I've had the Superman and Shazam! companion volumes since childhood, but this one didn't come my way. But I picked up a Taiwanese copy at a sale on Saturday and I thought I'd blog the stories.
Although I only learned to read in the 70s, most of my earliest Batman encounters were with pre-New Look stories. It's a quirk of my comics reading life that I got to know many characters more through older stories than contemporary ones. I think the first Batman stories I read were those in Colossal Comic #53, which Ausreprints tells me had "The Return of Two-Face", "The Lost Legion of Space", "The Joker's Utility Belt" and "The Forbidden Cellar", and a Robin story, "The Magic Key". My dad brought home the Famous First Edition reprint of Batman #1. Later I got issues of a local title called Giant Batman Album that were filled with older stories (drawn from DC's recent reprints), and the Signet Batman vs. the Joker and Batman vs. the Penguin paperbacks. I also had a hardcover British Batman Annual from the late 60s filled with stories from the 50s. All had appeared in issues of the US Batman Annual so presumably that's where they were drawn from.
My first contemporary Batman story may have been "Paint a Picture of Peril" from Detective Comics #397, which I read in another local title, Batman and Robin. I could follow the story, but I didn't get it. Beyond that I can't trace how I got to know the 70s Batman. The local comics of the era with DC content often contained all kinds of things. Giant Batman Album #27 had "Man-Bat Madness", "Man-Bat Over Vegas", and a House of Mystery story, "Bat Out of Hell". The issue disturbed me: I was frightened of vampires at the time and the latter two stories both have vampire themes. My other early encounters include the stories from Batman #252 and #253. The latter is the story in which he met the Shadow. He tells him he was his greatest inspiration.
My first "New Look" story may have been "Batman's Great Face-Saving Feat", the first Mystery Analysts tale, which was also in Batman Album #27 (and is rather like a pre-Schwartz story). If not, it was probably "Inside Story of the Outsider", which I found weird. I didn't see much more from that period in my formative years, so I don't have the same affection for it I have for the pre-New Look tales. I did early read some stories from the later 60s, particularly "Die Small -- Die Big" from Detective Comics #385 (Robert Kanigher and Bob Brown), and "Batman's Marriage Trap!" from Batman #214 (Frank Robbins and Irv Novick). I think the former story a moving one, showing Kanigher at his best. The latter is campy, but Robbins and Novick later played a big role in giving the strip its post-camp 70s style. Robbins is one of my favourite Bat-writers. (I love his art too, but I understand why it's not to everyone's taste.)
Of other 70s Batman writers, I might be the world's only David V. Reed fan. He's sometimes known as David Vern, and had earlier written for the feature in the late Golden Age (mostly in the first half of the 50s). I have fonder memories of Denny O'Neil/Irv Novick stories than Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams ones, such as "Batman for a Night" from Detective Comics #417.
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The "New Look" Batman will always be my Batman since that iteration hit just about the time I had begun reading comics. However, I also have a fondness for the earlier Bat stories that appeared regularly during that same period in the various Annuals and 80 Page Giants. A positive result from the TV show was the various paperback reprint books that were issued and provided still more Golden Age goodies. "The Joker's Utility Belt" was a favorite along with another Joker story that featured a splash page of Batman and a small boy standing on a beach watching the Joker as he built sand castles.
My experience is similar to yours, Luke, but a little different. I have had the Superman and Batman volumes for years, but I have never read the Shazam one. (I’d buy it if I could, but I rarely see it and never in my price range.) Regarding Batman specifically, I bought as many of DC’s “100 Page Super-Spectaculars” as I could when I was a kid, so I grew up with a good mix of Batman stories from all eras. I think I have every story from the “30s to the 70s” tome reprinted in other collections (and in color) at this point, but it still holds a special place on my shelf.
The Shazam! one is From the Forties to the Seventies, but DC Indexes says the first issue of Whiz Comics, cover-dated for Feb. 1940, actually went on sale 1 Dec. 1939, so it could've been From the Thirties too.
One thing I found amusing with the Superman and Batman editions of From the 30's to the 70's was that they were both originally published in 1971, the amount of '70's material to choose from was essentially limited to 1970.
Three of the five stories in the "Batman in the 70s" section actually appeared in the 60s, but two of them only narrowly: Batman #217 with "One Bullet Too Many!" was cover-dated for Dec. 1969, and Detective Comics #295 with "The Secret of the Waiting Graves" was cover-dated for Jan. 1970. These tales are of a piece with the feature's 70s stylistically, and the former was a story that made the feature over for the new decade. But placed between them is "The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl!" from Detective Comics #359, cover-dated for Jan. 1967. It's the collection's only New Look story.
I wonder if the placement of the Batgirl story was intended to beef up the '70's section or was it a mistake? Story-wise and art-wise it certainly seemed out of place, especially since the story was produced when the TV shows influence was strongest.
...Um , everybody here DOES know that " the 70s " started on January 1 , 1971 ?
The NINETEEN-SEVENTIES , it is true , started on 1/1/70 , yes...........
I had the original Bats and Supie 30s-70s book , but I did not know of the Shazam! book , or the later-years revisions of the Big Blue and Dark Knight volumes til' many years later (W$as there a 2nd of the Shazam ?)
I am assuming that the Asian/Oceanian versions of all three were identical in contact to the original American ones...
The century's eighth decade started Jan. 1, 1971, but I think 1970-79 is the natural understanding of "the 70s".
My copy has the same contents as the American book - I checked this using the GCD - but the colour pages are in B&W (done from the US colour pages, so their colours appear as greys) and there's a mistake in the "Batman in the 60s" section: 16 pages are duplicated from the previous section in place of most of "Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl" and the first third of "Prisoners of Three Worlds". The volume as a whole is physically thinner than my copies of the others due to the paper used.
I hadn't noticed this, but the Shazam! volume was published by Harmony Books, rather than Crown Publishers like the others. It was done later, in 1977, so it has stories up to 1976. I think only the Superman volume got a to the Eighties version. My guess is appeared due to the Superman movies.
doc photo said:
I didn't think of this until I read your question, but when the volume appeared "Batgirl" was the regular back-up feature in Detective Comics, so it might've been included in the section to represent her. Its placing makes the "Batman in the 70s" section the Julie Schwartz chapter and "Batman in the 60s" the "Silver Age excesses" one.
The last two stories in the "Batman in the 30s & 40s" section are from the 50s, and not even marginally.
Sounds like the makers of the Batman reprint didn't like Bat-Girl.
Well, "Silver Age excesses" is my characterisation. It's a hobby-horse of mine that there were traditional Batman stories in the era as well as SF/fantasy ones,(1) but they're not represented here. The "Batman in the 60s" section has "Bat-Mite Meets Mr. Mxyzptlk", "The Second Batman and Robin Team", "Bat-Girl", "Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl", and "Prisoners of Three Worlds". So three of its stories are SF/fantasy ones, and all are Batman Family stories.
The beginnings of the Batman Family approach are apparent in the 50s section, as its last three stories are "Ace the Bat-Hound!" , "The Batwoman" and "The Challenge of Batwoman". One might argue over whether Bat-Hound was an excess. I think it's a fair description of Bat-Mite. Except for him I'm not hostile to the Batman Family characters, and I'm a bit fond of Batwoman, but I like non-Batman Family stories more.
Bat-Girl appeared six times, and in the Batman Family pin-up in Batman Annual #2. She's in three of the stories here - she appears in "Prisoners of Three Worlds" - so the collection has half her stories. She was shown on the cover each time she appeared in a story, albeit not always prominently. My guess is it was thought she'd strongly appeal to girls. Her last Silver Age appearance, in Detective Comics #322, was the only time she appeared apart from Batwoman.
Looking through the volume, I doubted "Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl" deserved its place in the collection. I can't read it since it's mostly missing from my copy, and it might be an imperishable masterpiece, but I somehow doubt it. I have a theory about why it's there. "Prisoners of Three Worlds" was the first book-length Batman story. (It's also the sole story in the collection representing the SF and strange transformation stories of the late 50s/earlier 60s.) To make it special, the creators moved forwards the Batman/Batwoman and Robin/Bat-Girl love plots: Batman admits his love to Batwoman (but weasels out of it later), and Bat-Girl gets past Robin's defences. "Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl" might've been included in the volume to help set this up.
Apparently, Batman and Batwoman appear only marginally in "Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl": they're sent to Washington to testify before a senate crime committee, leaving Robin and Bat-Girl guarding Gotham. It could be the story was partly chosen for its Robin-focus. But there are other Robin stories that might've been chosen for that purpose, including his solo ones from Star Spangled Comics.
The New Look era had some excesses too, such as "Batman Battles the Living Beast-Bomb!" from Detective Comics #339.
The use of SF in the strip goes back further than one might think. Early forays include "Batman in the Future!" from Batman #59 (1950), and "The Lost Legion of Space" from Batman #67 (1951). The latter story introduced Brane Taylor, the Batman of the future, who returned in "The Batman of Tomorrow!" in Detective Comics #216 (on sale 1954).
(1) Of the stories in the two Signet volumes I mentioned, "The Challenge of the Joker" is from 1960 and "The Return of the Penguin" from 1963. They're both traditional Batman stories in which the villain embarks on a themed series of crimes and sends Batman clues to them. The only thing in the Penguin story that gives its period away is Batman and Robin use Whirly-Bats. "The Challenge of the Joker" is a bit odder in that the Joker's methods aren't clown-themed and he makes use of two fantastic devices, including a sky-sled that looks like a Joker face. (If anyone wants a look at it, it's on the cover of the original issue, Batman #136.)
The story from the Joker volume that one might've guessed was from the fantastic era is "Batman - Clown of Crime!", in which Batman's and the Joker's minds are switched. But it's actually from 1954.
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