Is DC Spreading Batman too Thin?

Here’s a list of currently published Batman and Batfamily books:

Batgirl
Batman/Superman
Batman
Batman and Robin
Batman Beyond
Batman Eternal
Batman 66
Batman 66 Meets the Green Hornet
Batwing
Batwoman
Birds of Prey
Catwoman
Detective Comics
Gotham Academy
Gotham by Midnight
Grayson
Harley Quinn
Legends of the Dark Knight
Red Hood and the Outlaws
World’s Finest

That is by far the vast majority of comics published by DC. Sure, Batman is one of the top three most iconic superheroes of all time. In fact, he’s one of the most iconic pop culture figures in history. He’s cool, he’s compelling and he appeals to an extremely wide audience. Hell, nobody doesn’t like Batman.

DC is painfully aware of this. You could make the argument that the poor reception of Man of Steel forced them to insert Batman into its sequel to keep from falling farther behind Marvel in the cinematic universe. Batman sells. Sadly even more than the first real superhero, Superman. But how much is too much?

Let’s say you’re a kid who saw a Batman cartoon or movie and now wants to read the comics. Where do you start? Which book do you jump into the middle of? It’s been many years since you could just go to the comic shop and say ‘get me Batman comics’. Since being priced between $2.99-$4.99, can you imagine buying that list of books every month? Sure, the argument to that is a diverse number of titles allows readers to pick and choose what they want without having to feel lost or overwhelmed. That makes a lot of sense as an explanation…until the next big intra-company crossover. Besides, couldn’t that make a reader feel marginalized?

I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a negative that these rich characters all have adventures we can follow, but at some point you have to worry that shamelessly inserting Batman characters into stories or overloading DC’s library won’t induce Batman Fatigue. Think of it as Marvel’s Wolverine Syndrome. A lot of genuine comic fans have been turned off over the years by needlessly slapping Wolverine onto every cover and into every team Marvel has. I mean, for being a tragic loner he sure as hell is in a lot of team books.

Much like Comic-Con, it’s possible that it could collapse under its own weight. If the whole ordeal is too intimidating and at the same time too ubiquitous, there could be a push-back where readers simply throw their hands in the air and give up.

Batman is popular now and has been for 75 frakking years, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be too much. At some point DC should re-evaluate how selective it is with the Caped Crusader, otherwise they run the risk of numbing readers to his presence and falling down the rabbit hole of gimmicky writing. They just need to be smart, be respectful and try to prevent Batman to once again become a parody of himself like the Schumaker years.