The Shadow Influences on Batman

And Frank Miller's idea that these superheroes would be vilified by parents groups, the media, and be called in for questioning by a Senate Sub-Committee was modeled after the real-life vilifying of these characters and the U.S. government proceedings against them in the 1950s. In reality these superheroes Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman were vilified by parents groups, the media, a psychologist named Frederick Wertham and a Senate Sub-Committee on Juvenile Delinquency called the comic book publishers in for questioning and they eventually make a pact with the Comics Code Authority that they would give them their obedience or disappear. It happened in 1954 and the original strict Comics Code was created, those that weren't code approved were forced out of publication because the threat of newsdealer boycotts were pressuring them into not selling what somebody had found offensive. DC editors had been censoring Batman comics since 1941 when they created an Editorial Advisory Board so by the 1950s it was actually the horror and crime comics Crime Suspenstories, Crime Does Not Pay, Tales of the Crypt, Vault of Fear, Haunt of Fear, that made comics all look like monsters and really soiled them in the public eye. Batman is at his core a horror-esque character dressing as a bat to frighten and had very brutal methods before DC editors censored the character, so Frank Miller puts Batman in the role that the horror and crime comics and publisher Bill Gaines were in at the time that these things really happened.