An enthusiastic, immersive, entertaining guide for both die-hard Batfans and curious onlookers.
A passionate, precise documentation of Batman’s legacy and enduring popularity among “nerds and normals alike.”
With the same gusto that characterized his debut superhero portrait (Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, 2013), NPR panelist and pop-culture critic Weldon comprehensively charts the nearly 80-year history of Batman through facts, opinions, interviews, visits to Comic-Con, and the obsessions of fans who have helped make the character a household name. Sprawling in scope yet written with breezy flair, the narrative explores Batman’s early beginnings from his comic-book inauguration in 1939, “striking poses” with his billowing cape. A creative collaboration by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, the superhero was an instant hit on the comic circuit and was soon complemented by sidekick Robin, the Boy Wonder, in 1940, creating a male-male partnership Weldon waggishly interprets as “factory-installed with subtext both acknowledged and unspoken, subtext that audiences have always read and interpreted in a host of discrete ways.” Initial decades of successful comics, radio shows, and movie serials also brought unexpected criticism involving alleged misogyny and blatant homoeroticism, both briskly cloaked with the 1956 addition of Batwoman and a myriad of effectively distractive nemeses. As Batman’s popularity became more volatile, writes Weldon, image updates and rebirths attempted to both pacify fans and retain the brand’s appeal and longevity throughout evolutionary cycles in the 1980s, ’90s, and into the present. Details on franchise film production snafus and commentary on Batman’s campy gay appeal add further layers of relatability to the story. Interwoven through the narrative is Weldon’s exploration of how the superhero persona has so captivated the devoted nerd community and why this subculture has defensively and protectively venerated the Dark Knight as their own. Weldon, a thoughtful portraitist who introduces many subtexts to his discussion of superhero adoration, cleverly considers Batman “an inkblot; we see in him what we want to—even if we aren’t ready to admit it to ourselves.”
An enthusiastic, immersive, entertaining guide for both die-hard Batfans and curious onlookers.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5669-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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