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Once upon a time, a stone mason's son named Michael waited, full of excitement, for his hero, Batman, to debut in live-action on TV for the first time. The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves had run for six seasons during the boy's earliest years, having debuted when Michael was a toddler at about the same age I was when Batman later debuted with Adam West as its star. Whereas The Adventures of Superman and The Lone Ranger had treated their mystery-men with dignity and respect, the Batman series that came out in 1966 turned the Dark Knight into a bright, campy joke. As I became aware of the Adam West show (which happened quickly because my baby book shows that "Batman" was one of my earliest words, spoken the month the program premiered), I was far too young to know it was a comedy. Young Mike Uslan, on the other hand, was old enough to see that Batman was being treated as a joke and to be horrified that people were laughing at his hero. And so, much like young Bruce Wayne making his childhood vow to war wage on all crime, Michael vowed to prove one day that the world could take Batman seriously. He grew up to teach the first course on comics as folklore at any accredited university, to write the comic book adventures of Batman and other characters, and to serve as executive producer on every Batman movie since the 1980s.
By refusing a studio's offer to produce a campy Batman update in the vein of the Adam West series, Michael stayed true to his intent. At the time, everybody else in Hollywood had rejected his idea. As his business partner, Ben Melniker, put it: Michael became Batman's Batman. Uslan and company ultimately managed to bring a psychological depth previously unseen in superhero films. Comic book movies changed. Movies changed.
The first edition of Michael Uslan's autobiography, The Boy Who Loved Batman, came out a year before the film The Dark Knight Rises. So much has happened since then, and thus he has now updated his life story. The paperback edition recently came out within weeks of the release of his latest production, the Joker film directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix. That movie has earned more than a billion dollars worldwide, broken records left and right, stimulated public discourse about media violence and mental health, "provided a great educational tool for discussing the making of a murderer," according to a Vanity Fair article, and (we hope) shown that Hollywood can tell successful stories based on comic book characters without requiring quarter-billion-dollar budgets.
This autobiography, with its account of Michael Uslan's personal passion, purpose, and persistence, offers an intriguing and engaging read. Many people have found it to be uplifting and inspirational. So many things Michael accomplished can never be accomplished by anybody else because only one person gets to go first and because many of his achievements fall far outside the range of things that most people plan to do, such as writing comic books and making movies. But any of us may know what it's like to feel passion, to develop purpose, and to need persistence in order to achieve the things we hope to do in our lives. Despite differences in interests, one person's passion can inspire another person's pursuits.
Full disclosure: Michael Uslan and I have done many convention panels together. He wrote the forewords to both my first book and my most recent (Langley, 2012; 2019). He's the only person other than Stan Lee to write forewords for more than one of my 13 books. His influence in my life before I even knew him and his friendship since then have been important enough that I dedicated The Joker Psychology: Evil Clowns and the Women Who Love Them to Michael Uslan, the world's first doctor of comic books.
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References
Langley, T. (2012). Batman and psychology: A dark and story knight. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.
Langley, T. (Ed.) (2019). The Joker psychology: Evil clowns and the women who love them. New York, NY: Sterling.
Uslan, M. E. (2019). The boy who loved Batman (2nd ed.). Red Lightning Books.
