Although it doesn’t attain the spectacular, mind-blowing, everyone in the world should own it levels of Fletcher Hanks’ I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets (man, I can’t wait for the sequel book in July), Bat-Manga is about as close as you can reasonably expect another tome to be. This is simply deliriously fun stuff.
The book is a collection of Japanese Batman comics from 1966 and ’67, from the era when campy Batmania was traveling the world due to the Adam West TV show. These comics were written and drawn by Jiro Kuwata, the creator of such mangas as 8-Man. Mr. Jiro, as it turns out, specialized in mangas adapting American TV shows, including The Invaders and The Time Tunnel.
The art style here is very familiar to fans of Japanese cartoon shows of the time, programs such as Prince Planet and Gigantor. The writing is typically weird. The villains are more like pumped up versions of Dick Tracy’s overly baroque foes than regular members of the Batman Rogue’s Gallery. Only one villain here seems based on an actual Batman enemy, that being a version of the shapechanging Clayface, one of Batman’s few sci-fi oriented antagonists.
The rest include a weirdo with a weather controlling wand, a skeletal figure who seems immortal and calls himself Lord Death Man, and a gorilla who gains human intelligence and declares war on mankind for it’s cruelty to animals. Another fellow loses his face and takes his revenge on other faces–admittedly, a very Batman-like psychosis–including at one point going after Batman’s gigantic “likeness carved onto the face of Mount Gothem!” Sure enough, Batman and Robin catch the guy in the act. “He’s using a high-pressure rock-pulverizer rifle!” Robin exclaims. Hey, what else?
The only downside to the book is that copies of these old comics are spotty, and several times the final chapter to one of the multi-part story arcs is missing. This is obviously annoying, but there is enough wonky joy to be derived from the contents that it didn’t cripple my pleasure from it. Also, because it’s manga (which I don’t read), it took me a bit to fully get into the last page to first page ordering of the story, and to read the dialog balloons from right to left rather than left to right.
In compensation, the book is gorgeous. It’s oversized, and the paper and production values are very high. The comics tend to be in black and white (on yellowish paper), although every once in a while we get a page or three in color. I guess it was actually printed that way originally. Between the comics themselves, we get wonderful full color pictures of various Batman toys and geegaws as sold in Japan, ranging from the normal (Batmobiles, Batplanes) to the inappropriate and often downright bizarre (a Batman rifle, a Batman gas pump). My library carried the paperback edition, which as noted is quite swank, but apparently there’s an ever ritzier hardcover edition.
Seriously, you will want to check this out. Unless you haven’t read I Will Destroy All Civilized Planets yet. If you haven’t, get on that first, lest you accidental die before reading it and ruin your entire life as spent here.
(For some reason I could only find an Amazon link to the hardcover edition. However, from there you can follow the “also available” link to the paperback.)
