The trouble with museums is they’re not very exciting.
Now that I can hear all of my friends in history and academia removing their earrings and cracking their knuckles, what I mean is that museums are meant, in their general design, to be more of a quiet, contemplative experience. While that’s a perfectly enjoyable thing (especially for someone who can suffer from sensory overload, like me), it does mean they don’t exactly gel with the loud, packed press of bodies and noise that is your average major comic convention. Naturally, that didn’t stop SDCC from trying.
“The Batman Experience” was a free museum attraction at Balboa Park that ran in conjunction with SDCC, meant to celebrate both Batman’s 80th and the character’s status as the first comic book inductee into the Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame. I’ll be honest: neither of those events were particularly enthralling for me. The state of comics these days is that every fifth anniversary of Batman’s has some sort of celebration attached to it, not to mention every hundredth issue, and it sort of blurs together into Warner Brothers shouting at anyone who will listen about how special their baby boy is at every opportunity.
Similarly, I have no knowledge of the Comic-Con Museum or its new Hall of Fame beyond seeing mention of it this past weekend, but Batman’s status as the first inductee plus the scattering of locations where fans can vote in their favorite for next year’s induction gives me the sense that we can probably predict how the first decade of inductions will go. Blue Devil fans, you’re probably going to have to wait a while.
As for the attraction itself? Experience is overstating it a bit. There was a line to get in, and as we stood in it, snaking our way closer to the door, we were greeted with the “delightful” sounds of the Dark Knight Dive, a wind tunnel where staff would occasionally lead eight volunteers in Batman-themed jumpsuits to float on a very strong gust of wind. Creating this gust of wind naturally involved an extremely loud machine that only got louder as they would ramp it up for each session.
The sound did not abate inside of the exhibit either, as directly through the doors visitors were faced with a large-screen display featuring a rotating video that showed a variety of Batman art through the years and a bit with Batman artist Neal Adams opining on the character. It was neat but not terribly intriguing; no one who has read comics for any length of time has a shortage of hearing old men talk about how they used to be. Surrounding this screen were various display cases featuring props from live action adaptations, including the Burton and Schumaker suits, costumes from the recently-ended Gotham TV show, and even a couple of Batmobiles. It was neat to see them up close, but again it’s not like these aren’t things that are regularly on display somewhere. There was also a Mondo gallery featuring framed poster-size reproductions of classic comic covers and a few display cases with pristine editions of some of those comics.
Downstairs from that floor is where things were more interactive. There was the Rogue Gallery Rumble, a room wherein supervillain faces were projected onto punching bags for visitors to hit, and the Batcave Gaming Lounge, where visitors can listen to Bruce curse authentically at twelve-year-olds on Call of Duty play the various Batman video games that have been released, from the original NES era forward. This was fun to see, and it was also nice that visiting kids seemed to be getting plenty of opportunity to play them. There was also a pair of display cases featuring every Batman Black and White statue in numerical order, which is fine if you’re into that.
Overall, the entire thing felt very lackluster to me. I suppose it’s partially the choice of character and partially the things on offer; for all that this was an exhibit for the Comic-Con Museum, the comics aspect of it felt, much like it feels at SDCC, very much like an afterthought. Instead of a single video screen offering Adams’ general musings, why not multiple stations with various creators talking about a specific issue they were proud of working on? Why not some interactive devices with digital comics loaded into them?
I think that’s my overall issue with the whole thing; while it was nice to see some memorabilia, when I think of museums, I think of culture and education, and there’s no reason we can’t apply that ethos to comics as well. As it is, while the whole thing was fine, I don’t feel any more enriched for the viewing of it. I don’t take anything away that makes me more excited to learn. Some of that is the source material—it’s hard to learn new things about Batman these days—but the majority is the setup of the attraction itself. It’s just all flash and no depth. And really, can any Batman Experience be complete without a listen-through of Prince’s “Batdance”?
