That's what he was called in his earliest incarnation, in the Depression/War era comics.

The joker, the hulk, the batman etc. all seem to indicate a distancing or separation from the the character. Spiderman, superman, green lantern etc are names to be used. The batman is a very ambivalent character and to the cities of gotham he is as much a mysterious force of nature as person to potentially talk to.

It is dumb to call The Joker "Joker" and The Batman "Batman" as if they went to California and got a judge to change their first names (Joker Q. Jones?), but when Orson Welles was The Shadow, all the crooks would address him as "Shadow" - as in, "You'll never get me, Shadow!".

Well, in direct address, it would be "Joker," "Batman," "Hulk." Like Doctor Who's quasi-titular character, he's "The Doctor" when he's being spoken of, "Doctor" when he's being spoken to.

No doubt, he was the Batman back in the day. And to get word nerdy (ie pedantic cause I are a pedant), the word the singles him out as a unique instance, THE batman, as well as distancing the speaker from the unique entity pointed to by the word the. So it's a really good way to enhance the creepiness of the guy. Just plain old Batman, "Hey, it's Batman," is too familiar, like Jimmy Olson "Hey, Superman, how about a picture of you with Lois." I think the idea is that the Batman would make Jimmy wet himself.

Well, The Batman has to be differentiated from "a batman" which is a fellow who plays cricket.

Freki

Interesting: If people start talking about "the Superman," we assume they're discussing Nietzsche.

I've been saying all along that if Nietzche had a Superman, then Spinoza must have had a Batman.

Or at least a Hulk.