Home > Comics > Batman Family of Comics > Golden-Age Batman Comics: 1938-1953

This is a selection of Batman Comics from the Golden Age (with GEMs highlighted).  The list includes links for the following: (a) Wiki page (from the Grand Comics Database, or GCD), (b) e-book (available upon request), and (c) More info on each comic (via optional posts by various contributors).

Please note that the list is sortable by each column. (Multiple levels of sorting are possible by sorting more than one column in succession, from lowest to highest.)  You can also do an instant filtering of the table by entering a character string in the ‘Search’ field.

The Golden Age of Batman began with his creation by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and his introduction to the world in the landmark Detective Comics #27.  Batman was a big hit from day one, and over the next few decades he continued to gain popularity, becoming an instantly recognizable icon and one of the most widely known fictional characters ever created.  In the early days, the Batman stories were more dark in tone and often came close to crossing ethical boundaries (with Batman even carrying a gun on occasion!), but as the comics were mainly targeted towards kids, the DC editors nudged the creators to make the comics more suitable for children (and the gun-carrying was dropped!).

Over the next two decades after his debut, the Batman legend grew with the fleshing out of his origin story and the introduction of his junior partner Robin.  Other milestones during this period included the introduction of many memorable villains including the Joker, Catwoman, Penguin, Two-Face, Scarecrow, Clayface and the Riddler.  The first three villains have retained their essential character since their introduction up to the present (though the Catwoman was originally called the Cat) , but all the others were reinvented in the Silver Age and they too form part of the Batman mythology even today.

In many ways, the development of Batman in his early days paralleled that of Superman.  Each character was created by two young men, one skilled in writing and the other in art.  The two writers (Jerry Siegel and Bill Finger) were tremendously talented and they had long, productive careers extending well into the 1960s.  Both Siegel and Finger are generally recognized as being among the finest comic-book writers of their generation.  On the other hand, the two artists (Joe Shuster and Bob Kane) were good but not exceptional, though they both had a strong visual sense and knew how to introduce flair into their characters.  They were soon superseded by better artists, who became part of the art studios run by the original creators Shuster and Kane respectively.  The difference was that Shuster soon stopped signing other artists’ work and claiming it as his own, while Kane continued to do so for over 25 years until the late 1960s, with his ubiquitous boxed signature on the splash page of nearly all Batman stories.

Among the artists who took on the mantle of illustrating Batman comics during the Golden Age were Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff, Dick Sprang, Charles Paris Lew Sayre Schwartz and Win Mortimer.  Charles Paris was mainly an inker of other artists’ pencils (mostly Dick Sprang’s), while Win Mortimer was primarily a cover artist.  Of all these artists, Sheldon Moldoff had the longest tenure as Batman’s illustrator, working as Bob Kane’s ghost artist for nearly three decades and receiving virtually no credit for his contributions (though this has been retroactively corrected: his work has been properly credited in the Grand Comics Database and on this website as well).

Although Bill Finger wrote the bulk of the Batman stories during the Golden Age, being a perfectionist he was often unable to keep up the pace of delivering Batman stories on the tight schedule required for the regular publication of the comics.  Thus, there were other writers who often stepped in to script Batman stories, among them Gardner Fox, Don Cameron, Alvin Schwartz and David Vern, as well as the incomparable Edmond Hamilton (who also scripted many amazing Superman and Superman-Batman stories during the Silver Age).

Unlike the case of Superman and most other DC super-heroes, there is no consensus for the point at which Batman comics transitioned from the Golden Age to the Silver Age.  Based on my careful (albeit subjective) assessment, I have chosen 1954 as the transition year, for reasons which are explained in detail in the subsection covering Batman’s Silver Age.  For more details on the Golden Age of Batman comics, please see this link.

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