The missing era of Batman

[thehod]

Looking at the archive editions and the showcase reprints and so on it seems to me there is a missing era of Batman that is getting less then adequate representation in the reprints Dc are putting out.

There's plenty of the Golden Age stuff, and plenty of his new look material reprinted, and the 70's and so on, but very little of the 1950's Batman.

The only example of this era having been reprinted is in the Batman in the fifties trade that came out a few years past, but this was still very little.

Any other ideas where I can go to get my fix of the Negative, Zebra and Mer-Batman?

[Lone Ranger]

Sorry - I am no help here because I agree that this era has not been reprinted except on an ad hoc basis.

I've also found that the Batman and Detective books from the 50s can be quite tough to track down - I think I read somewhere that print runs were lower so there's a bit of a scarcity factor.

[Kan-Man]

I was actually going to start a similar thread asking about the Batman Chronicles series that DC started with the intention of reprinting every Batman story in chronological order. They've done 2 volumes so far, so it would take probably a couple of hundred years to catch up to the present day. I'm wondering if they'll abandon the project now that in addition to the archives, they've got the Showcase stuff coming out.

As far as 50s era stuff, the only place I remember seeing those stories was in the 100 pagers and some of the 80 page giants. I especially liked the stories that featured the different bat-suits (the white snow suit comes to mind).

[Scott Shaw!]

I've been collecting the 1950s Batman titles for a while, and they're pretty hard to find and can be very pricey...but VERY Oddball, chock-full of bizarre Bat-costumes, aliens, monsters, outlandish and Robin-in-the-corner situations. Frankly, they're much less familiar, yet even nuttier, than Mort Weisinger's "Superman family" of titles. As someone who grew up in the 1950s, I find it surprising that I've seen so few of these.I'll be spotlighting a particularly Odd one -- DETECTIVE COMICS' "The Giant Batman" -- at ODDBALL COMICS in December.

I'd say that DC was embarrassed by any proof of their existence -- imagine the reactions of the current version of Batman -- but the fact that they're reprinting similar Superman stories would indicate otherwise. Heck, I'd love to edit a volume of ODDBALL BATMAN STORIES for DC!

Aloha,

Scott!

[MDG]

This paperback....
http://cgi.ebay.com/Batman-Robin-com...em130046999513

...was my first intro to 50s Batman. It focuses on pretty straightforward crime stories, and one of the better Joker stories ever.

I wonder if DC purposely avoids 50s Batman stories now so as not to alienate the grim 'n gritty crowd. (Even though they can make the argument that, while the stories in the Superman Family showcases were in some of the best-selling comics ever, Batman at the time was at the brink of cancellation.)

MDG

[Allan Harvey]

The 1950s and early 60s Batman is my favourite version of the character by far. Some of that stuff is just so-o-o-o off the wall. Editor Schiff was trying so hard, but he was no Mort Weisinger.

All the 1960s Batman Annuals are worth looking for as they contain a raft of classy 1950s reprints -- though they are themselves getting fairly pricey now.

Also worth tracking down is a copy of Batman: From the 30s to the 70s which has a number of great tales, including the introduction of Batwoman, and the Two-Face sequence.

[JKCarrier]

This is probably my favorite era of Batman -- just so completely strange and fun! Although the "New Look" era being reprinted in SHOWCASE has its charms, I feel like Batman lost a lot of his verve once they started drawing him realistically, and he stopped fighting aliens.

[Aaron King]

Scott Shaw!, what's a Robin-in-the-corner situation and why is it called that?

[thehod]

Also worth tracking down is a copy of Batman: From the 30s to the 70s which has a number of great tales, including the introduction of Batwoman, and the Two-Face sequence.

Yep, I've got a copy of that, although it is falling to pieces.

It's just a shame this era of Batman hasn't been given the archive treatment.

[pmpknface]

Well, it'll take a while but the new trades they are doing are working on reprinting all Batman stories from beginning to end.

I'd like a tpb of the Gene Colan Batman issues, if just to see his art!

[Mike Kuypers]

Scott Shaw!, what's a Robin-in-the-corner situation and why is it called that?

Check out some of these Detective Comics covers from the '50s and '60s:

http://www.comics.org/covers.lasso?s...ip=250&show=50

[Cei-U!]

Maybe it's just a case of familiarity breeding contempt but I have long runs of Batman and Detective from mid-1955 through the start of Julius Schwartz's New Look and, frankly, I find this stuff the nadir of the series' long history. If you only know the era from the old 80-Page Giant collections, trust me when I say those stories are the exception to the rule. Aside from the all-too-rare Dick Sprang gem (though his best work of that era was over in World's Finest), the artwork is uniformly flat, cold, crude, unimaginative and repetitive. Some of the stories are so incredibly retarded they fail even as high camp. And that's not to mention the sheer inappropriateness of the Darknight Detective traipsing around alien worlds with pink skies and bright yellow mountains. There is fun to be had--I'm a sucker for Bat-Mite and Bat-Hound myself--but you have to kiss a lot of toads to find the occasional princess.

Cei-U!
I summon a dose of O'Neil and Adams-- stat!

[Red Oak Kid]

I'm kinda torn on these stories. They should definitely all be collected and reprinted just so they can be accessed by the people who like them.

I'm not sure I would buy it tho.

I used to like the stories in those 80pg Giants, especially the ones with the Weisingerish extended Batman family.

And I was a sucker for the stories about the "caveman" Batman and Robin and the "Frontier" B&R where B&R would travel back in time and discover there had been a guy in the past who had a batcave and fought crime etc. I think the Frontier or Civil War Batman even had some kind of wagon(batmobile) hidden in his barn, connected to a cave.

However those stories are a bit tough for me to read now because there are so many logic holes in them. I have no trouble with two guys in spandex travelling in time, but the barn with the hidden wagon bugs me.

I just made up the term "logic holes".

[Scott Shaw!]

Maybe it's just a case of familiarity breeding contempt but I have long runs of Batman and Detective from mid-1955 through the start of Julius Schwartz's New Look and, frankly, I find this stuff the nadir of the series' long history.

I don't think that these are particularly good comics, I'm just fascinated with their weirdness, probably because I'm less familiar with 'em than I'd like to be. The inappropriate, illogical and often awful aspects you cite also fascinate me. It's like Jack Schiff was doing everything he could to imitate Weisinger and Schwartz, but he had no understanding of their gimmicks.

If you ever wanna make some space for more comics, Kurt, please let me know. I'd love to buy some of these wacky "Batman" stories from you, if you don't want 'em any more!

Aloha,

Scott!

[Captain Jim]

I used to have a bunch of mid-fifties issues I bought in back issue bins (and yes, they were hard to come by). I also grew up on the late-fifties/early sixties issues. And while the one obviously flows into the other, and there are certainly similarities, they seem like mostly distinct eras to me.

While Batwoman and Bathound (for instance) debuted in the mid-fifties, they really only became staples in the books in the late fifties/ early sixties. Similarly, while there may have been the occasional "alien" issue in the mid-fifties, it was in the later era that it became almost an "every issue" phenomenon. In short, the "weirdness" was mostly prominent in the late fifties/ early sixties (pre-New Look).

The mid-fifties stuff I found fascinating, sort of a hybred of the 1940's and late 50's/early 60's Batman.

I'd love to see either or both reprinted, though. The later era more for nostalgic than quality reasons.