Batman: The Sunday Classics 1943-1946

By various (Sterling)
ISBN 10: 1-4027-4718-7 ISBN 13: 978-1-1402-4718-2

For nearly seventy years the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country and the planet, with millions of readers and accepted (in most places) as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books, it also paid better. And the Holiest of Holies was the full-colour Sunday page.

So it was always something of a poisoned chalice when a comic-book character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) and became a syndicated serial strip. Both Superman and Wonder Woman made the jump in the 1940s and many features have done so since. But one of the best regarded, highest quality examples, both in the Daily and Sunday format was ‘Batman and Robin’.

Although a highpoint in strip cartooning, both the Daily and Sunday Batman features were cursed by ill-timing at a period in newspaper publishing that was afflicted by rationing, shortages and a changing marketplace. These strips never achieved the circulation they deserved, but at least the Sundays were given a new lease of life when DC began reprinting vintage stories in the 1960s in their 80 page Giants and Annuals. The superior quality adventures were ideal short stories and added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital “H”.

The stories themselves are broken down into complete single page instalments building into short tales averaging between four to six pages per adventure. The esoteric foes include such regulars as the Penguin (twice), Joker, Catwoman and Two-Face, original villains such as The Gopher, The Sparrow and Falstaff, but the bulk of the yarns have more prosaic criminals, if indeed there is any antagonist at all.

A benefit of work produced for an audience deemed “more mature” is the freedom to explore human interest stories such as exonerating wrongly convicted men, fighting forest fires and discovering the identity of an amnesia victim. There is even a jolly seasonal yarn that bracketed Christmas week, 1945.

The writers of the strip included Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Joe Samachson, Alvin Schwartz with art by Bob Kane, Jack Burnley and Fred Ray, inking by Win Mortimer and Charles Paris with lettering by Ira Schnapp. The strips were all coloured by Raymond Perry.

This lovely oversized (12 x 9.3x 1 inch) full colour book, first published by DC Comics/Kitchen Sink Press in 1991, also contains a wealth of extra features such as biographical notes, a history of the strip, promotional artefacts, behind-the-scenes artwork and sketches, promotional features and much more. It’s about time it was back in print, as it’s a must for both Bat-fans and lovers of the artform.

©1991, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.