Tales of the Dark Knight (32)

Tales of the Dark Knight
By Mark Cotta Vaz

This book about Bat Man was written in 1989 on the 50th anniversary of the character. The book was surprisingly good.. looking at many different aspects of BatMan. Starting with Bob Kane and the beginning of the character. The book contained many comics to support the book, including many from the "golden age of comics" ie.. the late 30's and early 40's. It was interesting to see differences in the comic.. Batman looked roughly the same.. but the car was a 40's type car with a bat mask on the front.. the dialog was different also.. Robin often said 'thats a corker'.. whatever that means - lol.
This also dealth with a lot of the behind the scenes work of the artist and writers, and what they were trying to do with the comic.
During the war the comic was heavy on the propoganda.. buy war bonds, and Batman was fighting the Nazi's... The 50's brought hard times and a bit anti-comic book movement that made the quite bland.. this continued well into the 70's... During the 60's the TV show really boosted the popularity.. but also made it very campy... It wasn't until the 80s that BatMan returned the the dark brooding character that has been is orgins.
The book also looked at the adventures of BatMan from his comics, looking at his emenies, the Bat Cave, love interest, time travel, monsters etc. etc.
Over all this was a very enjoyable book.. I have always like BatMan but realized much of what I know about him comes from the more recent Bat Man animated TV show that started in the early 90's.