Fans of Adam Wests's campy take on Batman were given a treat when that iteration of the character got his own comic book line with Batman '66, so how come Tim Burton and Michael Keaton's more Gothic take on the character didn't get the same treatment? Well, it very nearly did, but unfortunately for fans, DC apparently shut the idea down.
Back in 2015 - inspired by Batman '66 - comic writer/artists Kate Leth and Joe Quinones teamed up to take a similar approach with the 1989 version, which would have brought characters like Robin, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Batgirl into Tim Burton's Batman universe. The miniseries would have presented readers with the return of Catwoman (she was saving a life for next Christmas, after all) and even would have featured a fresh take on Two-Face, with Billy Dee Williams' Harvey Dent finally taking up the moniker.
The pair apparently got so into the project that Quinones developed a bunch of concept art for several of the new and returning characters that fans can check out in a 2016 blog post from the artist. There's even a mock up of potential cover art that features Batman, Catwoman, Robin, Jim Gordon, and Two-Face. In the post, Quinones explains the stories would have picked up any threads left after the conclusion of Burton's 1992 sequel Batman Returns. "We had a lot of fun ideas for the series overall," he wrote, but for reasons unexplained, the project was inexplicably shot down when Leth and Quinones pitched it to DC.
A quick scroll through the comments on Quinones' post shows that fans were befuddled as to why this wouldn't have been embraced by DC, especially after the success of Batman '66, though in his post he doesn't offer any explanation as to why the project got the nix. The Batman Beyond universe was continued in comic form, as was the Batman: The Animated Series take on the character. So it's curious why DC wouldn't want to embrace this one as well, especially considering that (at least judging by the comments) there's a fairly sizable audience clamoring for it.
But with recent news breaking that Michael Keaton will be reprising his role as Bruce Wayne in the DCEU, maybe interest in his original interpretation will be revitalized and DC will change its mind, finally giving fans a chance to see the continuing adventures and misadventures taking place within Tim Burton's Gotham. It's hard to keep track with all the different cinematic versions of Batman, but reportedly his character in the upcoming Flash movie will be the same Batman from the Burton universe, so maybe not all hope is lost. If absolutely nothing else, it really would have been a long-awaited treat to see Lando Calrissian flipping Two-Face's iconic coin.
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