The Bat-signal · Wikimedia Commons
Of all the recurring dates in the comics calendar, few have landed on September 21 as often as DC's own Batman Day. The annual, worldwide celebration of the Dark Knight — first launched in 2014 to mark Batman's 75th anniversary — moves around the third or fourth Saturday of September each year, and the calendar has put it squarely on September 21 twice: in 2019 and again in 2024, the latter coinciding with Batman's 85th anniversary since his debut in Detective Comics #27 (1939).
Each Batman Day brings free comics, in-store events, and cross-platform tie-ins from DC, Warner Bros. Discovery, Max, and DC Universe Infinite, turning one Saturday into a global toast to the character co-created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The 2024 edition, DC noted in its own announcement, was billed as one of the "most enduring characters in popular culture" getting his biggest fan celebration yet — exclusive comics, retailer promotions, and media specials rolled out simultaneously across the globe.
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Gotham (2014) series logo · Wikimedia Commons
On September 21, 2017, Fox's Batman-prequel drama Gotham premiered its fourth season with the episode "Pax Penguina," pushing further into the show's take on a pre-Batman Gotham City ruled by future rogues gallery members like Oswald Cobblepot and Edward Nygma. The series, which ran from 2014 to 2019, built an entire mythology around young Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon years before the cowl.
Original illustration — swap for licensed art
Also on September 21, 2017, Dutch cartoonist Aloys Oosterwijk published the final installment of his long-running gag strip Willems Wereld. A staple of the Netherlands' newspaper-strip scene, the feature closed out its run the same day Gotham was premiering an ocean away — a small reminder of how much comics history happens outside the Big Two on any given date.
Original illustration — swap for licensed art
September 21, 2021, also marked the death of Dutch cartoonist Nico Visscher at age 88. Based in Groningen, Visscher spent decades as one of the Netherlands' best-known editorial and gag cartoonists, drawing strips including De Wolken and Korrel and earning national recognition for his political cartooning across a career that stretched back to the 1960s.
Original illustration — swap for licensed art
New Comic Book Day on September 21, 2022, brought Marvel readers the debut issue of X-Terminators by writer Leah Williams and artist Carlos Gómez. The miniseries sent Jubilee and Boom-Boom out for a night on the town to console a heartbroken Dazzler — only for the trio to be kidnapped and dropped into a run of elaborate death traps. It shipped alongside more than a dozen other Marvel titles that week, including Avengers #60, Fantastic Four #47, and New Mutants #30.
Batman Day doesn't have a fixed date — it's tied to a Saturday in September, not a calendar day — which means September 21 has hosted it twice in the celebration's run so far: 2019 and 2024. Do the math, and the character born in 1939 has now had a milestone 85th-anniversary party fall on this very date.
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