Latest Batmobile

George Barris designed the first real-world Batmobile in 1966. The Caped Crusader’s ride was an evolution of the 1955 Lincoln Futura show car. [Click here to see the missing link.] Barris’ design also held a hint of the Cadillac DeVille and the Screaming Chicken Trans-Am. Whatever its genesis, the flame-spouting Batmobile was a car. You know; a vehicle driven by people. In fact, the Batmobile’s bubble cockpit put the distinctly disarmed Dynamic Duo on display. Compare that to the vehicle above. The Dark Knight’s latest ride is a cross between a tarantula and an MRAP. More to the point, its point is plain to see: bow-mounted machine guns. Which reminds me . . . I can’t remember ever seeing Batman shoot a gun. So why is it OK for him to mount them on his car(s)? Just wonderin’.

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60 COMMENTS

    • Indeed. Lately half of this site’s articles are flailing stories by Mr. Farago. I’ve started severely curtailing my visits until the stupid recedes a bit.

      A shame really, the gun, training, and competition reviews written by others are generally pretty decent.

  4. If you look at the classic batman comics he used to carry and use guns often. So did many of the heroes before the no killing thing kind of became vogue. Until, recently in any super hero movie the bad guys were hardly ever killed. Only now like in Ironman and other films is it acceptable to kill bad guys again. Personally, I would love to see batman carry a pistol and Captain America to get his 1911 back.

    • It wasn’t so much “vogue” as legally required. One of the many ways the US government has demonstrated the depth of its commitment to freedom of speech was by passing a law called the Comic Code in the mid-1950s, which imposed censorship on comic books for decades (it’s no longer around).

      • And we have the commie-fearing conservatives to thank for that. According to them, comics were the gateways to hell, inspiring little boys to disobey their parents and wear leather jackets and grease their hair back.

      • “One of the many ways the US government has demonstrated the depth of its commitment to freedom of speech was by passing a law called the Comic Code in the mid-1950s,”

        Nope. Not true. That is just wrong. Congress did not pass any law, there was no legal regulation made by any governing body. The Comics Code was a product of the Comics Magazine Association of America(a private body) to self regulate the content appearing in their publications. It was not government censorship.

    • Cap had his 1911 in the film a few years ago. And animated Cap has a 1911 in flashbacks to WWII.

      The modern DC animation has deaths. It even has cussing and sexual innuendo. It’s definitely not the ’90s batman…except that it uses the same voice actor.

    • You’re half-right.

      The Bat-man first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. That character however was a pretty blatant rip-off of The Shadow and similar pulp of the 30s. Shadow used guns, rich guy in disguise, etc.

      However the modern Batman as we know him when he got his own comic in 1940 did not really use guns (except for a couple weird spinoffs and the more modern stuff). The reasons are more creative. As Batman evolved his character is more about imprisoning the insane in Arkham rather than simply killing them off. This also lets them escape and be recurring villains, etc. Something that would not happen if they were killed.

      So nothing anti-gun about Batman so much as from a story arc perspective killing off villains isn’t interesting. Personally I’d say the backstory with the parents is more a rationalization than anything.

      As a side note, the original comics of that period are really fun.

  5. Yep my son showed this to me today. My comment was”that’s way over the top”. I think the goal is to make it like a video game. BTW I don’t find this incendiary at all- just cool…

  6. Batman did indeed used to carry, but it was written as a point of personal hypocrisy for him to use the same weapon (the gun) that took his parents’ lives. After that, his CVK (Code vs. Killing, in ‘Champions’ terms) pretty much seemed to be the way The Dark Knight rolled with few, if any, exceptions that come to mind.

  9. The batman anti-gun thing kinda evolved throughout the comics… it was never part of the original sources though. He originally used guns.

    The irony of having weapons mounted to his car should not go remiss.

    • Different Enterprise, but you jogged the same “peaceful morphing into military while pretending we’re not” trend in Star Trek. In the original ST, we’re told in the voiceover that theirs is a peaceful, scientific 7 year mission to find new life and go where no man has gone before, a futuristic Jacques Cousteau, the Enterprise their futuristic Calypso. Oh, and we had Chekov and Uhura to show that mankind had set aside our differences … we could all get along together now in a world without war, an interplanetary UN running everything and headquartered in San Francisco. The hippies won. Peace in our time. Only to find out we’re at war with the Klingons, and this Calypso is armed with phasers and torpedoes.

      OK, we fixed that… Next Gen. We now have Worf, to show we’ve now made intergalactic peace with the Klingons! Koom-Ba-Yas for everyone, I’m buyin’! Now, let’s go get those Romulans! In our newer, fancier, much better armed CG “Calypso”!

      • I always thought that Harlan Ellison’s gritty vision of the future in “Babylon 5” was closer to reality vs. Star Trek’s utopia. In “Babylon 5” they still had prostitution, drugs, robbery, smuggling, addictions, gambling, corruption, and war (and that was the first episode). Humans have been involved in such activities for over 5 thousand years, it is impossible to believe that we as a species, will give up all that sinful pleasure seeking stuff in the next couple of hundred years.

        • Ellison may have written an episode or two, but J Michael Straczynski was B5’s big kahuna. Says so in the opening of every episode.

        • Ellison was the creative consultant for the show. He did pen the B5 writer’s bible, but JMS was the exec. producer and wrote 92 of its 110 episodes. Plus, he tweaked and often wrote the B story (esp. if it was an arc element) for the scripts where he wasn’t the listed screenwriter. The grittiness and vision of the future was Joe’s.

          The Great Curmudgeon did do the story for two scripts and shares screenplay credit with JMS on those. He had a cameo as a Psi Cop in Season 4. He also did the voice for Sparky the Computer in the S3 episode, Ceremonies of Light and Dark when they had to reboot the central computer. Regarding this, Joe said, “No, I just figured, if the computer system had a glitch, what would it sound like? Answer…Harlan.”

          One of the great things about Bab5 is that it its still completely relevant today even though it’s now in its 20th anniversary. I’m doing a podcast on the show and we just went live with The War Prayer from season 1. Considering the Ferguson unrest it is excellent timing. (Ok… cheap plug… If you want to listen, the show is The Babylon Project Podcast, at http://www.babylonprojectpodcast.wordpress.com. It’s also on iTunes)

  11. Batman has frequently had guns on his vehicles, he just doesn’t use them on people. He shoots vehicles, buildings, and other nonliving targets.

  14. From what I’ve read about this movie it’s being loosely based on Fank Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. In that story an older Bruce Wayne resumes his role as Batman after years of retirement. In this story the Batmobile was an armored tank that shot rubber bullets and was used on a street gang the size of a small army. So based on that it technically fits. It’ll be interesting to see if Superman will be portrayed in the movie as he was in the graphic novel. In it he was just a weapon that did the bidding of the government. Superman was a real tool in those books. It came down to a fight between Batman and Superman where Batman was essentially fighting a super strong incarnation of government oppression.

  16. See, if Bloomberg had any vision, or balls, or a little something… He could actually afford to be batman! Instead he pisses his wealth away like it’s a… Tax deduction.

  17. One of the cannons fires non-lethal rounds, the others are for destroying the arkham knights mechanized tanks. Not much of a gamer anymore, but still play the crap out of the arkham games.

  18. So TTAG has evolved from complaining about police to complaining about fictional vehicles. Nevermind that the Batman has a long history of firearms use.

    • TTAG no longer exists. It’s now TheTruthAbout moms, cops, rape, comic books and pawn shops. It essentailly did what the History Channel did. It had integrity, and legitimacy, then followed the path of “whatever gets the most views (ratings)”. So, like how History used to have shows about WW2, and now has Ancient Aliens, TTAG used to be about guns now it’s about comic cops and rape.

      • TTAG is fine, Robert Farago is the problem, he constantly spews emotional, buzz word driven hyperbole that would make Bloomberg proud. Its gun related though since the evil police carry guns.

        • Problem is his facts aren’t even right half the time. Farago’s posts are like TAAG’s version of info wars– Barely factually and only loosely based in reality.

    • I don’t believe he’s complaining about the Batmobile. It appears he’s quoting or echoing the opinions on the source article. Click on the link.

  19. This comes from the upcoming arkham video game and it is stated that the guns use non leathal rounds, someone at ttag just saw the photo and thought it would make a good headline, seeing stuff like this on ttag disappoints me, if I’m to show this site to my friends to give them a view on our gun culture and seeing the articles on how the antis just use emotion and don’t go on facts it looks stupid when they see stuff like this, the author knows close to nothing of the subject of the picture and just makes a random assumption just by looking at it,that batman never carried guns. Just wished the author would of looked up what he was looking at, and not just take things for face value like the grabbers do, you can do better ttag.

    • Again, I believe he is echoing the source article. Check it out.
      It’s funny, but it appears that the people complaining didn’t watch the films, because the Batpod was equipped with dual 20mm cannons and the Bat packed some serious firepower.

  21. Looks like the article’s author missed the last 30 or so years of Batman-related media.

    The Batmobile from Frank Miller’s DKR was a tank.

    The Batmobile from the Burton series was armed and armored. Batman fired directly at the Joker from the Batwing in the first movie.

    The Tumbler from the Nolan series was described at a bridging vehicle for the military. The current bridging vehicles the Army uses are based off the M1 Abrams and M60 Patton tanks. It was armed with auto-cannons and rockets. The Batpod from the same series of films had machine guns and rockets.

    • Watch the first Tim Burton Batman movie again (what was it, 1989?) and you’ll see plenty of bat-gunplay. When Batman sends the Batmobile into the Axis Chemical plant, not only do twin Browning machineguns pop up out of the fenders to blast its way in, it deploys bombs to kill a group of Joker henchmen. Plus the Batwing strafing run you mentioned – where he also deploys missiles into a crowd where the Joker’s henchmen are running amok.

      In the sequel, Batman blows up a bomb-carrying circus gang member and sets another on fire with the jet exhaust from the Batmobile.

      Not to mention the early comics where even after Batman stopped packing heat, he still wasn’t shy about killing criminals – usually by breaking their necks.

    • I wonder at what point in developing a bridging vehicle someone decided it needed to transform into honda hippo?

  23. Batman doesn’t like guns, but he’ll use them when he needs to, and then occasionally complain about having to use them.
    Then again, if I were a 6ft plus billionaire made of solid muscle that trained in every martial art on the planet, shooting somebody would feel like royal cheating to me too.

    • I sometimes have people use batman as an anti gun pawn. I remind them that he is despite being labeled as the main non powered superhero he regularly dose some very super powered things. And where that falls short the writer is always there to provide some ludicrous out in case things get to real. Besides, even if I were some freak able to leap twenty feet straight up and the luck to be missed by every bullet I would rather diffuse a conflict via firearm where every gets to walk away 90% of the time than dish out the type of savage beatings batman dose.

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