I am thinking about reading every Batman comic that has ever been written. Thoughts/advice? 0

[cylinderofantigod]

I've come across several threads like this across the internet, and general consensus is that it's a borderline-impossible, Herculean task. And that was generally just for Batman and/or Detective Comics; in my case, I'd also want to include every spinoff based on a main character from Batman (Nightwing, Robin, Joker, Harley Quinn) or otherwise primarily based in Gotham, and every Batman spinoff ever released, including Elseworlds, graphic novels, and whatnot.

I'm a hikiNEET with absolutely nothing better to do, and, by my calculation, if I spent all day every day doing nothing other than reading Batman, I'd finish somewhere between day 60 and day 90 - assuming I got through 50 normal-sized comics per day on average, and allowing for the fact that some of the older comics were 50ish pages and there are probably a bunch of series that qualify vaguely as "Batman" which I'm not even aware of yet.

I have already acquired every issue of the original runs of Batman and Detective Comics (before The New 52), which are one-third to one-half of all of the comics, and now I'm working on obtaining the others.

Regardless of whether or not I ever commit to this in full, I plan on at least compiling a complete list of material that meets the above criteria. Has any organized, complete, comprehensive list of Batman-related comic titles ever been made, and if so, where can I find it? Of course, I'll post my final list in case any comic nerds out there find it useful for whatever reason.

I feel like the main hurdle in accomplishing this is that there are a solid 25 years of Batman and Detective Comics that were just plain bad (some of the early stories were great, but it gets pretty awful in the 40's and that continues in one form or another for a while), and I'd have to get through most of them before things really started getting good (around the early 70's), assuming I'm reading in order to some degree, so I'd be tempted to quit during Batman's campy phase, the Seduction of the Innocent blacklash phase, or the weird 50's sci-fi phase. But once I broke through that barrier, those comics would pretty much read themselves.

Thoughts? Opinions? Is this actually a realistic goal, assuming I don't find a job or a life or anything better to do in the meantime? Has anyone accomplished this before? How many issues of Batman have you read, and how long did it take? How fast can/do you read comics? What are your favorite and least favorite eras of Batman, while we're at it?

 

Edited March 26, 2020 by cylinderofantigod

[THE_BEYONDER]

Welcome to the boards 

 

There’s a ton of terrible Bat books.

 

good luck 

[theCapraAegagrus]

[THE_BEYONDER]

6 minutes ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

 

[Ken Aldred]

20 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

Welcome to the boards 

 

There’s a ton of terrible Bat books.

 

good luck 

Yup. You need to be selective.

Read some articles about the better series and which eras had more consistent quality. Also, there’s a wide range of artwork and storytelling, and some might not appeal to you.  That’s why I never set myself a Herculean task like yours: I prefer to focus my attack narrowly.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Ken Aldred

[slym2none]

Good luck!



-slym

[Brian48]

I tried doing that.  I have Bats #1-713 and 'Tec 27-867 as PDFs as well as a boatload of hard copy graphic novels.  The graphic novels were easy enough since modern writing is fairly good, but some of the older era stuff was just mind numbingly dumb.  The more I tried reading through them, the less joy I got out of reading Batman.  Gave it up and stuck just with those stories I like or think I'll like.

[Coverless 9.8]

Don't leave the cave until you're done! 

[James J Johnson]

3 minutes ago, Coverless 9.8 said:

Don't leave the cave until you're done! 

I hope he's not going to skirt all the cross-over issues and other titles featuring Batman. Brave and the Bold, Dark Knight this and that, World's Best/Finest, JLA, etc., etc., If you're going big, then go big, or go home, right? 

[cylinderofantigod]

35 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

Yup. You need to be selective.

Read some articles about the better series and which eras had more consistent quality. Also, there’s a wide range of artwork and storytelling, and some might not appeal to you.  That’s why I never set myself a Herculean task like yours: I prefer to focus my attack narrowly.

Everything from the 70's on seems tolerable. I rarely pick a random book from that era on and dislike it. Conversely, I can rarely read one of the 40's/50's/60's books and get any farther than a page or two.

The different art and storytelling seems to go in waves, but the stuff I love and the stuff I hate seem to all be grouped together.

The darker stuff from the 80's and 90's are my favorite, and the campy from the early era is my least favorite.

31 minutes ago, Brian48 said:

I tried doing that.  I have Bats #1-713 and 'Tec 27-867 as PDFs as well as a boatload of hard copy graphic novels.  The graphic novels were easy enough since modern writing is fairly good, but some of the older era stuff was just mind numbingly dumb.  The more I tried reading through them, the less joy I got out of reading Batman.  Gave it up and stuck just with those stories I like or think I'll like.

How far did you get?

Yeah, the older era stuff is painfully tedious.

 

  

43 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

Welcome to the boards 

 

There’s a ton of terrible Bat books.

 

good luck 

 

Thanks. And, yeah, there are, but most of the more egregious offenders seem to be in one continuous series, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. If I can just get through them, I won't mind the rest so much... but I would have to get through them, and get through them first.

 

41 minutes ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

 

I wouldn't be here if I weren't giving it some serious thought. I have a lot to do at the moment (relatively speaking) but I'm thinking I might attempt starting it in a month or so, if I decide to.

I might. I might.

It would mean several months where I couldn't do anything else at all, but it's not like I'm not sitting here wasting my life, anyway. It would at least be an accomplishment.

 

  

3 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

I hope he's not going to skirt all the cross-over issues and other titles featuring Batman. Brave and the Bold, Dark Knight this and that, World's Best/Finest, JLA, etc., etc., If you're going big, then go big, or go home, right? 

I was thinking that my rule-of-thumb would be that any comic that is primarily focused on a Batman-derived character would go on the list. Dark Knight: This and That would definitely be included, and while crossovers like Batman/Superman count since Batman is tied for primary focus of the comic, JLA would not count, since Batman is one of many included characters and doesn't usually take place in Gotham. Brave and the Bold Batman issues might count, if I decide I'm not too lazy to go through them all and figure out which ones those are.

 

[JollyComics]

28 minutes ago, cylinderofantigod said:

Everything from the 70's on seems tolerable. I rarely pick a random book from that era on and dislike it. Conversely, I can rarely read one of the 40's/50's/60's books and get any farther than a page or two.

The different art and storytelling seems to go in waves, but the stuff I love and the stuff I hate seem to all be grouped together.

The darker stuff from the 80's and 90's are my favorite, and the campy from the early era is my least favorite.

How far did you get?

Yeah, the older era stuff is painfully tedious.

 

  

 

Thanks. And, yeah, there are, but most of the more egregious offenders seem to be in one continuous series, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. If I can just get through them, I won't mind the rest so much... but I would have to get through them, and get through them first.

 

 

I wouldn't be here if I weren't giving it some serious thought. I have a lot to do at the moment (relatively speaking) but I'm thinking I might attempt starting it in a month or so, if I decide to.

I might. I might.

It would mean several months where I couldn't do anything else at all, but it's not like I'm not sitting here wasting my life, anyway. It would at least be an accomplishment.

 

  

I was thinking that my rule-of-thumb would be that any comic that is primarily focused on a Batman-derived character would go on the list. Dark Knight: This and That would definitely be included, and while crossovers like Batman/Superman count since Batman is tied for primary focus of the comic, JLA would not count, since Batman is one of many included characters and doesn't usually take place in Gotham. Brave and the Bold Batman issues might count, if I decide I'm not too lazy to go through them all and figure out which ones those are.

 

Nicely work, Mr. Quote ANNNNDDD Welcome to the Board!

Edited March 26, 2020 by JollyComics

[Ken Aldred]

55 minutes ago, cylinderofantigod said:

The darker stuff from the 80's and 90's are my favorite, and the campy from the early era is my least favorite

That’s a very good period for Batman comics.  Generally very readable and consistent from the mid-80s to early 90s.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Ken Aldred

[mrc]

As a Bat fan, I've always found this book to be a pretty indispensable guide..........

 

[cylinderofantigod]

18 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

That’s a very good period for Batman comics.  Generally very readable and consistent from the mid-80s to early 90s.

Agreed. And while I guess a lot of the modern comics also have consistent artwork, readability, and writing, there was just a magic from that era that they don't usually capture. Plus, a lot of the comics from the late 2000's on seem to have an off-flavor to them.

Not to say that a lot of it's not good. I like what I've read of The New 52, and I haven't gotten to Rebirth yet.

14 minutes ago, mrc said:

As a Bat fan, I've always found this book to be a pretty indispensable guide..........

 

Nice. I'll check it out.

[Senormac]

I think it's a great idea.  I can't think of a better way for you to spend your time.  Don't forget all the Worlds Finest stories 

[ttfitz]

3 hours ago, cylinderofantigod said:

Thoughts? Opinions? Is this actually a realistic goal, assuming I don't find a job or a life or anything better to do in the meantime? Has anyone accomplished this before? How many issues of Batman have you read, and how long did it take? How fast can/do you read comics? What are your favorite and least favorite eras of Batman, while we're at it?

 

That's quite a chunk to read. My local comic shop manager has something he calls The 100 Back Issue Comics a Week Challenge, where you are supposed to read 100 back issues each week during August (along with the extra days to make it 5 full weeks), so a total of 500 back issues. I've done the Challenge 3 times now, and it's pretty tough unless you have nothing else to do - 10-15  minutes an issue, I would say, and you need to get 14-15 comics each day to make the grade.

The first year I did it, I just chose random sets of books, in 2018 in honor of the Superman anniversary I did all Superman books (Action, Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen), and similarly in 2019 I did Batman (Batman, Detective, Brave and the Bold, World's Finest). While I read digital comics, I tried to keep it to books I actually owned, so I ended up reading most of the Batman related issues from aroun 1959-1976 - Batman 122-271, Detective 263-454, B&B 67-123, and WF 99-222. Skipped some of the Giants with lots of reprints, on a deadline after all!

I can tell you it's a chore, but kinda interesting to see how things changed over the years - and also how repetitive it got at times. 

So I say, why not? Give it a try if you have the time and means.

[sfcityduck]

I have read all of the Detectives, Batman's, World's Finest's, Star Spangled's (Robin by the way, had more GA appearances than Batman), and newstand one-off's (All-Star, etc.) into the 1950s via the Archives and Omnibus volumes.  Frankly, I really like the late 40s and early 1950s comics. 

[Ken Aldred]

2 hours ago, cylinderofantigod said:

Agreed. And while I guess a lot of the modern comics also have consistent artwork, readability, and writing, there was just a magic from that era that they don't usually capture. Plus, a lot of the comics from the late 2000's on seem to have an off-flavor to them.

It’s a great time to get immersed in comics, to keep your mind occupied during self-isolation.

If you don’t  want to re-read the mid 80s to early 90s material again, then maybe go back a generation and read some of the Bronze Age classics by Adams, Rogers, Aparo and Golden in particular.  Generally very good stories, and the darker, moodier stuff you’re after.

[romanheart]

Great series. I read Detective and Batman, and I'm sure there are other good Batman stories in other stories. I don't think anyone has read every Batman story. 

[James J Johnson]

2 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

It’s a great time to get immersed in comics, to keep your mind occupied during self-isolation.

If you don’t  want to re-read the mid 80s to early 90s material again, then maybe go back a generation and read some of the Bronze Age classics by Adams, Rogers, Aparo and Golden in particular.  Generally very good stories, and the darker, moodier stuff you’re after.

If you love history, many Golden age DC, Timely, Centaur, etc., etc. comics are available for online reading. If unaware, very interesting and highly enlightening as to where many ideas, storylines, and characters originated from! Many, like Kirby and others, are Golden age creators whose creations extended into the Silver age and beyond!

A wonderful companion for that is the Steranko History of Comics, Vol 1 and 2, IMO, the best historical overview you can read.