The success of the vigilante superhero The Batman helped Detective Comics out-earn rival Action Comics, whose success with Superman had inspired artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger to create a worthy competitor. For Batman (1943, its big screen adaptation of the comic as a 15-part serial Columbia Pictures turned the concept over to Larry Darmour Productions, which had graduated from Poverty Row in 1938 to assume control of Columbia's serial department. Screenwriters Leslie Swabacker, Victor McLeod, and Harry L. Fraser were more than up to the task: Fraser had directed Columbia's first serial, Jungle Menace (1937), starring explorer Frank Buck, while Swabacker had written the 1936 Republic chapter play The Vigilantes Are Coming, featuring Bob Livingston as the Eagle, a masked cowboy hero; McLeod was the writer of many a Johnny Mack Brown shoot-em-up whose career had begun in the animation department of Walter Lantz Productions. As evidenced in Chapter 12 of Columbia's Batman serial, "Embers of Evil," elements from the comic book are conspicuous in their absence; instead of the futuristic Batmobile, Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin (Douglas Croft) make do with a Cadillac sedan while Gotham City's top cop, Commissioner Gordon, has been replaced by Captain Arnold (Charles C. Wilson). The serial did introduce its own innovations, some of which were later incorporated into the comic, and in "Embers of Evil" supervillain Dr. Daka (J. Carrol Naish) even disposes of a victim with a pack of poisoned smokes nearly 70 years before Breaking Bad's infamous ricin-laced cigarette.

By Richard Harland Smith