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We continue with the early days of The Batman, from November 1941 to March 1942 to be exact. So The Batman has been around for a few years by this point, appearing in both Detective Comics as its star and his own titular book, as well as guest appearances in World’s Finest Comics. His main villain was already established (the Joker), and the Boy Wonder was entrenched as his ward. Since I reviewed the last Chronicles book a lot of things have happened to Batman. In the comics we have RIP going on where Batman has been broken down mentally. In animated news we got Gotham Knights, a DVD I didn’t think was terribly great. Finally there was the monster film, The Dark Knight Returns, which made a ton of money and met with critical acclaim. My thoughts on it can be found elsewhere (basically I thought it was too long, some plot points weren’t needed, but Heath Ledger was just amazing) so we’ll leave it at that. Let’s check out how The Batman was in the pre-WWII United States. The previous volume I just sorted the reviews by title, but here I will keep it in chronological order to keep in tune with the trade itself.
-Detective Comics #57- This is an interesting mystery where a man poisons himself then takes out his greedy family members. Batman thinks he’s solved the case but the murderer is not who he seems to be. Decent story.
-Detective Comics #58- This would be the first appearance of Penguin. He is actually well-defined compared to what he is like today, a small, cartoonish figure with his umbrella’s and silly crimes. Batman defeats the crook, but Penguin gets away. This was actually a funny story.
-Batman #8- For those who didn’t know, Detective Comics featured one story of the Dark Knight, while Batman featured anywhere between 3 and 5. The first story sees Batman dealing with a mob boss who is running things from prison. It wasn’t earth-shattering at all. The second features Professor Radium, a man who is radiated with radium and ends up seemingly dead at the end. The third story is the better one of the book, a man who kills stars of a new show that laugh in the face of superstition, only to die by that same superstition (Oh the irony!). Joker appears in the fourth story, and he leads the dynamic duo on a string of crimes across the country. Joker ends up in jail at issues end.
-Detective Comics #59- Penguin shows up again, leading a group of hobos in his newest cash-making scheme. Penguin hands in this hobo criminals to collect the reward, then busts them out of prison. Batman eventually catches on and stops the Penguin, who again gets away.
-World’s Finest #4- This cover features Superman, Batman and Robin on skis. Batman and Robin head out west to stop a group of ghost bandits. Batman finds out they are covering great distances by flying and eventually puts an end to those bandits.
-Detective Comics #60- Joker breaks out of jail and shows up to lead a group of criminals in a string of heists where they dress up as different uniformed members. Batman catches on and stops him, and puts him back in jail. (The second time this trade).
-Batman #9- The first story is actually very good, as criminals kill a mystic who foretells how they will die as his vengeance, and as Batman and Robin try and catch the criminals, each meets the fate the mystic said they would. This was really good and needs to be reprinted somewhere more accessible for all to read. The second tale is a bit of a drop-off, as Batman and Robin stowaway on boat to stop a killer whale that is actually a submarine. Joker escapes, again, and Batman and Robin need to stop him, again, and Joker is put back in jail, again. The final tale was a nice Christmas tale, where Batman helps a young boys Christmas wish come true.
-Detective Comics #61- This was an interesting one where three men talk about their rackets that Batman broke up, and we see at the end they were talking about it in prison.
-The Bottom Line- Well, this isn’t your daddy’s Batman, that’s for sure. It’s more like your grandfather’s Batman, actually. I usually associate Golden Age Batman with a lot of goofiness and camp, but reading this it isn’t entirely true. Yes, some of the tales were just plain goofy, but there were some real gems nestled in here as well. The Penguin stories were quite good, the Superstition case and the Four Fates case stands up to some of the Batman stories written today and of the 5 volumes this is my favorite so far, with a fun atmosphere, and if you can look past some of the old verbiage and sayings, this is a volume you should go out of your way to get. Recommended.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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