Like the best pulp, they're ridiculous but fast-moving and shot through with a sense of impending doom. A lot of people complain about Robin's presence in Batman's world, but he's been a part of it from the very beginning, and is the throughline for a lot of young readers. It's a fat, 64-page comic, and introduced the Joker and Catwoman (then simply known as "the Cat"). The final reprint in this volume is the first issue of Batman (which, like Detective Comics, is still churning out approximately 12 issues a year). (Detective Comics also featured the adventures of Slam Bradley and other mostly forgotten characters, but they're not reprinted here.) Each issue of Detective Comics in which Batman originally appeared was 64 pages long, but the Batman stories themselves usually are shorter than 20 pages. The villains and situations are pure pulp, and the dark, sinister atmosphere is thick. There is no Alfred the butler, and we don't see a lot of Bruce Wayne's life as a feckless playboy, but we see enough. These early Batman stories (most of which were originally published in Detective Comics in 19) are cloddishly written and primitively illustrated, but nearly everything that makes Batman a powerful and intriguing character is present.
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