Matt Fraction On The Bat Whispers Influence On The First Joker Story

Posted in: Comics, Movies | Tagged: #, John Siuntres, matt fraction, The Bat Whispers, The Joker, Word Balloon

Matt Fraction On The Bat Whispers Influence On The First Joker Story

Matt Fraction on the 1930 movie The Bat Whispers and its influence on the very first Joker story in 1940's Batman #1

Published Sun, 18 Oct 2026 08:58:11 -0500
by Rich Johnston
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Article Summary

• Matt Fraction says The Bat Whispers directly influenced The Joker’s first appearance in 1940’s Batman #1.
• He points to the film’s first ten minutes, set in Gotham City, as a clear blueprint for early Batman storytelling.
• Fraction argues The Bat Whispers shaped Batman more than Metropolis, calling it the real roadmap for the comic.
• The restored 1930 film recently entered the public domain in the US, making The Bat Whispers easy to watch today.

The Bat Whispers was a 1930 American mystery film directed by Roland West and based on the 1920 mystery play The Bat, by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. It was considered a lost film for many years, but was restored in 1988. It entered the public domain in the US this year and was uploaded to YouTube. And it is among Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson's many stated influences on Batman, especially the introduction of The Joker, even if here, the bat is the bad guy…

And talking to John Siuntres on his Word Balloon recently, current Batman writer Matt Fraction said, "The Joker's first appearance is from The Bat Whispers. It's straight up. They just took this. That's the story. The first ten minutes of The Bat Whispers, the 65-millimetre version, are set in Gotham City. It is."

"There's a very cinematic chase added to the opening of the film and then the story as we know it takes over, which at that point is a drawing-room mystery with people running in and out of rooms and a maid that shrieks. It's really weird." I quite like that too, though; it's very funny.

Matt concludes, "But every now and again, when it takes advantage of that 65 millimetre camera, it's incredible… If you watch the first ten minutes of it, it's like, oh, this is the roadmap—more than Metropolis, more than anything else. Nope. It's this. This is the roadmap for what this book became. And they saw it, because it's the first Joker story."

And now you can too…

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