Karl Hellfern), his first mad scientist enemy, and his first recurring enemy. #29 brings us “The Batman Meets Doctor Death.” The title opponent is Batman’s first opponent with a catchy nom de guerre (his actual name is the pretty nifty Dr. (Plus Bob Kane started having assistants to keep up with the work.) The art is kind of crude, and the plot borrowed heavily from a Shadow pulp story, but the creators were on to something new in comics, and rapidly improved. The hyphen was quickly dropped, but Batman’s habit of killing opponents in the heat of battle took a bit longer to disappear. But in the last panel, we learn that Bruce Wayne himself is in fact the Batman! What a twist! Commissioner Gordon explains the plot to Bruce, who finds it all highly unlikely. He saves the fourth partner, and punches the villain into a tank of acid. Crane is murdered too, but before the murderer escapes with a certain paper, a mysterious Bat-Man appears, beats up the murderer and his partner and takes the paper.įrom this, Batman is able to figure out which of the two remaining partners is the mastermind. The son claims he didn’t do it, and to lend credence to this claim, a call comes from Crane, one of Lambert’s three partners, explaining that both of them had threats made against their lives. Chemical syndicate head Lambert is dead, and the most likely suspect is his son. We open, of course, with “The Case of the Criminal Syndicate.” Police Commissioner Gordon is chilling with his young socialite friend Bruce Wayne, talking about rumors of a mysterious “Bat-Man.” Gordon is informed of a murder among the wealthy citizens of the city, and Bruce tags along as he hasn’t got anything better to do. I believe this was the first of this collector’s bait format, thus the “introductory price.” This “Archives” edition is a hardbound full-cover reprint of the Batman stories from Detective Comics #37-50. But both, of course, dedicated to justice in their own ways.

As the Shadow was to Doc Savage, so Batman was to Superman, a skilled man operating in the shadows, rather than a superhuman operating in the light of day.

The kernel of the idea was proposed by artist Bob Kane, and fleshed out by writer Bill Finger, with a first appearance in Detective Comics #37. Batman was the second full-fledged superhero published by National Periodicals, soon to be better known as DC.

Batman Archives, Vol. 1 by Bill Finger