The Essential Batman Encyclopedia by Robert Greenberger
02/08/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Titan Books/DC Comics. 385 page illustrated soft cover. Price: £18.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84576-957-4). Buy The Essential Batman Encyclopedia in the USA - or Buy The Essential Batman Encyclopedia in the UK  check out website: www.titanbooks.com and www.dccomics.com
It's hard to believe but its some twenty-seven years since the Michael Fleisher 'Encyclopaedia Of Batman', which I also own and read. A reprint of which has also come out recently. This 'Essential' volume by Robert Greenberger is the first of three following the same path including what has happened in the past quarter of a century. In many respects, both books can complement each other since the earlier book digs heavier into the Earth-2 Batman and only the few decade of the Earth-1 Batman from the 60s up.
This book can be seen as a reference or a straight read. By pacing myself, I read the book in just under a fortnight although I doubt if many will want to do that but it's the best way to assess the content.
I did find it a little strange that all the real identities of various characters got their own entries. Granted many of them were little more than a paragraph but unless you knew them already you'd have probably gone for the non-de-plume. It might have made more sense to have them refer back to them than that and use the space for a easy reference page to put the info together. The same applies when you have successive characters in the same letter having similar entries as with the Waynes and even the Twiddles.
One game which you might want to do with your mates is to sit down with this book is to relate an entry and see if they can guess which decade or Batman it belonged to. I was finding myself increasingly recognising the differences as I got to the info saying when the event first happened. This book isn't really for the layperson though. If anything, I think things might have been easier to just cover the Earth-1 Batman as an entity to itself than mix the entries in for Earth-2 Batman which is, to all intents and purposes a separate character. The 'Crisis On Infinite Earths' and more recent 'Infinite Crisis' has essentially kept the same Batman although given enough explanation now about how its used to do a sort of reset and update but still essentially keeping the same Earth-1 Batman. I think segregating them differently would have helped differentiate the adventures. It would certainly have given the space to cover the Secret Society Of Super-Villains (whose reference was invariably oddly capped) which was repeatedly referred to but oddly omitted for a separate entry. You have to dig through all the entries to discover the tales of the Earth-1 Batman start in 1960. It's a shame that the original Bob Kane two page origin wasn't sure in its entirety than the latter Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee re-interpretation. Granted the artwork was better but it misses out an important element of showing the original.
Out of all of this one thing did strike me. The Earth-2 Batman and Robin and occasionally with Superman, all in their civilian identities would use Professor Carter Nicholls to hypnotically project them back in the time stream for adventures. When they arrived, they inevitably changed into their super-hero garb for the adventure. Even when I read the original tales it struck me that had they enacted this purely as an illusion set in the present, Nicholls would have realised who they really were. If he was powerful enough to really send them through time without the aid of a time machine then he had to be one of the most powerful entities around. That being the case, I wonder why he's never had a counter-part on Earth-1? Maybe he has but the connection hasn't become known yet.
Something else that has struck me over the entries is the number of people who've figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman and how ungrateful he was when Zatanna erased people's memories of this and other secret identities. Granted, she also did it to him when he got angry over it when it hit on his sensibilities. You'd have thought there would have been some element of relief and at least some safety for butler Alfred Pennyworth that the knowledge wasn't as known as it was. By the way, this would also make a great game to play with your mates if they want a change from spot the decade: just how many villains worked out who Batman was.
Neither Fleisher originally or Greenberger with this volume has explained how Batman got the bigger trophies like the giant dinosaur or giant coin to the Batcave without anyone spotting them being moved. The Earth-1 Batman doesn't look like the sort of chap these days to collect trophies or make a fuss about getting something for his trouble in catching the felons. If anything, this trophy thing is very much more a thing of Earth-2 which only infringed on Earth-1 back in the 60s as they were written by the same writers and was a requisite for having something to fill up your secret headquarters.
Although it is stated from the start that this is solely an encyclopaedia of the comicbook Batman, I did find it amusing that having his cowl sprayed with radioactivity was taken from them and used in the mid-1960s TV 'Batman' series. If anything, it gave a little more insight that any of the more, shall we say, camp aspects were because of the 50s influence on its creators. It'll be interesting to see how far that goes when the Batman Chronicles reprints reach that era and we can see for ourselves the various influences.
Other odd facts emerged like the number of villains who had hooks for hands. Its amazing that Boston Brand aka as Deadman would ever find his man. Likewise, looking at Wayne Enterprises and its various charity Foundations how anyone could think its owner was purely a playboy. In many respects, his company looks like its bigger than LexCorps or even S.T.A.R. when it comes to research.
The book is also loaded with lots of illustrations as well as thirty-two pages in colour. I should point out that most of the black and white illustrations don't have labels or even those who illustrated them, even if there is a large list at the back of the book. Granted this can also be a game to play with your mates to identify them all but I'd have thought a simple by-line wouldn't have gone amiss to give credit where credit was due.
I think you can tell from all my comments that I've had a great time with this book. Any criticisms are less at Greenberger but at the Batman mythos itself over the years. There is a lot of good material to read in here that should have you making this an essential purchase.
I hope all those involved in creating the comicbooks get their own copies and see things that have been done and either resolve or do better in future. For the reader who wants to have a reference to the characters and how various realities have influenced them over the years then this book is definitely an asset and something the writers of the forthcoming Superman and Wonder Woman volumes have to live up to.
GF Willmetts
|
|
Add SFcrowsnest.com daily news updates to your
own web site or blog - just cut and paste the code
below...
POST YOUR COMMENTS  CLICK HERE TO HAVE YOUR SAY
|
