When I was quite a bit younger than I am now, I came across a battered copy of Batman: From the 30s to the 70s, edited by E. Nelson Bridwell and published in 1971. While it also included commentary, it was primarily reprints of old Batman comics from the first thirty-ish years of Batman's existence. It had some color pages but most of it was in black and white.
Looking back, I honestly cannot emphasize enough what an extraordinary book this was. Even by the time I found it, which was long after 1971 (I'm not that old), graphic novels and collected editions just weren't a thing, particularly from Marvel or DC. I'm not saying they didn't exist whatsoever. William Eisner had published A Contract With God in 1978, among other things. However, graphic novels were still an anomaly. And in 1971, a book the Batman: From the 30s to the 70s basically didn't exist. (Other than a companion volume about Superman I also found at the library a bit later) I also found the Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics around this time but it had been published eleven years later in 1982.
(Interestingly, newspaper comics had a history of getting published collections for decades. Even at that point. And stories did get reprinted as parts of annuals and such. But not in a format that was designed for longterm shelf life)
Bridwell did a really strong job picking out stories for the book. It isn’t a proper retrospective but much more of a greatest hits collection. While it naturally has the first appearance of Batman in Detective Comics #27, it has a number of other important milestones.
The first appearance of Robin, of the Joker, of the Riddler, of Alfred, of Ace the Bathound, of the first Batwoman and Batgirl, of the second Batgirl who is the first one pretty much anyone cares about. It has the first Red Hood story and Batman entering the Bronze Age. And that’s not even an exhaustive list. There’s something like forty-eight stories reprinted in the book.
(I have to admit that I was surprised, revisiting the book, how much I didn’t enjoy the Silver Age stories, compared to either the Golden Age or Bronze Age. Honestly, so much of what I enjoy about Batman really comes from Bronze Age and on forward.)
In almost every way, this collection is more of a historical artifact rather than an important resource. We now live at a time when bound reprints are readily available, not to mention digitally available. And they’re in color! More than that, and this kind of boggles my mind, it covers less than half of Batman’s publishing history
Still, when I found it at the library, it was an amazing experience.
