Happy Batday - 75 Years of the Dark Knight: Jeph Loeb

Batcake and me. Let's celebrate.

This year celebrates the 75th anniversary of everybody's favourite comic hero. Well alright - mine. Gotham's black-suited* badass has been my go-to guy for all things superhero since infancy, and being a hopeless manchild well into my thirties, that's not about to stop any time soon. I could write bibles' worth about why I think he's the greatest, but you're probably as short on patience as I am on attention span. So, just put succinctly: I love the goddamn Batman.

Now the caped crusader's reached three quarters of a century, I thought it time to devote a swift bit of love to those who've brought Bruce Wayne's heroic alter-ego to the critical and cultural heights he's been hitting, socking, and kerpowing since 1939.

So, in no order whatsoever, I'm starting with...

Jeph Loeb

Who?

American film, TV and comic book writer.

Why is he great?

He wrote Commando (1985).

"Don't disturb my friend - he's dead tired." Ha! Because he's dead, see?

Anything else?

You need more? OK, what about Teen Wolf (1985)? This bit's amazing. Plus it has in it a girl called Boof. How brilliant's that?

Erm, anything Batman related?

Holy dicktug, yes. Have The Long Halloween: a seriously brilliant crime puzzler set early in Batman's career that deals with Harvey Dent's descent into super villain Two Face. It's spooky, utterly gripping, and a genuine mystery, one that gives our hero just cause to call himself, "the world's greatest detective". Lots of core elements were pilfered wholesale for Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy.

They used loads of sources for that. What else you got?

Blimey, alright. Well, follow up Dark Victory is another cracker. More gangsters and grim goings-on. Not a lot of joy admittedly, but damned compulsive, thanks again to Loeb's insistence of making it a whodunnit. 

Keep going.

OK, Batman: Hush. Perhaps best advised for those at least arse-deep in the Bat mythos, 'cos there's years of backstory on which the story hinges. For fairweather readers, it could be confusing, but for fans who've done their homework, it's a big ol' wet dream of a series. Plus, it might just be the best use of a particular character usually ill-served by writers who simply don't know what to do with them. To say who it is would spoil the story. So get reading.

OK, shall do. Anything else?

Yeah, heaps, but what do I look like - Wikipedia? Get to a comic shop or Amazon or a library or wherever and get some Loeb in your life.

Batfin

*alright, grey and blue sometimes too. And yellow on the logo. Or red, like in Batman Beyond.