Batman trade SECRETS OF THE BATCAVE 8/29

[OKITOMAGIC]

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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[Lee Semmens]

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

Thanks in advance.

[nightwing]

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.

[TELLE]

Sounds like a near-perfect Bat-collection!

[nightwing]

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.

[Lee Semmens]

Thanks, Nightwing.

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

[Super Monkey]

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

[India Ink]

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).