After enjoying the first volume of Batman Chronicles so much, I decided I had to continue with this series, since I'm fascinated by the extremely early adventures of this iconic hero, this time from 1940. The stories in this volume begin to take a different tone, since Robin is usually there to pal around with, and Bruce seems to really enjoy his pipe-smoking bachelor lifestyle, although a few plots include his fiancee Julie (which was news to me!). Besides the Joker, there are a few more villain introductions, although they are definitely different than we know them today. Catwoman wears a full cat-head mask, which looks pretty silly, and Clayface is simply an actor in makeup (for now!). The cool thing about these stories is most of them are actually presented as mysteries - lots of suspects are introduced, and Batman really gets to be a detective and solve the crime. But along with the intellectual side comes some extreme violence, with bad guys being tossed around and even slammed into walls (which the narrator loves to call a "sickening thud" over and over again). Robin often uses a sling as his weapon (always with a David & Goliath reference), the Batplane shows up a few times, but there's still no official Batmobile - I'm looking forward to its introduction. If I didn't have so many other books waiting for me to read, I would already be buying the next volume of this series by now!Labels: batman, books, comics
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