The 1950s were the decade when Fredric Wertham's attack on the social evils of the comic book reached its highpoint with the publication of Seduction of the Innocent and his testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. It was also a decade of UFO sightings and the beginning of the Space Race. As a result Batman and other superheroes needed to fight crime while modeling wholesome behavior for young boys. Wholesome was especially important in Batman comics because Wertham had explicitly accused Batman and Robin of being—gasp!—homosexuals, much too far outside the conservative social norm of the 1950s.

The stories, described in the introduction to this collection as, “wild, wacky, weird [and] wonderful” could also be characterized as short and silly, especially when compared to the portrayals of Batman and his supporting cast that began in the 1970s and has continued into the early twenty-first century. Nevertheless, they are a lot of fun. Bill Finger, France Herron and others wrote these stories filled with memorable supervillains, giant props—a favorite device of Finger’s—scientific crime-fighting gadgets, and extraterrestrials. The square jawed Batman drawn by Bob Kane’s ghost artist Sheldon Moldoff and Dick Spring and the snub nosed sidekick Robin added to the visual wholesomeness of the daring duo. ( )

Of all the old books I'd like to add to my collection, one of the most desired would be Batman From the 30s to the 70s, a book I checked out time and time again from the library when I was a kid. Cheapskate that I am, I don't have much hope of actually obtaining that tome, but I was delighted to find at least some of the reprints I remember in Batman in the Fifties. Best of all, it was only a buck at the Seattle Friends of the Library sale. The stories reprinted are grouped into four sections: Classic Tales (I would title it "Gimmick Tales" myself), The Batman Family, The Villains, and Tales from Beyond. Each represents a different thread that made up the tapestry of the era's Batman tales.
--J. ( )

I find those old comics really fascinating. The fact that Batman has been around for seventy years now is part of what makes it so interesting for me, and reading those old stories is sort of like stepping into a time machine? Even though it's still Batman, the stories have a *very* different feel to those of today, and often are unintentionally funny (or funny for different reasons). But it really is fascinating to see where those characters came from. I'm going backwards - I'm still waiting for my '40s issue. ( )