Bartman: Bart Simpson's masked superhero

CharacterBart's alter egoSince 1991

Bartman isn't Bart: he's what Bart becomes when he puts on the mask. Born of a scheme to score a discount at the door of a comic book convention in May 1991, the masked vigilante has barely existed on television. Yet he has come to life in six comic book issues, a video game named after him and a playable power in "The Simpsons Game", released in 2007.

Bartman is Bart Simpson's costumed identity: a mask, a cape and an unabashed parody of Batman. He doesn't exist on his own: he appears when Bart decides to play superhero and vanishes as soon as the mask comes off.

The paradox in a nutshell: the show almost never uses him, yet comic books and video games have made him a hero in his own right. This article follows the mask, and the mask alone, from the 1991 phone booth to the consoles of the 2000s.

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The day Bart became Bartman (May 9, 1991)

Bartman is born in "Three Men and a Comic Book", which aired in the United States on May 9, 1991. It's the twenty-first episode of season 2, the thirty-fourth overall, written by Jeff Martin and directed by Wes M. Archer. In the French version, it is titled "Un pour tous, tous contre un".

Bart and Lisa go to the twelfth "Close Encounter of the Comic Book Kind" convention, where Bart has his eye on issue #1 of Radioactive Man, priced at $100. The convention offers a discount at the door to any visitor dressed as a recognizable character, something Bart only finds out once he gets there.

He doesn't miss a beat: he ducks into a phone booth, comes out masked and wearing a cape, and announces himself as Bartman. The cashier isn't buying it and charges him full price. So Bartman isn't born of tragedy or a calling, but of a miscalculation.

👕 In the phone booth, Bart only adds a mask and a cape to his everyday outfit, and the convention cashier doesn't fall for it. For your own trip to a comic book convention, our Simpsons T-shirts make a more recognizable base under the cape.

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Bartman is not El Barto

The spiky-haired boy has two alternate identities, and they have nothing to do with each other. El Barto is a signature, Bartman is a disguise: the first lets him take credit for a misdeed without ever showing his face, whereas the second is all about showing himself, cape billowing, and demanding attention.

The difference also shows in their narrative weight. On the show, the El Barto tag spans decades, whereas Bartman's mask only comes out a handful of times. For everything else, you have to look for Bart Simpson beyond the episodes: in comic books and on game consoles.

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A mask, a cape and Bartarangs

In 1991, the costume was bare-bones. Bartman is just Bart with a mask over his eyes and a cape: no belt, no gadgets. Nancy Cartwright, who voices Bart, also voices his alter ego.

His powers, on the other hand, are better stocked than his wardrobe. He is credited with the ability to climb walls, glide, fire a grappling hook and throw Bartarangs, as well as a utility belt that the 1991 episode doesn't show: it isn't until the 2007 segment that we see Bartman in a full costume with his gear.

The Bartarang deserves a quick mention. It's a mask-shaped boomerang that Professor Frink makes in a batch of three in the story "Dial 'M' for Milhouse" (Simpsons Super Spectacular #12, December 2010): one freezes the opponent, another is filled with sneezing powder, and the third plays background jazz designed to repel teenagers. The Bartarang is to the Batarang what Bartman is to Batman.

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Bartman at Bongo Comics (1993-1995)

In print, the character gets a real costume and a real job. Bongo Comics published a series titled "Bartman" from December 1993 to July 1995, six issues in all. In it, Bartman takes on the bullies and supervillains who crop up in Springfield.

The titles give a taste of the publisher's humor. The first issue is called "The Comic Cover Caper!", and two more issues followed in 1994: "Where Stalks… The Penalizer!" in April and "The Final Collision" in August. Then came a three-part story published in May, June and July 1995, titled "Bartman", "Bartman - Part Two: Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" and "Bartman - Part III: The Great Purple Hope". None of these titles has an established French equivalent.

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The mask returns to the screen: 1999, 2007, and a couch gag

Eight years after the comic book convention, the mask makes its first comeback. Bart wears it to enter radio station KBBL's "How Low Will You Go?" contest, in "They Saved Lisa's Brain" ("Les Gros Q.I." in the French version), the twenty-second episode of season 10, which aired on May 9, 1999.

The real comeback arrives in 2007, and it's a full origin story. In the eleventh episode of season 18, "Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Three Times" (January 28, 2007), the family tells three stories about revenge, and Bart's runs under a segment title that parodies Christopher Nolan: "Bartman Begins". The French version of the episode is called "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange trois fois" and titles the segment simply "Bartman".

The Batman parody is played straight. Leaving the Gotham City opera, Homer and Marge are shot dead by a mugger with a snake tattoo on his face. At the funeral, Grampa reveals that he was once the vigilante "Crimson Cockatoo" — a name with no French equivalent, left in English — and trains his grandson. Once the training is over, he offers him his old costume and the name "Crimson Cockaboy", which the boy doesn't take up. Bartman tracks the killer down at Gotham's natural history museum in the middle of a robbery: a Bartarang breaks the spell the Serpent has cast on the guests, the police surround him, and Bartman unmasks him — the snake tattoo is there — before pushing him onto the fangs of a snake statue, which kills him.

Director Michael Polcino's favorite segment to bring to the screen was, by his own account, "Bartman Begins", particularly for the amount of shadow he got to use in it: the only time the show indulges in the nocturnal-vigilante aesthetic for Bartman. Al Jean, for his part, noted that for the parody to steer clear of legal trouble, all it took was leaving the character's chest free of any emblem.

🧵 Not a single emblem on the chest: that was the legal precaution behind "Bartman Begins". Your jacket has no lawyers to keep happy, and our Simpsons patches give it the emblem the segment denied itself.

One last sighting falls outside the tally, away from any storyline. Bartman shows up in the "Homer Shake" couch gag, which replaced the opening sequence of the fourteenth episode of season 24, "Gorgeous Grampa" (March 3, 2013), on its original American broadcast. It's a mere walk-on, yet fans still count it among the character's appearances.

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The character video games brought to life

Where television forgets him, the game controller crowns him a hero. "The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man", released in December 1992 on the Nintendo Entertainment System and then in February 1994 on the Sega Game Gear, is the only game to bear his name: published by Acclaim, it opens in Bart's treehouse, where he learns that Radioactive Man is being held in the Limbo Zone, a mysterious prison orbiting a black hole.

The game is a two-dimensional platformer in which Bartman must defeat three supervillains before facing the mastermind behind it all, Brain-O the Magnificent. Elsewhere, Bartman is a power, not a hero: in "The Simpsons: Bart vs. the World", the mask is a pickup that lets Bart fly, for example to reach the top of the Great Sphinx in Egypt.

The 2000s turned him into a wardrobe option, then a gameplay mechanic. He's one of the costumes available to Bart in level 6 of "The Simpsons: Hit & Run" (2003), while "The Simpsons Game", released on October 30, 2007, goes much further: its second level is fittingly titled "Bartman Begins" and sends Bart and Homer underground, through a manhole near Springfield's natural history museum, where they discover that Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney have been sent to steal the museum's exhibits for Principal Skinner.

Here, Bart discovers his power: a transformation that lets him fire his slingshot and glide to distant platforms, later joined in the game by a grappling hook that works on certain anchor points. You'll find the full overview of the game adaptations in our guide to Simpsons video games.

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"Do the Bartman": the namesake you shouldn't confuse him with

One mix-up keeps coming up, and it's best to clear it up right away. "Do the Bartman" is a song, not a superhero: a track from the album "The Simpsons Sing the Blues", whose music video aired on December 6, 1990.

The song invites you to do a dance and never once mentions a mask, a cape or a vigilante. It actually came out five months before Bartman's TV debut: the two Bartmans were born separately.

🎧 "Do the Bartman" is practiced on the dance floor, not in the wardrobe: you rehearse it with your earbuds in, and our Simpsons AirPods cases protect them between sessions.

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Summary table

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FAQ

• 1Who is Bartman in The Simpsons?
  Bartman is Bart Simpson's costumed superhero identity: a mask, a cape, and an open parody of Batman. Nancy Cartwright provides his voice.
• 2What episode does Bartman first appear in?
  In "Three Men and a Comic Book" ("Un pour tous, tous contre un" in the French version), the twenty-first episode of season 2, which aired on May 9, 1991.
• 3What are Bartman's powers?
  He is credited with wall climbing, gliding, a grappling hook and Bartarangs, the mask-shaped boomerangs made by Professor Frink.
• 4How many issues does the Bartman comic book series have?
  Six issues, published by Bongo Comics from December 1993 to July 1995, from "The Comic Cover Caper!" to "Bartman - Part III: The Great Purple Hope".
• 5Is the song "Do the Bartman" about the superhero Bartman?
  No. It is a track from the album "The Simpsons Sing the Blues", whose music video was released on December 6, 1990, and it has nothing to do with the masked vigilante.

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Conclusion

Bartman is a rare case: a character whose career has played out almost entirely away from television. A handful of on-screen appearances, versus six comic book issues, a game named after him and a playable power in "The Simpsons Game": the imbalance is dramatic.

Yet he stays true to his origins. The mask was meant to land a discount at the door of a comic book convention, and it has never quite stopped being a scheme: a disguise put on to get something out of it, in a town where real heroism rarely wears a cape.

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