Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga (2014), Volume 1

March 15, 2015

The lavish art book Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan (LJ 1/09), edited by Chip Kidd, first alerted American fans to a surprising and long-hidden piece of Batman lore: the officially licensed Batman manga, created in Japan in 1966-67 during the heyday of the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman TV show. That book included only excerpts of the manga; now, after an initial online serialization, DC is publishing an English-language translation of the complete series in three volumes, printed in the traditional right-to-left orientation. Kuwata, who created the popular manga hero 8-Man in 1963, loosely based some of these tales on original early 1960s American Batman stories, but there's none of the silliness of that era of Batman here; these are serious-minded crime-fighting tales, with science-based villains, a fallible Batman, and a tough, resourceful Robin. The action scenes exemplify manga pacing and dynamism. It's more than a little like a less cartoony Astro Boy--unsurprisingly, given that similar to many manga artists, Kuwata was strongly influenced by Astro Boy's creator, Osamu Tezuka. VERDICT Recommended for its cross-cultural interest but also to fans wanting some straightforward Batman adventure.--S.R.

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