Today for some reason is Batman Day. There have been periods in my life when every day seemed like Batman Day.
I got a few messages from folks asking me what my favorite version of Batman is. There have been a lot to choose from…too many, in my opinion. A character is defined by what's right for him (or her) and what's wrong for the character…and given all the different interpretations that have made it into print, I think there's really nothing now that's wrong for Batman. Has anyone made him into a paranoid mongoose with a lisp yet? If not, wait. It'll be a mini-series in our lifetimes. To me, each variant undefines Batman another notch.
That said, I find it helpful to divide Batman into two eras. There was the period before 1964 when everything was signed by Bob Kane and the artists drew in a broader, cartoonier style that was supposed to emulate how Bob Kane would have drawn it if Bob Kane had drawn it. From that era, I preferred the more serious detective-type stories and mainly the ones drawn by Dick Sprang or Jerry Robinson.
After '64, no one was trying to draw like Bob Kane — even the guy ghosting the comics that Bob Kane was allegedly drawing. Again, I liked the more serious detective-type stories…and the ones where Batman outsmarted the villain instead of out-crazying him. The more mentally disturbed the hero was, the less I liked him or thought of him as Batman. My favorite tales from this era were drawn by Neal Adams, Irv Novick, Jim Aparo, Don Newton, Gene Colan and a few others…but only a few.
A number of times in my life, I was asked to write Batman stories for DC. Each of those times, I declined because I honestly wasn't sure who Batman was at that moment at that company. In hindsight, me doing a version that did not match what others were doing with him might not have bothered the editors there much but it probably would have inhibited my writing a lot. I don't think I would have done a very good job at it.