If you like Silver Age Batman, and like it VERY much, you will absolutely LOVE this newly packages Slipcase Edition of Batman Silver Age Newspaper Strips from IDW.

IDW, perhaps, strangely enough, is publishing the collected newspaper strips of DC Comics’ Batman. Okay, we don’t need to know why IDW and not DC, we can simply admire the finished result.

The Batman comic strip ran in newspapers from 1966 to 1972. Along the way, the strip underwent the same transformations as in the comics: first campy and cartoony, with lots of colourful and silly villains, to darker and sleeker. In later years, the strip mirrored the comic books and reintroduced a lot of Batman’s traditional villains.

This newly assembled slipcase edition consists of three individual volumes, each collecting a couple of years worth of strips.

There are daily black and white comic strips, and the coloured Sunday strips, in sequential order. In each volume, along with the reprinted strips, are wonderful notes about the politics and behind-the-scenes situation with the Batman strip. Editors coming and going, writers and artists being brought in, and changed.

Things get really strange by the year 1972, when the publishing syndicate essentially kidnaps the strip, engages DC in a copyright war, and hires its own writer and artist to carry on the Batman strip, all without authorization. The final straw is when the syndicate adds its own superhero to the strip! Unbelievable but true.

Artists who drew or ghosted the strip include Sheldon Moldoff, Al Plastino, Curt Swan, and Nick Cardy. All very capable DC artists.

These combined volumes contain approximately 600 pages of reading, all of it bound to trigger nostalgia in the older Batman fans, and amusement and entertainment in younger or first time readers.

IDW Batman Silver Age Newspaper Comics Slipcase Edition. $99.99 for over 600 pages. All ages.

By Alan Spinney

After a career of graphic design, art direction and copywriting, I still have a passion for words and pictures. I love it when a comic book comes together; the story is tight, and the drawings lead me forward. Art with words... the toughest storytelling technique to get right. Was this comic book worth your money? Let's see!!