Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I just got the new trade, Secrets of the Batcave. I liked most of the stories , but I do not understand why the story the man behind the red hood (51 origin of the Joker ) and the first batman.
I wish that DC would stay with the themes , I liked these stories , but I do not understand what it has to do with the batcave theme?
They could have done the story where Dick Grayson goes to Hudson College , and Bruce and Alfred go to the city( Batman 317 I believe is the issue)
I am interested to hear other view points on these trades, as well as who picks the stories , which seem to repeat and repeat the same ones
I would be interested in an trade which tells the origins of the villians , from the 40's, 50's etc to see the new imput, by new artists and writers.Please forgive any spelling errors , broken hand using one finger,



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Could someone please provide a rundown - or a link - of the Golden and Silver Age tales included in this book?

Thanks in advance.

Just ran out and got it.  The stories are divided into sections.

Here goes:

** TROPHIES OF THE BATCAVE **

"Brothers in Crime", 
from Batman #12, Sep 1942
Don Cameron, Jerry Robinson

"The Penny Plunderers"
World's Finest Comics #30, Sep/Oct 1947
Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jack Burnley

"Dinosaur Island"
Batman #35, Jun/Jul 1946
Finger, Kane, Burnley

"The Thousand and One Trophies of Batman"
Detective Comics #158, Apr 1950
Ed Hamilton, Kane, Charles Paris

"The Man Behind the Red Hood"
Detective Comics #168, Feb 1951
Finger, Lew Sayre Schwartz, George Roussos

"The Flying Batcave"
Detective Comics #186, Aug 1952
David V. Reed, Schwartz, Paris

"The First Batman"
Detective Comics #235, Sep 1956
Finger, Shelly Moldoff, Stan Kaye

"The 100 Batarangs of Batman"
Detective Comics #244, Jun 1957
Finger, Moldoff, Paris

** BEGINNINGS OF THE BATCAVE **

" The Origin of the Batcave"
Detective Comics #205, Mar 1954
Finger, Moldoff, Paris

"The Man Who Falls"
Secret Origins of the World's Greatest Super-Heroes, 1989
Denny O'Neil, Dick Giordano

** TALES FROM THE BATCAVE **

"The 1,000 Secrets of the Batcave"
Batman #48, Aug/Sep 1948
Finger, Mooney

"The Batman Dime-Museum"
Detective #223, Sept 1955
?, Moldoff, Kaye

"Prisoners of the Batcave"
Batman #108, Jun 1957
?, Moldoff, Paris

"Shadow Play"
Batman #348, Jun 1982
Gerry Conway, Gene Colan, Klaus Janson

"Interlude on Earth-2"
Brave and the Bold #181 (this one is incorrectly listed as Batman #348, like the above)
Alan Brennert, Jim Aparo

"Inside the Batcave"
Bizarro Comics, 2001
Paul Pope, Jay Stevens

Plus cool diagrams and text showing the Batcave in each decade of bat-history.

This is one beautiful book!  It really brings back a lot of happy memories of those "themed" Super-Spectaculars and Limited Collector's Editions of my mis-spent youth.  Now I'm really looking forward to the "Kandor" volume.

Sounds like a near-perfect Bat-collection!

Well, it's certainly a very nice one, but like OKITOMAGIC here, I question the inclusion of "The First Batman" and "The Man Behind the Red Hood."  Neither have much if anything to do with the Batcave and both would have fit well into future collections themed around the rogue's gallery or Batman's secret origins (the latter could include the Joe Chill story, the Lew Moxon story, this one, the one where young Bruce apprentices to a private eye while wearing the Robin costume, and so on).

Overall, though, it's very nicely put together and the design inside is pretty.  Not sure why they topped it all with a painted cover of "modern Batman" when he's not really in the book, but it is a nice painting (by Simone Bianchi).

One thing this book shows you, though, is how nuanced and intricate Batman's history was back in the day.  Given that writers of the past couldn't do an "everything will change" plotline every month like they do now, they had to spend a lot of time looking closely at the mythos and fleshing it out.  Those were always among my favorite tales: What were the Waynes like? How did Bruce discover the Batcave?  Who is the guy who turns on the Bat-Signal? What's in all those cannisters in the utility belt?  Whatever happened to the circus the Graysons performed in?  I always loved that stuff.

Thanks, Nightwing.

It looks as though I'll be getting this TPB, even though I have a number of the stories already.

Amazon has this book for $12.23 and some there are selling it for as low as $9

It's interesting that this book, like some other recent TPBs, mainly sticks with Classical Era stories and doesn't try to fit in post-Classical reprints (ie. 1990s and on).

DC seems to realize the truth that we will either buy books of one flavour or of another, but we don't much care for books that try to mix them all together.

I haven't bought any of the new Greatest collections, partly for this reason. In trying to fit EVERYTHING into less than 200 pages of content, they have to skip over too much. The Greatest books would have been better if each feature was covered in two volumes (eg. Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, volume 1: 1939 - 1975; Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, volume 2: 1976 - 2005).

India, I for one hope you're right and we'll see less of books that try to mix "classic" and "modern" stories.

For one thing, as you suggest, I am a fan of the one but not the other.  This is why I passed on the recent "Daily Planet" and "Lex Luthor" TPBs, for instance...the "good" stuff didn't make up for the crud at the end.  I understand mixing things up from a marketing perspective; no doubt the aim is to turn modern readers on to the old stuff, and prod codgers like myself into coming back to the monthlies.  But I really think we're becoming more and more two different audiences, and nobody's really satisfied with collections that are neither fish nor foul.  The average Jim Lee Batman fan, for instance, probably doesn't care a whit for Shelly Moldoff.

Also, from a conceptual standpoint, we're often talking here about very different characters.  The Superman of the 90s is not the Superman of the 50s and 60s, and tacking on a Jurgens-era story to a book full of Hamilton and Binder tales is disorienting and frustrating for everybody, IMHO.  This is how I felt about the "Greatest Stories Ever Told" books from years ago...especially the Superman and Flash versions.  The "current era" stuff in the back of those books didn't fit at all with the rest of the volumes.  It reminded me of those annoying previews they stick in the middle of a comic with a totally different audience..."Hey kids, if you think this issue of Spider-Man is cool, check out this cool preview for the Radioactive Gang Banger Skate Squad!"

BUT...I think there are some different explanations for why this particular book is so "classic"-heavy, and why the Kandor book probably will be, too.  And that is, the vast majority of this mythology was built up prior to the Crisis.  How many stories have there been, really, about the Bat-Cave in recent times (if you don't count blowing it up in that earthquake storyline, and that's probably 2000 pages in itself).

Also, I think it's entirely possible that now DC's remembered they have references like "The Complete Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Heroes," they're using those volumes to select stories around specific themes.  And everything chronicled in those books is pre-1965.

Don´t know about the editorial decisions for the content of the new TPs, but as a fan of the characters, I don´t like being an exclusivist. A good story is a good story, being it pre-Crisis or Post-Crisis. I started collecting with the Superman revamp, and liked the character enought to buy all the back issues I could find and reprints of Pre-Crisis stuff. I have the Candor book pre-ordered on Amazon and enjoy Busiek´s and Morrison´s take on Superman. Even Jurgens years have good stories like Homeless for the Holidays and Krisis of Krinson Kryptonite. Even John Byrne have at least a good stoty, the vampire annual illustrated by Arthur Adams. And reading all the Silver Age Showcase editions, I see that it wasn´t at all perfect. So yes, I,m a fan of the Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale penned Batman storylines, but also care the same about Denny O´Neil/Neal Adams or, for the matter, Sheldon Moldoff.

I've mentioned before that my real introduction to Batman in the comics came with a Blue Ribbon digest reprinting several classic tales from different eras, with some editorial comment.  These mixed books have their place --you can't expect new readers to patiently read through the entire 60-year history of a character before enjoying The Joker's Five-Way Revenge, Dark Knight, etc.