Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga, Vol. 1

An oddity of comics history, this manga-fied Caped Crusader by Kuwata, writer of the contemporary 8-Man, came out during the Adam West Batman era of the 1960s and has some of that show%E2%80%99s campy detective work. This is a straightforward reprint, lacking the analysis that appeared in Chip Kidd%E2%80%99s Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan. The episodic stories start with a Japanese-English mix, introducing a villain, Death God Man, who%E2%80%99s based on shinigami myths, but other installments feel as if they could be purely American in origin. As the heroes%E2%80%94Batman and Dick Grayson as Robin%E2%80%94go through the book, there%E2%80%99s a theme of new technology%E2%80%99s capability for causing disaster when mishandled by flawed human beings. While the book has no overall plot, the artwork%E2%80%94revolutionary for its time%E2%80%94is caught in that moment when the jump from paper strip to page-turner was being made, so it is remarkably clean if not overly imaginative in character design. Yet there are a number of instances of dynamic %E2%80%9Ccamera%E2%80%9D techniques, and the cityscapes are timelessly eye-catching. Color pages sprinkled throughout are a visual lagniappe. A charming blast from the past. (Dec.)