Book Review: Cultural Studies

Japanese-American Exchange Program

Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan

by Chip Kidd

Pantheon, 384 pp., $60

You just thought the world went mad for Batman this year. Well, not to discount a billion-dollar global gross, but the fervor for The Dark Knight pales beside the mania that attended Batman's TV debut in 1966. The campy series prompted blockbuster ratings, a Top 40 hit theme song, Hollywood's elite clamoring for cameos, and all manner of bat merchandise cluttering store shelves everywhere. Chip Kidd never recovered from that bout of Bat Scratch Fever. The superpowered graphic designer – was he bitten by a radioactive logo as a teen? – has accumulated tons of Batman memorabilia, and his book Batman Collected cataloges hundreds of products pumped out during the Caped Crusader craze of the Sixties. His new follow-up, Bat-Manga!, should remove any lingering doubts that Kidd is as compulsive about collecting bat shit as the Riddler is about leaving clues to his crimes, and it also proves that ours wasn't the only country flooded with cheap goods bearing the Cowled Crimefighter's likeness in '66. Here, from the collection of Saul Ferris, are dozens of toys, models, and other goods cranked out in Japan to cash in on the character's sudden popularity.

These obscure objects of bat desire are beautifully presented – Geoff Spear photographs even the shoddiest knockoffs with a fetishistic adoration that makes them look like museum treasures – but the true beauty of the book is its reproduction of five serialized Batman stories created specifically for the weekly manga anthology Shonen King by star artist Jiro Kuwata. The results owe more to Batman comics of the day than the TV series – less camp, more action – and yet they don't feel quite like the American comics, either. Except for Batman himself, the artwork is distinctively manga, the stories are paced more slowly (Really? Three panels just to show Batman running from the Batmobile to a lab?), and their sci-fi elements (weird experiments, mutants) radiate an Atomic Age anxiety that seems peculiarly Japanese. Still, they're compelling and exquisitely crafted works of cartooning, and since only a year's worth of stories were created and they were never reprinted or translated until Kidd sought them out, they constitute a genuine rarity, the Batfan equivalent of an unknown Shakespeare play. Lost adventures of the Gotham Guardian? Holy Apocrypha, Batman! That's a must-have!

Additional Reading: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life by Brian Raftery (Da Capo Press, 232 pp., $16, paper); Salmonella Men on Planet Porno: Stories by Yasutaka Tsutsui (Pantheon, 272 pp., $21.95)