Golden Age Batman graphic novels

Batman Chronicles vol. 1-5

I think there's five volumes. They reprint every Batman story starting Detective Comics #27 in chronological order.

They're also paperbacks too, so they aren't expensive at all. They're really worth getting.

 

Yeah i've got Vol. 2 and it's really good, you read a lot of stories that have been re-made recently as well which is cool.

 

Yup, I love the Chronicles series. The first is the best, with the pre-Robin stuff.

 

i thinkif you read Chronicles Volume 1, it gives readers a chance to see how dark he was meant to be... something modern batman stories take too much for granted (meaning this element isn't there enough in modern batsy)

but i guess a lot of it has to do with the character evolving over 60+ years....

i mean he was almost a pulp character in his original origin.... closer to the shadow or the spider or the avenger than to a comic book superhero

 

Yeah, dark like asking for the way, drivin' a red car and freely talking to civilians

Some people don't know what "pulp" means. Superman is a pulp hero, too. And so are all superheroes from the Golden Age. "Pulp" doesn't necessarily mean "gritty". It also means over-the-top giant robotic spiders.

 

Pulp is more like cult, like Resevoir Dogs is more pulp than Pulp Fiction I feel, because it's smaller, and has a more cult-like following, kinda like Clerks.

 

"Pulp" comes from the cheap magazines, who were said to not contain really culturally important work, a kind of opposite to "high" literature. That's what "pulp fiction" is, not necessarily something dark, gritty and violent.

 

I'll always love that scene. He was flawed. Batman talks to civilians in Miller's Dark Knight Returns - "Watch your language son."

Actually, the Shadow pulps, which Batman most closely shared in mood and tone and style, were the dark crime-noir stuff. "Without The Shadow, there would be no Batman! Since the first Batman story was a start-to-finish lift of an earlier Shadow novel, it establishes that the similarities between the two characters were no accident. Bruce Wayne is wealthy young man about town Lamont Cranston. The friendship between Bruce and Commissioner James Gordon (whose name comes from The Shadow's sister magazine, The Whsiperer) is no different from the relationship between Cranston and Weston. Batman's talent for escapes also comes from The Shadow, since the first recorded Batman escape duplicates The Shadow's in the same story. And the Shadow lifts continued in subsequent stories, even ones written by Gardner Fox, which gave Batman an autogiro, Bat-a-rangs like The Shadow's cable-outfitted "yellow boomerang," and a suction-cup device for scaling walls ... all Shadow gimmicks. Without the Knight of Darkness, there would be no Dark Knight." - Anthony Tollin. http://www.comicmix.com/news/2007/06/24/the-case-of-the-chemical-syndicate/

 

Yeah but they're intrinsically linked. It's like film noir and detective stories, they are not exclusive, and were never meant to be, but that's the way most of them go.

 

whats really neat... is that most of the golden age heroes would fit in the pulps PERFECTLY...

thats actually the reason whybatman doesn't carry a gun... B. KANE & B. FINGER decided against it cuz they thought he would be too close to the Shadow... they wanted to distance themselves from the pulps

AND TO RESPOND: sure bats is darker in the modern comics... but for 1939... that was dark VERY VERY DARK... and in the modern comics he has an edge... but it's batman HE'S VERY ESTABLISHED... not as frightening as 1939...

i mean if you go to a retail store & buy your kid a batsuit for halloween.... THE CHARACTER INSTANTLY LOSES HIS SCARE FACTOR WHEN KIDS WHO ARE 3 YEARS OLD WEAR A CAPE & COWL...

in 1939 he WAS SCARY because he wasn't marketed to 3-5 year old aged kids... He was marketed to 8 to 12 year olds... a big difference

 

However Batman has carried and used guns on occasion in the comics and film.

 

No, not really. There were a lot of darker and more gruesome comics out there.

 

there may have been, but he was still dark... go read detective 27 you'll see what i'm talking about

 

I would see a story that's okay to read for an 9-year old boy. Batman was never made for adults. The core audience back then were young boys up to young soldiers in the World War.

 

The original Batman has always been my favourite. As opposed to the modern Batman who is like an urban guerilla with his vigilante SWAT team the first Batman was almost silent, crept around, and was just weird and scary. That's the Batman Burton put in his first movie.

 

The first Batman story - "The Case of the Crime Syndicate" - was a start-to-finish lift of an earlier Shadow novel "Partners of Peril" - not a story or a character strictly for 9 year olds.

Bill Finger confirmed it in the Steranko History. He admitted that ''I patterned my style of writing after The Shadow.... It was completely pulp style.'' Finger also admitted, ''We didn't think anything was wrong with Batman carrying a gun because The Shadow used one." Neither the Shadow or the Batman were made just for children.

 

I said not "just for children". But Batman has been an All Ages character. There is absolute nothing in the old Batman stories that's extreme.

Well, but even the EC Comics were marketed at kids, so Wertham wasn't completely wrong

 

it is no argument that batman was based off of the Shadow.... but even as dark as the shadow was, batman still became darker, only because THE SHADOW (at least to purists) in confined to the 30's & 40's...



[QUOTE/]The original Batman has always been my favourite. As opposed to the modern Batman who is like an urban guerilla with his vigilante SWAT team the first Batman was almost silent, crept around, and was just weird and scary. That's the Batman Burton put in his first movie. (/QUOTE]

this character was the Shadow