Tales of the Dark Knight

"Tales of the Dark Night" covers the first fifty years of Batman comic books (1939-1980). Obviously, Mark Cotta Vaz's book was inspired the revival of interest in the character following the critical success of Frank Miller's "Dark Knight" and the Tim Burton film version of "Batman." This book does a solid job of detailing the continuing evolution of Batman since the character was first introduced in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939. Vaz looks at the "Golden Age" of the Forties, when the orphaned Bruce Wayne first began his crime-fighting career, the development of the arch-villains such as the Joker and Penguin, what he characterizes as the "benign scoutmaster" days of the Fifties during the comic book censorship uproar, the strange science-fiction/space alien episodes of the early Sixties and the campy late Sixties television show, and the characters return to his root as the apocalyptic Dark Knight. "Tales of the Dark Knight" is fully illustrated by artists from Bob Kane to Curt Swan, Sheldon Moldoff to Murphy Andreson, Neal Adams to Ed Hannigan, all the way up to Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. In addition to panels from dozens of comics there are 48 classic covers presented in full color. This book does a more than adequate job of filling in the gaps in the career of Gotham's crime fighter. Whether you know a little or a lot about Batman, you should enjoy leafing through this book.