Batman The Dark Knight Part 1: Bill & The Bat - Character Corner

This time on the Character Corner we’re finally talking about The Batman. We’ve talked around Batman for a while now. We covered him a bit in our Suicide Squad Character Corner, then the Rogue Wars episode on is villains. We’ve also covered one Robin and all of the Batgirls and even Batwoman. So it’s about time we finally dive into discussing the big guy himself.
We’ll be breaking this out into three parts. For this first part we cover the early years of Batman up to the introduction of Tim Drake as Robin. That’s about forty years of history from 1939 when he first appeared in Detective Comics #27 to the late 80’s and A Lonely Place of Dying. We also spend some time addressing the tragic story of Bill Finger who for the longest time was the uncredited creator of not just Batman but a lot of Batman’s villains as well as the classic conceptions we associate with the character. If you have Hulu, you should definitely check out Batman & Bill that goes into way more detail over how poorly DC treated Bill Finger and how everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.
Issues:

Writer Bill Finger

Detective Comics #27 – The Case of the Chemical Syndicate – First Appearance
Detective Comics #29 – First Utility Belt
Detective Comics #31 – First batarang and first bat-themed vehicle
Detective Comics #33 – First telling of origin
Detective Comics #38 - First Appearance of Robin (Dick Grayson)
Batman #1 – First Appearance of The Joker & Catwoman

Superman #76 – First teamup with Superman
World’s Finest Comics
The Brave and the Bold #28 – Joins JLA
Tales of the Demon (1971-1980)

Detective Comics #411 – First appearance of Talia Al Ghul
Batman #232 – Daughter of the Demon (First appearance of Ra’s al Ghul)
Batamn #235
Batman #240
Batman #242
Batman #243
Batman #244 – The Demon Lives Again
DC Special Series #15
Detective Comics #489
Detective comics #490

Strange Apparitions

Detective Comics #469-479

Batman #357 – First appearance of Jason Todd (Pre-Crisis)
Batman #366 – First Appearance of pre-Crisis Jason Todd as Robin
Batman #408 – First Appearance of post-Crisis Jason Todd
Batman #410 – Post-Crisis Jason Todd as Robin
The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller)
The Killing Joke
Batman: Year One (Frank Miller)
Batman: Death in the Family
Batman #436 – First appearance of Tim Drake
A Lonely Place of Dying

Batman #440
New Titans #60
Batman #441
New Titans #61
Batman #442 First Appearance of Tim Drake as Robin

Short list of some of Bill Finger’s Batman Creations:

Batman
Joker
The Penguin
Scarecrow
Two-Face
The Riddler
The Calendar Man
Gotham City

Part 2 of this series we’ll take a break from the comics and go into some of the other media interpretations of Batman and then we’ll return for the rest of the comic history for Part 3.
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