WHEN HE WAS
THREE OR FOUR
YEARS OLD,
MATT REEVES
FELL ILL WITH
A FEVER.
His temperature soared so high, he needed to be constantly hydrated. Day and night, his parents fed him water through an eyedropper. And as they did so, a dark figure in a cowl and a cap manifested from the shadows above him.
“I remember very distinctly, even to this day, seeing Batman on the ceiling,” Reeves tells Empire. “I wasn’t afraid of him. I just thought, ‘Oh. Batman is on my ceiling.’” He smiles, like he’s speaking of an old friend. “There was something about him that connected to me.”
When Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s crimefighting creation appeared in the pyretic Reeves’ bedroom, the character had already been going for three decades: in comic books, film serials, radio dramas, stage shows and, premiering in 1966 (the same year Reeves was born), the wildly popular TV show starring Adam West.
During the next half-century, his popularity proliferated, through bold graphic-novel reinterpretations such as Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One and Jeph Loeb’s The Long Halloween (Loeb, by the way, taught Reeves screenwriting at the University of Southern California), plus the blockbuster movies of Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder. And that’s not even inclu ding all the recent spin-offs and sidesh ows, taking in Todd Phillips’ Joker, The CW’s Batwoman and Epix’s Pennywort h. Even Michael Keaton’s 1989 Batm an is making a retrotastic comeback in next year’s multiverse-hopping The Flash.