Set Description:
Synopsis: Our set contains 75 of the 100 books in this set with a minimum grade of 8.5. All but three of our books are at least second highest graded in the census, with 24 single highest graded copies.
Background: What can anyone say about this title? Batman's self-titled run is one of the most significant in the history of comic books and one of the most widely collected. It is the title that introduced the Joker, one of the most recognizable villains in the history of comics, as well as other major members of Batman's extended family including Catwoman, Alfred, Vicki Vale, and Mr. Freeze. It is also where Batman got his very first detailed origin, where the Batmobile first got its stylized look, and where Gotham City got its name. Most importantly, the launch of Batman #1 in Spring of 1940 just over a year after the introduction of the hero in May 1939, established Batman as one of the two most important heroes in the early DC stable.
The character Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). Batman’s popularity led directly to the start of this self-titled run in the spring of 1940. Though DC initially launched Batman as a quarterly publication, it later became a bimonthly series through the late 1950s, after which it became a monthly publication. The original Batman series ended with issue #713.
Our Collection: We've never seriously collected Batman, as a super power of being rich, while perhaps more realistic than any other super-hero power, never got me excited. It’s a book that I find extremely inconsistent, which I would also say about Superman. One has no powers and confronts more ordinary adversaries, the other has no worthy adversaries, he’s just too powerful. So when I started collecting comics again about 20 years ago, Batman was not one of the titles we collected. But as we completed many of our initial collections and started expanding our comic collecting targets, we decided to try to collect solo titles of each of the JLA SA members, just as we did with all the Marvel Avengers. The problem was, which titles to collect, as Superman and Batman each appear in several DC publications?
Initially, we started buying World’s Finests, which featured both Batman and Superman. At the time, the leader in the WF registry was selling his books so that many of those books were available and much more affordable than Marvels or some other DC titles. We now have over 100 of those books, but we have never been sure where to begin or end that title. Moreover, as time went by, we started preferring the Batman and Detective covers to WF. Still starting a collection of either seemed futile so late in our collecting history. After all, the runs are massive and our resources are now more limited since my retirement. But then the Alfred Pennyworth books came to auction, which gave us the opportunity to jumpstart collections of both Batman and Detective Comics, especially after I sold my Buckhead house and reduced my debt.
Still, Batman is one of those titles where we are currently very much on the fence. This set of Issues #101-200 interests me, but finishing it seems unrealistic, at least under the parameters we established of only buying first or second highest graded books, as we have not yet bought any of the more expensive issues. Thus, being completist and with money a challenge, we may sell these books in the future to raise money to complete other collections that are further along. Still, some of the covers are very cool.
Current Stats:
75/100 Books
19 9.8s-All Highest Graded
26 9.6s-16 Highest Graded
12 9.4s-5 Highest Graded
11 9.2s-6 Highest Graded
3 9.0s
4 8.5s-2 Highest Graded
16 WP
41 OW/W
11 OW
7 Cr/OW
24 Single Highest Graded
49 Highest Graded
23 Second Highest Graded
3 Third Highest Graded
14 Pedigrees
2024 Update: I must admit, I am becoming very skeptical that we can ever finish this set, as there are a half dozen issues that are ridiculously expensive, while we never even see high-grade examples of others. So you may see these books in the market some time in the future.
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