Batman The Golden Age Vol 2

Dark Knight Rising

Batman The Golden Age Vol 2
by Bob Kane, Bill Finger + Various
DC Comics
ISBN: 978-1401268084

Okay, so following my review of the first year in the career of Gotham’s first knight The Batman and his loyal chum Robin, The Boy Wonder in Batman - The Golden Age Vol 1 (reviewed here), I’ve finally read through the second year from December 1940 through to ‘Fall’ of 1941 in Batman - The Golden Age Vol 2. Now, this one collects the caped crusader’s appearances chronologically in all the issues of Detective Comics (where DC gets its name from), Batman Comic and World’s Finest Comics.

A note on that third title... this issue covers the first three issues of World’s Finest but the first issue was titled World’s Best Comics. Like the title was always known for, it features both Batman and Superman on the cover (and Robin) but, unlike the comic which springs to mind whenever the title is invoked, these weren’t team-up stories between Batman and Superman as they grew to be. Instead, each character set had their own stories within the comic so, yeah, the stories published in this volume are the Batman and Robin stories only, obviously.

Okay, so I talked about, in my last Golden Age Batman review, how Robin and self censorship had brought a more wholesome approach to the stories with the odd slip or pre-Robin appearance re-labelling here and there. This collection continues that approach and there’s not a whole lot to say about it... the stories are quite inconsequential for the most part, asides from the fact that the newly established running villains like The Joker would often return. The tales are short but the majority of them at this point are far less bloodthirsty and certainly far less whimsical than what the strip had quite quickly devolved into towards the end of the first year. That being said, there is still one story where our heroes are transported by a fantastical inventor into the pages of a book of fairy tales to rescue his daughter.

The stories may still be simplistic but the various descriptions and ‘turns of phrases’ employed by the writers at this time are anything but. For example, when Batman and Robin drop some cloth on some bad guys in a warehouse, we are told... “A Niagara of silk engulfs the thieves.” Also, I learned something from the comic in terms of language origins too. I’ve always known of the phrase when something is ‘plummeting’ to the ground but, here in the 1940s, Batman regularly, every other issue, ‘Drops like a plummet’, with plummet as a noun, which obviously extends from the use of ‘plumb bob’, although I’d never put two and two together in my mind before.

Also, the Batman is now, despite the tightrope of atmosphere that the stories tend to walk, commonly being referred to as The Dark Knight on many occasion. That is, when he’s not being described in more flowery language thusly...

“For he, in reality, is that personality known as the ‘eyes of night’... The Batman.”

The artwork is still simplistic and, many times in these early issues, the bat symbol is not always pictured on Batman’s chest in every frame. It’s like the artist just forgets sometimes. It’s also littered with references to contemporary culture but, somehow, they are often somewhat quite guarded and depicted as parodies of the real thing, such as when a cinema is depicted playing “Melody Of 1941” starring Tyrone Taylor and Myrna Rogers.

The Batmobile finally gets defined into the one generally depicted as its earliest incarnation here. For about a half of the year it still normal looking cars in different colours and sometimes open topped, sometimes covered. After a while though, we get that closed top, chunky Batmobile I always liked with the big fins and the Batman mask at the front like a gigantic hood ornament. Still no sign of the Batcave yet, though... Batman has a secret passage to a barn (the Batcave wouldn’t come until 1944, apparently).

Most of the villains are not that memorable and even The Joker is a bit pedestrian in his approach to crime, despite multiple appearances which, at this time, seem mostly saved back for the multi-story Batman issues rather than having him appear in the 'one off' stories in Detective Comics. Hugo Strange is here though and he uses a fear gas completely reminiscent of what the villainous Scarecrow is now famous for. Oddly enough, the Scarecrow’s first appearance, which I think I first read reprinted in a 100 Page Giant of Detective Comics back in the 1970s, is in issue number three of Worlds Finest and in it he absolutely has no ‘fear gas’ at all. It’s obvious by this time, though, that the writers were beginning to think more of recurring villains because he doesn’t meet an untimely demise at the end of the story.

Something else I noticed was, despite having Robin and all the ‘wholesome’ baggage that was ushered into the comic with him... and the fact that it’s quite often stated that “The Batman and Robin do not kill”, I did notice a few deaths here and there that each of these heroes have caused as an immediate consequence of their actions. For example, in Detective Comics Issue 55, Batman quite happily punches enemy agents off the roof of their dirigible to drop to their death below (presumably by dropping like a plummet, as is indicated so many times in the stories this year).

So, yeah, the tales covered in Batman The Golden Age Vol 2 don't make for the most memorable period for Batman and is not often as surreal or dark edged as the interesting ones from his 1939 beginnings... the stories are mostly flat and simplistic and the artwork is... well it’s not as bad as many of the comics at the time but it’s similarly not often anything to write home about. I get the feeling the writers and artists are just coasting on their good sales but I suspect the next couple of volumes of this will make an interesting contrast, as more regular characters and hopefully more convoluted plot lines may surface. We shall see, I guess.

Batman The Golden Age Vol 1

Bat Out Of Hell

Batman The Golden Age Vol 1
by Bob Kane, Bill Finger + Various
DC Comics
ISBN: 978-1401263331

Okay, so I enjoyed my little jaunt into the Golden Age tales of Wonder Woman so much recently (reviewed here) that I decided to maybe start familiarising myself (and refamiliarising, to a certain extent) with some of the early strips of other characters in the DC universe. So it’s onto Batman and, though I’d read a fair few tales of the early Batman comics as part of one of the expensive The Batman Archives collections, the big stumbling block of those old, very pricey editions was that they were fixated on just one title... in that case the Batman stories that appeared chronologically in Detective Comics. However, when various superheroes became popular, fairly quickly at the dawn of the phenomenon (Batman is kind of an honourary superhero because, in fact, he has no super powers at all), there was often a second title brought out dedicated solely to the title character and also the odd special issue of something else. So, for example, Wonder Woman would have self contained stories running concurrently in Sensation Comics and, later, Wonder Woman.

When I read The Batman Archives Volume 1 around a decade ago, this really foxed me because when The Joker popped up in the Detective Comics reprints, it was clear that he’d already had at least one (it turns out a fair few) appearance against Batman before, which weren't part of that same reprint tome. What these new Golden Age reprints do is to republish the stories involving the title character from all the comics which carried them in a chronological order... so if something refers back to a previous story (as I know it will here in a specific story in volume 2 or 3 when they get to it), you’ve definitely already read that one. So Batman - The Golden Age includes chronological reprints from Detective Comics, Batman and, in this case, a story featured in a promotional comic of collected stories to tie in with the 1940 New York Worlds Fair showcasing various DC heroes. Batman - The Golden Age reprints all the Batman stories from roughly the first year of his appearance, spanning 1939 - 1940.

Now, a few years ago people on Twitter were getting kinda irked that the version of Batman at the cinema was not a kid friendly version... that he was a darker character. Well, kid friendly these days is a very relative term and I got quite annoyed by people saying this stuff on Twitter (they didn’t feel they could take their kids to see movies like Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice... reviewed here) because my memory of Batman was that he always was the dark, vigilante of the DC universe and it was people like Frank Miller in the 1980s (with his much celebrated The Dark Knight Returns) who were merely trying to return him to his roots.

Now let me make something clear here. The other day I was thinking about all the stuff which used to be pitched to general family audiences on 1970s TV and I realised there’s no way on Earth half of the stuff I watched as a youngster would get passed by the censors these days, when everything at the moment seems to be veering towards a much more prudish, dreadfully PC and somewhat Victorian set of values (underground reaction and alternatives to those values, also, it seems). And it strikes me when I read something like pulp novels written in the 1930s or, indeed, these old Batman comics from the 1940s, that kids back then were even less bothered by, or mollycoddled to, the bleak, violent realities of life... which were obviously plundered for their entertainment value and reflected back in the art form. So these comics were more than kid friendly enough... they were just very grim and violent (for a while, there’s a big sea change within the first year here) and... maybe that’s the way things should be today. Who knows? However, somebody obviously didn’t think these were good reading for youngsters (in more than a decade before the comic book witch hunts of the 1950s which would lead to the creation of the Comics Code Authority) as you’ll see when I get to the introduction of a certain character. It all makes for very interesting ‘in between the lines’ reading though...

In Batman's very first appearance in Detective Comics Issue 27, we have a somewhat different looking character from the one most audiences are more familiar with these days. The masked head is more rounded with longer ears and a generally more sinister, edgy and well defined look to him. This look would remain for around half a year or more and it’s easily my favourite version of the character. This isn’t an ‘origin’ story in any way, shape or form... with the writer wisely deciding to hit the ground running to see if the character was successful before going into the more convoluted origins, I would expect. Actually, I wish this practice of eschewing where the character came from was something more modern movies did with these kinds of figures. After all... nobody seems to have much trouble accepting antagonists with no explanation in zombie movies.

It’s not until his seventh appearance in November 1939, The Batman Wars Against The Dirigible Of Doom, that we get the first crack at his origin story... which doesn’t really differ much from modern retellings (as it does with some famous comic book characters) although he definitely had no Alfred The Butler around to help him in this instance. That character doesn’t appear at all in this first year.

And, in his first story, his secret identity is kept a complete secret from the reader for a while, building up the mystery until, on the very last panel of the last page, he is revealed as Bruce Wayne. And, for some reason, it’s very rare in the stories that, once Batman is knocked unconscious (as he often is), anyone thinks to take his mask off and see who he really is. It just doesn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind at this point. But there’s a lot of other interesting stuff going on with this ‘dark’ character in this and subsequent stories...

In the first issue, for example, the villain accidentally falls backwards into a vat of acid and, while The Batman is not exactly responsible for his death this time around, he does make the comment that it was... “A fitting end for his crime.” In his second story, he casually summersaults an attacking villain off a rooftop to his death. In another adventure he deliberately throws one heavy onto another bad guy’s sword to kill him. In yet another story, he is feigning unconsciousness and is left with a guard while the main villain brings a disintegrator gun to melt him. When he is alone with the guard, he knocks him out, changes costumes with him and deliberately allows the guard to be melted to death in his place. So, yes, this is a much darker avenger than even people like Frank Miller in the 1980s were getting away with for a while.

As you would expect, various elements of the Batman mythos we recognise today are either not present or are not yet fully formed. It takes a fair few issues, for instance, to name the police chief as Commissioner Gordon. Another missing component is the Batmobile, as it came to evolve into. Here, he seems to sport a number of different cars, over the first year, of differing colours... often alternating between red and black. In Batman’s fourth appearance, the red car is drawn a little longer and is referred to as... “his specially built, high-powered auto.” So they were getting there.

Oddly enough, he had a batplane from very early on but, directly contradicting the accompanying text, the plane was more often than not a helicopter or autogyro. It took a little while over this first year for the Batplane to be rendered as... well... a plane. That being said, the way he uses his helicopter is somewhat questionable in regards to the story dynamics. For example, in a completely cloudless sky, he sets his ‘plane’ to hover above the villain’s lair and ‘disguises’ it by billowing a big black cloud of smoke to hide it. Conspicuous much? The villains react thusly... Villain 1: “A black cloud.” Villain 2: “Yeah, looks like rain.” Oh... so that’s alright then.

There’s also a Metropolis Insane Asylum rather than Arkham Asylum and the city is not once referred to as Gotham City as yet. Given the name of the asylum, one wonders if these early stories were meant to be set in the same city as Superman or whether that was merely a coincidence and the writers were just looking at an alternative term for a city.

Even from fairly early on, the art and practice of the early comic book industry, where I guess they thought people really weren’t paying that much attention and throwing them out after reading them, is in evidence. They’re already recycling exact poses copied from earlier issues several times in that first year, and placing them in panels in new stories. Also, the first two pages of Batman Issue 1 is a complete steel, being a straight reprint of the origin story already run in Detective Comics but with different colours used.

Another take away from this first year is that the earlier stories were full of non-scientific phenomena. For instance, we have a monk who keeps a giant gorilla and pet werewolves. We have a shape shifting vampire villain. We have a man with literally no face at one point and, when Batman enters the gardens of the villains who have stolen this man’s face, he sees flowers with living human faces on them. So I think it’s fair to say that these stories were not written with a worry about straying from a good, scientific foundation... which is something Batman was more known as in later decades... something of a ‘science detective’ like Doc Savage.

And then, in Batman’s 12th appearance, we have the first story featuring Robin The Boy Wonder and the tone of Batman comics are completely changed. Someone must have thought these things were getting too mean spirited because, once Robin becomes a regular feature of the strip, it’s not just the look of the Batman character which changes into something more like the Batman we know today. This is a Batman and Robin team with a big commitment to not taking life where possible... so a complete sea change for the character, it seems to me (although, to be fair, Robin does kick a guy off a metal girder to his death at one point, in self defence). Sometimes the violence still does happen and Batman seems somewhat contradictory in his responses. After happily letting two asylum patients maul each other two death earlier in the same issue, he later states at one point... “Much as I hate to take human life, I’m afraid this time it’s necessary.” What the heck? This is from a story where Batman is gunning down a giant man with a very strong cultural reference to the ending of King Kong. Interestingly, this is a solo Batman story which had been advertised a few issues before but was delayed for publication until after the addition of Robin, by the looks of things. It’s one of the few post-Robin stories here without The Boy Wonder in it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if that bizarre character contradiction comes from adding different text in the speech bubble to what had originally been in there for the original scheduled publication.

I hate to use the language of the Batman’s foes here but this newer, conscientious version of the Batman really was a boy scout. In Batman Issue 1, he breaks the fourth wall to deliver to the readers this message... “Well, kids. There’s your proof. Crooks are yellow without their guns! Don’t go around admiring them. Rather, do your best in fighting them and all their kind.”  Which is definitely a comic with a strong moral message methinks. I also found it very interesting how the writers keep pushing the idea of building gyms and other community centres for youths to keep them occupied and stop them getting into crime. This is exactly the same kind of thing I’m hearing now in London as the crime rate rises over here due to various issues... spend more money on keeping the kids occupied and focused (not that there’s any money left to be able to do that with over here).

Actually, the breaking the fourth wall thing becomes more of a thing too, on occasion. For example, at the end of the story in the 1940 New York Worlds Fair Comics issue, Bruce and Dick talk directly to their readers to urge them to visit the New York World’s Fair. The power of 'in-panel' advertising.

Funnily enough, one of Batman’s most vicious villains also makes his debut in Batman Issue 1. The Joker is, by my count, the third regularly occurring villain in these comics, after Hugo Strange and Catwoman. Actually, Catwoman is known only as 'The Cat' in early issues and she hasn’t yet acquired the name of Selina Kyle (or any fixed identity, it has to be said). Funnily enough, even from The Cat’s first appearance, Batman was already ‘accidentally’ letting her escape and making his sexual attraction to her known to the readers. Which is much earlier than I’d expected. In her second appearance she also manages to make an enemy of The Joker, which is kinda interesting.

One of the great things about reading these early comics is trying to catch the cultural references of the time and how they influenced the strip or were cherry picked to be a part of them. I’ve already mentioned the King Kong homage in one issue but when a character called Boss Zulch is introduced, he seems to finish almost every sentence he utters with the word “see?” which is obviously picked up from Edward G. Robinson’s character in the film Little Caesar. Also, one reaction to a pirate radio broadcast by The Joker goes thusly... ““Haw! That’s just a gag - like that fellow who scared everybody with that story about Mars the last time. Ha! Ha! Pay no attention to it dear.” So Orson Welles’ ground breaking documentary style radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds, which panicked half of America, was obviously still very much on everybody’s minds at the time.

Also in regard to influences, you can see just how one of my favourite pulp characters, Doc Savage, directly impacted on and influenced the Batman character by this point, as the supernatural stuff is mostly dropped and scientific stuff starts. Mention of brain surgery to cure criminal ways, for instance, or using an infra red lamp to read invisible markers left on a villain’s footprints to trail him. This would eventually lead to Batman’s later title as The World’s Greatest Detective, at some point, I guess... was that the 1970s or before then? I can’t remember.

Anyway, that’s the first year or so of Batman encapsulated in Batman - The Golden Age Vol 1 and, honestly, if you’re a Batman fan and want to know more about the character’s roots and how he evolved and changed, even in his first 12 months, then this is a really good place to start. Essential reading for me and I shall definitely be picking up the second volume at some point to re-read one of my favourite Batman stories from that era (which I have reprinted in an old 1970s Detective Comics Giant)... The Case Of The Carbon Copy Crimes.

Legends of the Superheroes

Just-less League

Legends of the Superheroes
1978 USA
Directed by Bill Carruthers & Chris Darley
Warner Archives Region 1

Holy Catastrophe, Batman!

You know, on paper, Legends Of The Superheroes must have sounded like it might just have worked and, frankly, the line up for this live action superhero-fest is enough to get any comic book fan clamouring to see this... that was my first mistake.

Ten years after the last episode of the 1960s Batman TV show aired, Adam West and Burt Ward reprised their roles of Batman and Robin in the only two episodes of this show ever produced. Joining West and Ward are Captain Marvel, Green Lantern, The Flash, Hawkman, Black Canary and The Huntress. Frank Gorshin reprises his iconic TV role of The Riddler for the first episode but, it looks like he had enough sense to bail out in time before the second episode was shot. He joins up with such super villains as Dr. Silvana, Sinestro and Solomon Grundy to blow up the world unless the Justice Leaguers (never referred to as such, this is more or less a remake of an episode of the old Superfriends cartoon show) can work together, follow The Riddler’s clues and save the day... like you know they are going to.

I got really excited about this show a few months back when I found out about it, but there are two things that should have tipped me off as to just how unbelievable a mess of a TV show this is. These are the fact that it doesn’t seem to have ever aired in this country (having now seen it... I’m so not surprised) and the other obvious thing is that I’d never even heard of this one until a short while ago. Seriously... how does that happen? I was ten years old at the time and superheroes were “it”. How does this one manage to get shown anywhere without various people of my age group even finding out about it. Ahh... I guess the days before the internet had their advantages and disadvantages. But even so, to stay off my radar for this long? It’s almost like they tried to bury it (understandable)... until Warner Archives resurrected it on DVD. And I don’t really blame them to be honest... with all these superheroes in it, it’s bound to be a good seller.

To the unsuspecting public at large, that is.

Legends Of the Supeheroes is easily one of the worst, boring, only survive it by gnawing one of your own legs off* chapters in live action TV superhero shenanigans that was ever picked up on a cathode ray tube. No, worse than that... scrub out “one of”. It’s basically an excuse for various supervillains and other characters to mock the DC superheroes and for the DC heroes to go along with it and show just how stupid they are. All this to fake audience applause and horrible canned laughter. It’s unremarkably shot, has terrible acting (although West and Ward seem to be true to form, just a little more ridiculous but enjoyable when they're in their “zone”), has dire music and the cheapest special effects ever (The Flash just dematerialises and reappears somewhere else to signify that he must have run there at super speed). It’s sexist (the women seem to be deferred to in a derogatory manner quite often and chosen for their ability to look like they’re about to burst out of the top of their costume at any second), racist (don’t even get me started on “ghetto-man”) and, worse than all this, simply unfunny... although it’s definitely being played for laughs.

And as bad as you think this first episode is... the second episode manages to run this even further into the ground by being even lamer than the previous edition. The second takes the form of a “roast” where various supervillains and acquaintances run our heroes down, as hosted by Ed McMahon. Seriously, this show is so badly written and disrespectful of the characters that I’m really grateful we didn’t have this in the UK when I was a kid. It would have sullied the reputations of these characters so much that my brain would have melted and I would have never been able to read of their exploits again. Just to give you a taste of how bad this is... when Hawkman’s mother comes around and starts taking cheap pot-shots at her son, she asks him to phone when he’s next visiting home so she knows to put some clean newspapers on his bed. That’s the level and quality of humour on this one I’m afraid folks and, combined with an awful and thunderous rendition of That’s Entertainment by a supervillain called Mordru and an interview segment where The Atom and his new fiance Giganta are quizzed about the difficulties of their sex life... it has to be said that this show ran for two episodes too long.

This is the first Warner Archives disc that I’ve seen that comes with any extras... and it’s the first time I’ve not wanted one of their discs to have any. If you can handle it, and I braved it I’m afraid, there is a deleted scene and a couple of outtakes on here, including a bit where you are invited to watch the entire finale song of episode 2 again, but with slightly different sound on it. This really isn’t for the feint hearted, folks.

There’s no way I can recommend anyone, superhero fan or not, to watch Legends Of The Superheroes. Luckily for Warner Archives, unless you know just how awful and unfunny the content of these episodes actually are, then you will be drawn in by the promise of seeing the live action versions of all these superheroes teamed together... so I really have no way of warning you. Still, I have to admire the label in question because they have been responsible for some terrific releases and even this... um... curio is something which should see the light of day at some point, I guess. But it’s a hard watch and a far cry even from the original Batman TV show in terms of the camp content that made that show so brilliant. It really doesn’t take itself seriously and, although that’s not an absolute necessity and could have worked really well for them... well, it didn’t! And I almost wished I hadn’t known about this one.

Holy wasted opportunity!

*with thanks and apologies to Douglas Adams