Improving the Foundations: Batman Begins from Comics to Screen by Julian Darius

Author:Julian Darius [Darius, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sequart Research & Literacy Organization
Published: 2012-01-01T03:00:00+00:00

After firing a gun into a potted plant as a demonstration to his students, Jonathan Crane’s old clothes are mocked by his fellow professors, spurring his decision to become a criminal. From Batman #189 (February 1967). Art by Sheldon Moldoff (ghosting for Bob Kane) and Joe Giella. Copyright © DC Comics.

Things only get worse for Crane when the university fires him for his aforementioned in-class gunplay, leaving Crane to devote himself to being the Scarecrow more fully. But, of course, Batman and Robin soundly defeat him, helped along by the Scarecrow’s theft of some rare books.

In this first incarnation, Scarecrow didn’t have the fear gas for which he was later known – he just used a gun instead. And he wasn’t afraid of hand-to-hand combat with Batman and Robin, as he would later appear.

The villain was never popular and appeared only a few times in the 1940s. He was brought back in 1967’s “Fright of the Scarecrow,” written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Giella, in Batman #189 (February 1967). Since the Scarecrow had not appeared for some time, the 1967 story begins by retelling the character’s origin in three pages. This time, he explicitly chooses the Scarecrow costume not only as a symbol of fear, by which gangsters make the money he equates with respect, but also as a symbol of poverty – making the Scarecrow almost a socially-conscious villain.

That story introduces the villain’s famous fear gas. When Batman and Robin are sprayed with it, they suddenly become afraid of falling. Robin hangs onto a tree branch, despite being mere inches off the ground. Batman, thinking that he’s about to “fall into a bottomless pit,” desperately grips the same tree’s trunk.

From this point forward, the Scarecrow would reappear more consistently, though he would never become a major villain.[56]

Like Ra’s al Ghul, Scarecrow had not appeared on film before Batman Begins, although he was slated to have been in the fifth film of the franchise before Warner Bros. decided on a version of Year One. He had, however, appeared in animated television. The first was in 1978’s Challenge of the Superfriends, produced by Hanna-Barbera. That show featured a team of DC super-heroes, based on DC’s Justice League of America but calling themselves the Superfriends, frequently battling their opposite numbers in the Legion of Doom, a team of super-villains. Needing 13 members, the show’s creators resorted to second-stringers like the Riddler as well as the Scarecrow – though his role wasn’t very prominent. As the TV show morphed into other incarnations (such as Super Powers), the Scarecrow would occasionally reappear. Assorted versions of the Scarecrow would also appear on the multiple incarnations of the Batman animated show begun in 1992.

The Jonathan Crane of the film differs from his depiction in the comics in several respects. Most basically, he is not a psychiatrist employed in the professoriate but at an insane asylum. This change loses the film little, except perhaps some sympathy for the character. It also has

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