A Man Called Uslan.

There were many highlights to this year's NYComicon that I'll share along with photos in a few days, including how I managed to get the evilest of evil eyes from one John Noble. I'd like to dedicate the most detail to a presentation given by a man named Michael Uslan, the greatest genius I never heard of.

For those who may not know how a comic book convention works, it's more than just a floor full of vendors selling action figures and comics, or artists and writers signing autographs. There are always a variety of panels, and I always try to go to at least 2 or 3 to justify the cost of admission. Otherwise I feel like I've spent 40 bucks to walk around a giant comic book store. The panels usually include professionals from the comic book industry, as well as film, television, gaming, and more genres that appeal to the geek fanbase. A lot of panels are marketing tools, publishers or filmmakers building hype and excitement for upcoming projects. These are pretty cool if it's a project you're interested in, but I also enjoy the inspirational panels in which a professional tells you his or her origin story, how he went from being a fanboy in an audience to someone fanboys would listen to.

The only thing I knew about the Uslan panel from the description in the convention guide was that he was some sort of producer, and he was going to be saying something about The Dark Knight. I was not prepared for what he actually had to say. Growing up, he became a big comic book fan after picking up some books at a yard sale. He practically learned to read from comics, and dismissed the preposterous claims of Wertham's “Seduction of the Innocent”. That author's logic after interviewing juvenile delinquents and learning that some of them read comic books growing up, was that comic books must cause juvenile delinquency. Every generation has some creative outlet become the scapegoat for bad kids, from cartoons in the ‘80s to video games of today. Some things never change.

Uslan was encouraged by his parents, and his father built shelves in the family garage that would eventually be filled by 30,000 comics. Years later when he was married, he would donate the bulk of his collection to a university. When he himself was a college student in the ‘60s, he took advantage of a new school policy that allowed new courses to be proposed and taught, should they be approved. He posited that comic books were a new mythology, and stated his case before a skeptical dean. If the Greeks had Poseidon and the Romans had Neptune, then comics had Aquaman. If the Greeks had Hermes and the Romans had Mercury, then comic books brought us The Flash.

The dean allowed the young man to finish, then told him there was no way in hell “funny books” would be taught in his school. He had read Superman as a boy, and comics were for children, something to be discarded and outgrown. But Uslan wasn't quiet beaten. He asked his dean if he could relate to him the story of Moses. “I don't know what kind of game you're playing,” said the dean, “but I'll play your game.”

“Moses was born at a time when his people were persecuted, being killed off. So his parents took their infant son and placed him in a basket, setting him afloat on a river. He was found and raised by adoptive parents, and when he grew up and learned his true origins, he rose up and became a hero to his people.” Uslan now asked the dean, who had admitted to reading Superman, to tell him Superman's origin. “Superman was born on the planet Krypton. When his father learned the planet would be destroyed and his people would die, his parents placed their infant son in a rocket ship and sent him to Earth, where he was raised by his adoptive parents, the Kents--” The dean stopped at this part of the obviously parallel tale, and told Uslan he had clearance to teach his comic book course.

But the tale didn't end there. The enterprising young man, capitalizing on the fervor the Wertham book was still causing, next made an anonymous complaint to a local news station, pretending to be outraged about this new class. Soon reporters from major networks were present with cameras in his classroom, and he had all the publicity he needed, getting calls from legends such as Stan Lee. It would be DC Comics that would grab him and bring him to New York as an intern, although he joked(?) that at the time interns were referred to as ”Junior Woodchucks”. One night, he heard an editor throwing a tantrum because he was against a deadline and needed a story idea. Uslan lied that he had a story idea, and thinking on his feet, came up with a pitch on the spot. The editor liked it so much he told him to have it on his desk the next day. Uslan pulled an all-nighter, recruited a secretary to help him type up the thing, and soon a college intern found himself as a published comic book author. The editor-in-chief at the time liked the story enough to hire him as a writer for Batman. Most people would be happy to achieve a dream so young; I certainly would. He decided he needed a new dream, and after about ten minutes, knew what it was.

At the time, Batman was reaching a wider audience thanks to a campy television show. I think reruns of the ‘60s series were my first exposure to the character growing up, so I had no idea about the darker origins of the character, that the death of his parents motivated his obsession in becoming the intellectual and physical epitome of a human being. Uslan liked Batman's humanity as I did, that this was a hero with no powers who theoretically any of us could become, with that much training (and wealth). But he knew of the Batman presented in comics, a tragic figure facing arguable the greatest rogues gallery in the industry. It hurt him to see people laughing at this character, and he decided that his mission would be to make a dark Batman movie.

To get his foot in the door proved more difficult than convincing a dean to let him teach comics. He got into Hollywood as a lawyer, making contacts needed to pitch his ideas. Studios gave him all sorts of ridiculous rejections that showed their ignorance. One executive told him it wouldn't work because another “funny book” movie, Annie, didn't do well at the box office. Another told him a Batman and Robin film would fare as poorly as Robin and Marian, a film about an aging Robin Hood starring Sean Connery. I give the guy a lot of credit for not bashing his head against the metaphorical brick walls he kept encountering. In 1979, he did get a studio interested in his idea, and told his boss he wanted to quit. With a mortgage and a 9-month pregnant bride, this probably wasn't a good idea, and his boss told him to sleep on it before doing anything rash. He talked it over with his wife, who must have been amazingly supportive, and both decided that to get anywhere in life, sometimes you have to take a calculated risk.

Again, this was 1979. Uslan didn't get into how he survived the 10 year gap until Batman was released in 1989, but somehow he did. He credits a lot of the success to two men he considers geniuses, the director Tim Burton and the late Anton Furst. Challenged with the description of Gotham City as a place where Hell has erupted through the pavement to build a city, the production designer turned to Burton, who thought it meant a New York City in which there were no zoning laws and new structures were built right on top of rusted, shambling old ones. Furst took that, and went off and designed the amazing sets that captured the vision of Gotham so perfectly.

Uslan was on top of the world. He had a great director and great production designer. His movie vision was becoming a reality. He even had Jack Nicholson signed on to play Joker. But then he got a phone call from Burton that he thought was a joke. As much of a visionary as that director was, it took some effort to sell Uslan on his idea for Batman: Michael Keaton. “You want Mr. Mom to play Batman?!”

Burton assured him that no one would take any of the potential leading men at that time seriously in the costume, and that they couldn't put an unknown against the star power of Nicholson. He asked Uslan to trust him, that Keaton would surprise him with his intensity and nail the duality of a character who could be laughing at a party one minute and be dangling a criminal off a roof while wearing a bat suit in the next minute. Their gamble paid off, and the rest is history. That movie spawned three sequels, and while they were increasingly worse, especially after Burton's departure, they had succeeded in introducing a darker Batman to the world. Uslan would executive produce the animated series that kept his vision alive long after the movies declined, and he'd meet another genius, Christopher Nolan, who would reboot the film series with a unique approach that remained true to the fantastical elements of the story, but grounded it in the “real” world.

And so, with Nolan's latest film The Dark Knight earning 8 Oscar nominations and selling over 15 billion tickets, Michael Uslan was satisfied that he had erased the “BIF! BAM! POW!” from the public's minds. He even got a phonecall from the “Robin and Marian” guy, congratulating him: “I always knew you could do it.” He concluded his inspiring origin story with one final thought. Over the years, comic book movies have become more and more of an accepted genre. Some people might not even realize that films like A History of Violence or Road to Perdition drew from graphic novel source material. But with The Dark Knight, people aren't describing it as a “good comic book movie”. They describe it as a “great film”. I personally love the fact that this hero and this incarnation of the character is now so well known, studios don't even have to include his name in the title.

Dreams come true, with ingenuity, patience, and hard work. They might take a long time and there will be bumps in the road, but people like Michael Uslan are living proof that it can happen.