Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
Speaker 1: the show where America is the star and the American people. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: Batman is a household name his list of comic issues,
Speaker 1: let alone live action movies, animated films and TV shows,
Speaker 1: video games, you name it, well, it's nothing short of astounding.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't always the case today. Andrew Farrago, curator
Speaker 1: at the Cartoon Art Museum, an author of Batman, The
Speaker 1: Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and beyond,
Speaker 1: is here to tell us the story of the Dark Knight.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's appropriate for a character whose secret identity
Speaker 2: is a millionaire and later a billionaire. But money was
Speaker 2: kind of the driving force behind Batman at the beginning.
Speaker 2: So as struggling and fairly undistinguished cartoonist named Bob Kane
Speaker 2: was working for National periodical publications doing funny animal comics,
Speaker 2: he was doing adventure comics. He was doing anything he
Speaker 2: could to try to make a name for himself, try
Speaker 2: to just make a living. And he heard that Jerry
Speaker 2: Siegel and Joe Schuster, who were the co creators of Superman,
Speaker 2: were making a really nice living. Hundreds of dollars a week,
Speaker 2: you know, just out of the Great Depression tail into
Speaker 2: the Great Depression from their creation.
Speaker 3: He talked to his editor, and editor said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you bring me another Superman and this will be
Speaker 2: lucrative for you. And he said, you know, I'll do
Speaker 2: it over a weekend. He basically went home and tried
Speaker 2: to come up with his version of Superman. And initially
Speaker 2: the character he came up with was really nothing like
Speaker 2: the Batman that we all know. He looked more like
Speaker 2: a circus acrobat with a Domino mask, blonde hair, Leonardo
Speaker 2: da Vinci inspired black batwing cape. He's possibly going to
Speaker 2: be a flying superhero. But thankfully, Kane was in touch
Speaker 2: with a very talented, very inventive writer named Bill Finger,
Speaker 2: and Bill Finger saw the raw potential there. He took
Speaker 2: Kane's ideas, he refined it. He gave Batman the cape
Speaker 2: and cow and outfit really close to what we know,
Speaker 2: know and love today. Yeah, he took Kane's concept and
Speaker 2: turned it into something that, eighty years later still energizes
Speaker 2: and excites fans everywhere. Batman made his debut in a
Speaker 2: publication called Detective Comics, and Detective very much spun out
Speaker 2: of the pulp magazines that have preceded it, So they
Speaker 2: were raw, edgy, dark stories. The good guys were very good,
Speaker 2: the bad guys were very bad. Bad guys often met
Speaker 2: very gruesome fates. And detective comics, as the title indicates,
Speaker 2: every month had detective stories, and Batman the earliest stories,
Speaker 2: and actually, throughout his history, you know, they have been
Speaker 2: detective stories. He's one of the people who claims the
Speaker 2: title the world's greatest detective. So each story had to
Speaker 2: have at least some hint of a mystery to justify
Speaker 2: Batman's inclusion. The early Batman comics did have stories like that.
Speaker 2: They did have mysteries involving political corruption and gangsters, and
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of stories one would say were
Speaker 2: ripped from the headlines. And prior to that it had
Speaker 2: been police officers, it had been private investigators, a lot
Speaker 2: of square jawed guys wearing suits punching gangsters on the cover.
Speaker 2: So obviously Batman wearing his incredibly dark costumes swooping out
Speaker 2: of the night sky grabbing criminals energized audiences the same
Speaker 2: way that Superman the year before really energized readers, and
Speaker 2: very soon.
Speaker 3: Batman became a staple.
Speaker 2: He appeared every month in that magazine, and Detective Comics
Speaker 2: circulation went through the roof, and he was awarded his
Speaker 2: own solo magazine. You know, in the late thirties. This
Speaker 2: was very forward thinking on the part of the publisher
Speaker 2: that's now known as DC Comics. So Caine and Finger
Speaker 2: knew we need colorful villains, we need eye catching covers,
Speaker 2: we need dynamic storytelling.
Speaker 3: They really were going that direction very early.
Speaker 2: Within about a year of Batman's debut, we had the
Speaker 2: introduction of Robin the boy Wonder again, bright red, yellow
Speaker 2: green costume. They called him the laughing young Daredevil. Would
Speaker 2: I would say, that's why we're still talking about Batman
Speaker 2: today in the present tense, instead of some interesting pulp
Speaker 2: inspired character whose time came and went immediately. I think
Speaker 2: for the better. Changed the tone of the stories. It
Speaker 2: made Batman a father figure, gave him someone to talk
Speaker 2: to when he was his way through a case, and
Speaker 2: that gave the readers a surrogate, a stand in where
Speaker 2: they could feel like, hey, I could do that, I
Speaker 2: could take part in these adventures. At partnership really pushed
Speaker 2: Batman even farther into the superhero territory. Than he'd been before,
Speaker 2: and that pushed the villains that much farther into extremes,
Speaker 2: because right after Robin's debut, you had Joker, who was
Speaker 2: evil and dangerous a villain as there was. We had Catwoman,
Speaker 2: two Face, and the Penguin and the Riddler, who are
Speaker 2: just as iconic as any heroes from that era.
Speaker 3: They really tapped into something.
Speaker 2: They knew what would be popular, they knew what would sell,
Speaker 2: they knew what the kids liked. They did pay incredibly
Speaker 2: close attention to their competition, so they paid attention to
Speaker 2: what kind of numbers is Superman doing, what's going on
Speaker 2: in Captain Marvel this month, who's the big new character
Speaker 2: on the stands, And if there was a way for
Speaker 2: them to tap into an audience, even if it was
Speaker 2: taking away readers from other books that were coming out
Speaker 2: from the same publisher.
Speaker 3: Then they had tapped into that.
Speaker 2: And the first year before Robin was introduced, the stories
Speaker 2: were very grim, they were very dark, and very quickly
Speaker 2: the publisher realized, you know, we're reaching hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 2: maybe millions of kids with these comics. Maybe we have
Speaker 2: a responsibility here to be a better example. So they
Speaker 2: decided early on Batman doesn't carry a gun. Batman doesn't
Speaker 2: use legal force. He tries to find a better way
Speaker 2: to solve his problems. If he can solve a problem
Speaker 2: without violence, by using his intellect and using his detective skills,
Speaker 2: that's even better.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Andrew Farrago tell the remarkable
Speaker 1: story of Batman's history. When we come back Batman through
Speaker 1: the years here on our American Story, liehbib here the
Speaker 1: host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
Speaker 1: we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
Speaker 1: from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
Speaker 1: can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
Speaker 1: to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
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Speaker 1: a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories dot com and give
Speaker 1: and we're back with our American Stories and the story
Speaker 1: of Batman. Andrew Farrago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum,
Speaker 1: was just telling us how Bob Kane and Bill Finger
Speaker 1: not only created the character, but paid close attention to
Speaker 1: what the audience wanted with the idea that children were
Speaker 1: their primary audience. The publisher as well as the creators
Speaker 1: made it clear early that Batman didn't use lethal force,
Speaker 1: but rather his intellect to defeat his foes.
Speaker 2: Back to Andrew, so Batman was fighting murderers, he was
Speaker 2: fighting killers. He was fighting really the lowest of the
Speaker 2: low as far as the villains went. And as more
Speaker 2: children were reading these books, as DC Comics was increasingly
Speaker 2: concerned about setting a good example, they realized, why don't
Speaker 2: we tone him down a little bit, why don't we
Speaker 2: have him do funny crimes and zaney crimes? And by
Speaker 2: World War Two, especially when kids wanted lighthearted entertainment, these
Speaker 2: adventures were becoming outrageous, more over the top. He had
Speaker 2: another artist by the late forties early fifties come on
Speaker 2: who really redefined Batman, an artist named Dick Sprang. He
Speaker 2: had a more cartoony art style, and Batman was this big,
Speaker 2: barrel chested, smiling adventurer. Robin started cracking puns and wacky jokes.
Speaker 2: They would have crazy adventures that involved things like giant
Speaker 2: oversized prop typewriters, or blimp chases or time travel. Bad
Speaker 2: guys that he's fighting during that time include aliens.
Speaker 3: They include mad scientists.
Speaker 2: You may have a criminal where Batman is trying to
Speaker 2: uncover his identity, and they'll realize that the criminal is
Speaker 2: spelling out his name one crime at a time. They
Speaker 2: went from being let's be just a little bit different
Speaker 2: than the real world to let's go totally nuts and
Speaker 2: have a crazy, fun adventure story. I would imagine anybody
Speaker 2: who read the first issues in nineteen thirty nine and
Speaker 2: then took a break and came back around nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two would not have recognized the character. And actually this
Speaker 2: was totally fine with the audiences, because up until that
Speaker 2: point there was constant audience turnover in comic book readership.
Speaker 2: You did have some diehard fans who started reading in
Speaker 2: the thirties and kept reading, but generally speaking, kids would
Speaker 2: read from about eight until maybe twelve or so, drop out,
Speaker 2: and then a new batch of eight to twelve year
Speaker 2: olds would come in. So stories didn't have to be
Speaker 2: particularly sophisticated. They didn't really need continuity that carried over
Speaker 2: from one month to the next. Stories could repeat themselves
Speaker 2: every few years because they assumed that the reader were
Speaker 2: new and hadn't seen them before. Characters like Batman and Superman.
Speaker 2: They were seen as very safe, very respectable books that
Speaker 2: any kid could read. You knew you were getting a good, reliable,
Speaker 2: adventure story every month. By the early sixties, Batman was
Speaker 2: actually in danger of cancelation.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It may have been that they weren't challenging their audiences.
Speaker 2: They had competition from publishers like Marvel, who were really
Speaker 2: winning the hearts and minds of younger readers. They were
Speaker 2: seen as more dynamic, more fun, and more challenging stories.
Speaker 2: At this point, they actually turned to some creators who
Speaker 2: had recently revitalized one of their comics.
Speaker 3: The Flash.
Speaker 2: So they took a character from World War Two era
Speaker 2: and came up with a new version of him that
Speaker 2: really engaged readers. It was exciting, it was more modern,
Speaker 2: it was more dynamic, where as Batman in the early
Speaker 2: sixties with like a throwback kind of a relic. So
Speaker 2: they had creators like writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine
Speaker 2: and Fantina come along and this is this is really
Speaker 2: what ultimately say Batman. They did an era called the
Speaker 2: New Look. They modernized him. He was not the barrel chested,
Speaker 2: grinning kind of Superman knockoff character that he was. They
Speaker 2: made him more streamlined, they made him a modern detective.
Speaker 2: They gave him computer equipment and modernized everything about the character.
Speaker 2: And that was, you know, that was a signal to
Speaker 2: readers that hey, take a look.
Speaker 3: We're changing things. We are aware that Marvel Comics.
Speaker 2: Exists and that that's the comic of choice for young
Speaker 2: readers and teens right now.
Speaker 3: But you know, we can be cool, we can be hip,
Speaker 3: we can be with it.
Speaker 2: And right around that time, executives at ABC were looking
Speaker 2: at bringing they wanted to bring a comic strip to television.
Speaker 2: They want to take advantage of things like technicolor, and
Speaker 2: they wanted to take advantage of nostalgia that people had
Speaker 2: for popular characters.
Speaker 3: So some producers, including.
Speaker 2: A man named Bill Dozier, were determined to bring comics
Speaker 2: to television.
Speaker 3: Somehow. That was going to be it. That was going
Speaker 3: to be the kind of thing.
Speaker 2: That they could put toe to toe with shows like
Speaker 2: The Adams Family and The Munsters that were.
Speaker 3: Winning over young audiences.
Speaker 2: Those really coveted young audiences and their families, and they
Speaker 2: had all grown up eRating Batman. They had fond memories
Speaker 2: of him, and they thought, we can do this, We
Speaker 2: can make this a fun television show. The TV show
Speaker 2: and it debuted in nineteen sixty six, was an immediate
Speaker 2: sensation that it was a huge hit in the ratings
Speaker 2: and really nothing would be the same for the character
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 3: It was just a smash in every sense.
Speaker 2: You had Adam West as Batman on the cover of
Speaker 2: Time magazine like magazine TV Guide. You had fashions inspired
Speaker 2: by Batman, you had catchphrases, you had every possible kind
Speaker 2: of merchandise under the sun coming out. It put the
Speaker 2: comic books back toward the top of the sales charts.
Speaker 2: You know, even though the show was campy, it was comedy,
Speaker 2: it was humor, but it really wasn't far off from
Speaker 2: the source material. Adam West was perfect as a stoic,
Speaker 2: square job, very sincere hero and crime fighter, and you
Speaker 2: had Burt Ward as his plucky, inquisitive, excitable sidekick. You know,
Speaker 2: if you look at the if you look at the roster,
Speaker 2: if you look at the cast list in the second
Speaker 2: and third season, you'll see that Hollywood A listers were fighting.
Speaker 2: They were begging to be on this show because they
Speaker 2: wanted to be a Batman villain or make a cameo appearance.
Speaker 3: It was the cool hip thing to do at the time.
Speaker 2: You know, all good things must come to an end,
Speaker 2: and the ratings came tumbling back down to earth very
Speaker 2: quickly in the third season, but the damage had been undone,
Speaker 2: and Batman would have his ups and downs in the
Speaker 2: years since, but there was never any danger of him
Speaker 2: going away once the television show hit. The Batman TV
Speaker 2: show came to define the character for a long time,
Speaker 2: for a good twenty years as far as the public
Speaker 2: was concerned, and in a way it came to define comics.
Speaker 2: So you could not see a newspaper headline from nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six through maybe even the early two thousands that
Speaker 2: didn't have Biff, Bam Pau superheroes in the headline. And
Speaker 2: not too long after that final episode aired, the show
Speaker 2: started up again and syndication. So much like Star Trek
Speaker 2: had this incredible shelf life after its cancelation, so to Batman,
Speaker 2: because almost the minute the new episode stopped, UHF stations
Speaker 2: picked it up and kids could still watch Batman every
Speaker 2: day after school. So as a as a kid in
Speaker 2: the eighties, that's how I was introduced to Batman. So
Speaker 2: this really loomed large This was as far as the public.
Speaker 3: Is concerned, this was Batman.
Speaker 2: But that actually didn't sit well with some of the
Speaker 2: comic book creators. They looked at this campiness, they looked
Speaker 2: at the silliness, and they realized, you know, if we
Speaker 2: try to do this, if we try to translate this
Speaker 2: exactly how it is on the screen to the comics,
Speaker 2: you know, we're gonna look like dinosaurs. The TV show
Speaker 2: had its chance.
Speaker 3: It came. It went, we want to do modern comics.
Speaker 3: We want to do things that again can go toe
Speaker 3: to toe with.
Speaker 2: Marvel comics and with the other comics that are in
Speaker 2: the rack.
Speaker 1: And we've been listening to a remarkable story about Batman.
Speaker 1: And it all started with money as the driving force.
Speaker 1: Bob Kane had found out that the people making Superman
Speaker 1: were making a couple one hundred bucks a week in
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, and he thought, oh, I can come
Speaker 1: up with my own character. He and his partner Bill
Speaker 1: Finger did just that. By the end of the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: they had their own book. World War Two came, people
Speaker 1: were looking for an escape, and a different version of
Speaker 1: Batman formed. And then came the early sixties. Batman's popularity
Speaker 1: was waning, and in came the TV show, and soon
Speaker 1: every a lister wanted to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorsh and Eartha Kit, Jerry Lewis, Auto Preminger,
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Junior, and the list goes on. When we
Speaker 1: come back, more of the story of Batman through the years,
Speaker 1: here on our American stories, and we're back with our
Speaker 1: American stories and the story of Batman. Despite the widespread
Speaker 1: praise of the nineteen sixties live action Batman's show during
Speaker 1: Adam West, the comic book writers felt the show was
Speaker 1: too campy. They didn't want that reflected in the print
Speaker 1: version because they would rather compete with what was going
Speaker 1: on over at Marvel and other competitors. Andrew Farrago tells
Speaker 1: us how instead the writers sought to pursue a darker tone.
Speaker 2: Prior to the sixties, comic books were, whether stereotypically or
Speaker 2: just traditionally, there was something that.
Speaker 3: A reader outgrew.
Speaker 2: The cliche is it's something that boys are into until
Speaker 2: they discover girls. But with Marvel comics in the early sixties,
Speaker 2: you know, they had stories that were more geared toward
Speaker 2: the older audience.
Speaker 3: They were geared toward teenagers.
Speaker 2: They had storylines that continued from one month to the next,
Speaker 2: and they encourage readers to come back. With creators like
Speaker 2: Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and stan Lee, Marvel felt
Speaker 2: like a clubhouse, and stan wrote columns and he answered
Speaker 2: letters in the books that encouraged a dialogue between him
Speaker 2: and the readers. So the Marvel Comics creators, instead of
Speaker 2: being faceless, uncredited people behind the scenes, they were up front.
Speaker 2: They had stan Lee's name, they had Jack Kirby's name,
Speaker 2: they had Steve Dicko's name prominently displayed in the books,
Speaker 2: and readers responded.
Speaker 3: To that in a huge way.
Speaker 2: DC As they lost more and more of their market
Speaker 2: shared to Marvel, they realized that they needed to catch up.
Speaker 2: They realized, if the audiences are sticking around, if we
Speaker 2: want them to stick around, this is how we have
Speaker 2: to tailor our storytelling. This is what we have to
Speaker 2: do to keep these readers here, keep them coming back.
Speaker 2: I give a lot of credit to Dennie O'Neil. He
Speaker 2: was very smart, he was very well read. His formal
Speaker 2: training had actually been in journalism before getting into comic books.
Speaker 2: He actually got into them kind of by accident because
Speaker 2: he was interviewing Roy Thomas, who was a writer and
Speaker 2: editor at Marvel Comics, and Roy suggested, hey, we need
Speaker 2: we need more, We need smart guys like you writing
Speaker 2: comic books, and Denny went that direction. He was a hippie,
Speaker 2: so you know, he brought kind of a more adult,
Speaker 2: mature sensibility to the comics compared especially compared to what
Speaker 2: had gone before, and they brought that sensibility over to Batman.
Speaker 2: Their signature villain was a shadowy ancient criminal mastermind named
Speaker 2: ros al Gul who planned to actually exterminate up to
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the Earth's population because he felt that
Speaker 2: eco terrorism was necessary to restore balance to the Earth.
Speaker 2: So this was very heady stuff compared to two Face
Speaker 2: robbing the Second National Bank at two pm on Tuesday.
Speaker 2: They also had Robin grow up and start going to college,
Speaker 2: so he had solo adventures, so he had Batman throughout
Speaker 2: almost the whole decade of the seventies. He had Batman
Speaker 2: as this solo adventurer and Robin so after about ten
Speaker 2: years of solo adventures, there was kind of a half
Speaker 2: hearted attempt to bring him back into the Batman stories.
Speaker 2: The problem was he was now an older teenager. So
Speaker 2: the solution was to have Dick Grayson, the original Robin,
Speaker 2: grow up a little bit and take on a new
Speaker 2: superhero identity. So he did that and became a character
Speaker 2: called Nightwing, and they introduced a new sidekick for Batman
Speaker 2: named Jason Todd.
Speaker 3: And then in the mid.
Speaker 2: Eighties, DC, to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary of publishing, decided
Speaker 2: to kind of start everything from scratch.
Speaker 3: They were worried that.
Speaker 2: New readers may have been put off by having fifty
Speaker 2: years of history to all these characters, so they wanted
Speaker 2: to do a fresh start with their comics. And with
Speaker 2: this fresh start, they decided that Jason Todd, instead of
Speaker 2: having an origin that was directly cribbed from Dick Grayson's,
Speaker 2: they decided he should have a new origin. They reinvented
Speaker 2: him as a street kid, a tough kid who actually
Speaker 2: met Batman because he stole the Batmobiles tires. Readers didn't
Speaker 2: really like this new version of him. They thought he
Speaker 2: was kind, he was kind of a punk, you know.
Speaker 2: He was not properly deferential to Batman. He was written,
Speaker 2: especially by the next writer of the Batman comics, Jim Starlin.
Speaker 3: He was written as kind of a hothead. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Starlin actually did not like Jason Todd or sidekicks and principle,
Speaker 2: so he kind of wrote a version that.
Speaker 3: He knew would be unlikable, that he knew.
Speaker 2: Readers wouldn't warm too, and kind of brought everything to
Speaker 2: a head with a storyline called a death in the family.
Speaker 2: They wanted to do a big publicity stunt draw attention
Speaker 2: to their comics, and they wanted to take advantage of
Speaker 2: then modern telephone technology, and they wanted to do a
Speaker 2: call in poll. This was in part inspired by a
Speaker 2: Saturday Night live call in poll where you determined whether
Speaker 2: a lobster named Larry the Lobster would be boiled on
Speaker 2: air or set free at the end.
Speaker 3: Of the night.
Speaker 2: So they wanted to apply the same thing to a
Speaker 2: DC Comics publication, and they said.
Speaker 3: We need to make it big.
Speaker 2: We need to make it life or death for readers
Speaker 2: to care enough to spend fifty cents to call in
Speaker 2: and make this phone call. I did.
Speaker 3: We've got this Jason Todd character. Let's put it to
Speaker 3: a vote. Does he live or does he die?
Speaker 2: By a narrow, very narrow margin by about seventy two votes.
Speaker 2: Readers said, yeah, the Joker should kill Jason Todd, So
Speaker 2: they killed him off in this violent storyline.
Speaker 3: It got national headlines. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Danny O'Neil, who's the editor of those books, I was
Speaker 2: able to talk to him about this, and he said
Speaker 2: they had the fortune or misfortune of it hitting on
Speaker 2: a slow news day, so the comics sold out nationwide.
Speaker 3: They rushed them. He caught grief from friends, neighbors.
Speaker 2: The local deli, everybody was upset at him for allowing
Speaker 2: this to happen. It really indicated that the public was
Speaker 2: ready for a much darker take on Batman, and that's
Speaker 2: really what we got. But those darker comics paved the
Speaker 2: way for Tim Burton Batman movies. It really was tapping
Speaker 2: into what this older readership was seeking. We're now into
Speaker 2: at least the second generation, maybe third generation of creators
Speaker 2: who grew up on Batman comics and Batman movies and
Speaker 2: Batman television shows, who.
Speaker 3: Have their own vision for the character.
Speaker 2: They know what kind of stories they want to tell,
Speaker 2: they know the best way to tell them, and whether
Speaker 2: that's in comics or movies or television or video games.
Speaker 2: We're getting some truly incredible stories. It's a testament to
Speaker 2: the original core concept of Batman that he's more widely
Speaker 2: known than ever. You can barely say that about any
Speaker 2: other character from the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: You can maybe say that about Superman.
Speaker 2: Mickey Mouse doesn't have the cultural relevancy today, Popeye doesn't.
Speaker 2: Batman is such an ageless, timeless concept. It's, you know,
Speaker 2: child suffers and unspeaks tragedy and then transforms himself into
Speaker 2: a protector, someone who whose mission is to make sure
Speaker 2: no one, no kid anywhere, has to go through what
Speaker 2: he did. And that's a story that you can tell today.
Speaker 2: It's a story you can tell one hundred years from now.
Speaker 2: Batman is a wonderful vehicle for telling all manner of stories.
Speaker 2: You can tell Batman stories about street level crime, fighting
Speaker 2: Nazis during World War Two, fighting Fifth Colonists, fighting Communists
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties. And I think that's going to
Speaker 2: be true ten years from now. I think it'll be
Speaker 2: true one hundred years from now.
Speaker 1: And it is so true, Batman will be around for
Speaker 1: a very long time. A terrific job by our own
Speaker 1: Monty Montgomery and Robbie Davis and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: Andrew Farrago, curator at the Cartoon Art Museum and author
Speaker 1: of Batman, The Definitive History of the Dark Night in Comics, film,
Speaker 1: and beyond. Get the book at the Usual Suspects online
Speaker 1: and My Goodness. The major decision made was to stop
Speaker 1: catering just two young kids who would grow out of
Speaker 1: the comics, and instead choose adult themes so that adults
Speaker 1: too could enjoy these remarkable stories and characters. Batman through
Speaker 1: the Year is here on our American Stories