That right there, friends, is my personal favorite Batman logo.

I know, I know — it’s far too campy and cartoonish to fly in today’s movie market, but the hypothetical Bat-trilogy we’re cooking up in this series of posts is, as we’ve established, probably going to have a lot more emphasis on the heroic and detective aspects of the character than it is on the “Dark Knight” aspects. and as such, I like to think having this new trilogy go out under an “old school” logo like that would be a pretty cool thing. And while this particular logo may not be the exact logo from the old Adam West Batman TV show per se, it’s still pretty close, at least thematically, so any way you slice it, I’m sure it’s a no-go.

That being said, there is a somewhat “retro” logo that I think would form a rather apropos visual backbone for this new trilogy, namely this one from the late-80s/early-90s  DC Bat-books —

Sure, it’s still not quite the perfect look, but it’s pretty cool , evokes just the right touch of the past, yet still wouldn’t be totally off-putting to a contemporary audience. It would, of course, inevitably be tinkered and toyed with, but that’s more than okay, since my point isn’t so much that it’s a perfect logo, by any means, merely that its design would form a nice visual basis for whatever sort of logo the series would, inevitably, end up with.

But you know what? It’s not logos I’m here, specifically, to talk about. That’s just a side issue, although one that fits in with what I am actually here to talk about which is — plot details, right? Well, that was the plan. And it’s still the plan. But it’s going to have to wait until Monday because I’m still cooking up a few minor details and tomorrow my free time is limited and I’m firmly committed to reviewing the latest Before Watchmen book for my own website, http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com. So plot stuff is coming, I promise — on Monday.

What’s the whole subject here today, then? Apart from logos, that is? Well, titles. Because is strikes me that what we’re gonna call these flicks is actually, you know, kind of important. And as good as I thought Batman Begins was as a film, I still think it’s kind of a stupid title. With the whole “Dark Knight” concept being one this series is sort of moving away from, or at least toning down, starting things off with a flick called something like The Dark Knight Returns is out, too — and would just cause confusion with the Frank Miller book of the same name, anyway.

The basic title of Batman is probably a no-go, too, since it’s been used twice already, in both the 1960s and 1980s, but I do, ideally, want this series to have more a Batman feel than a Dark Knight feel, so what does that leave us with? I have to admit it was something I was kind of struggling with in my mind, until I realized that sometimes the most basic names are the best, and sometimes the most workable solutions to problems are hiding in plain sight, to wit —

How about we just call these things Batman I, Batman II, and Batman III? Sure, it’s basic, maybe even (okay, definitely) unimaginative, but what the heck? Most of the folks out there would just say they want a ticket for “Batman,” whichever “Batman” it is, when they get to the box office anyway, so it’s definitely functional, at any rate. And yes, the idea of putting a I in the title of the first flick might be a bit presumptuous, but having “Episode I” in the title for The Phantom Menace didn’t hurt its performance at the gate any (nor did uniformly horrible reviews), and for a more current example of the same concept working out okay take a look at Atlas Shrugged, Part I, which has a sequel on the way even though the first movie lost tens of millions of dollars and was laughed off even by many of the same members of the “Cult Of Rand” at which it was squarely — and, frankly, solely — aimed. So maybe openly stating one’s intent to make more films in a series in the title of the first film is one way to guarantee that said successive films will happen?

Nah. I think that that theory’s a pretty dubious one at best, too, and I know full well that Atlas Shrugged, Part II  is only happening because a couple of Rand-fans with very deep pockets agreed to finance a trilogy from the outset, but still — I think Batman I, II, and III works (or rather would  work, mustn’t get ahead of myself) just fine, even if it doesn’t exactly reek of brilliance and/or originality.

I’ll be back Monday with — I swear! — the first plot details, but until then you’ve got 48 hours to tell me why this idea is brilliant, stupid, or somewhere in the middle —