It’s hard to believe that I started this manga way back in January 2015. It’s been a long run, but now I have finally finished the series. It does a good job of following the Adam West esque format and most of these stories feel like they could have been from the comics. The volumes make for a fun read even if they never do anything to take the series to the next level. It’s a good story, but don’t look for anything beyond that.

There isn’t really an ongoing plot for the series as you may expect. Each story is roughly 3-5 parts though so the cases get a lot of screen time for the necessary plot. As such, there is never much of a need for an ongoing plot because weekly (If the series was in that format) it would have sort of had a plot. Of course, an ongoing plot could have certainly helped to have upped the stakes by the end of the series.

Batman is portrayed pretty accurately. Once in a while he’ll seem a little hurried or our of character with the occasional “Shut Up” comebacks to the villains though. It’s hard to picture Batman saying that. On the other hand, they do a good job of trying to make Batman extremely heroic to the point where he sometimes misses the obvious because of this. A good example occurs in the final volume. A mysterious shape shifter had already gotten the better of Batman and Robin twice. The next morning it is reported in the Newspaper that a new art piece has been added to the masters collection from a rather rich collector. She only allows world famous art to go in this collection typically so it this is odd right? Robin quickly points out that the timing of this is suspect, but Batman disagrees.

He says that anyone has the potential to be a masterpiece so this mysterious fellow must have just made a great piece. It couldn’t have anything to do with the shape shifter and there’s no way that this collector is being forced into letting the piece in. After all, Batman wants to prove that dedication can always win in the end. Robin urges Batman to check anyway though so they go and lo and behold, the art piece was actually the shape shifting villain. Batman’s always looking for a good moral to the point where it nearly cost the heroes dearly.

Batman also murders a guy by throwing a really heavy object at his head. It’s never really brought up and smoothed over rather quickly with Batman’s justification that he had to do this to save Robin. It was a tense situation and Robin was about to die so you have to decide whether this was the right move or not. Personally, I think there were a lot of other ways Batman could have stopped the villain so the scene was a little dicey. As for Robin, he’s in character the whole time. He’s always getting defeated in a fight and tends to be a liability. That being said, as in the example above, he does pick up on things quicker than Batman at times. If there is a moral to cloud Batman’s judgment, you can count on Robin to get the right answer first.

The series is 3 big volumes long so maybe that’d be closer to 5-6 if they were normal sized. Most of the villains are made up for the series so it’s hard to remember a lot of their names. Lord Death Man is certainly the fan favorite and he even made it into the Batman Brave and the Bold TV show. He is really good at escaping death even if he may have ultimately gone down one too many times by the end. There was a guy who believed that his cape made him invincible. By the end of his arc the twist was that it was all phony, but this explanation is a little dicey at best. Before that, we saw him survive some sure death scenarios. The characters say that he was lucky by the end, but that’s hard to buy. He fell a great distance into the rocks that led to the ocean. He could not have dodged from his angle so the cape had to have some super properties to it right? If it was total luck, then I think the writers probably did not think it through.

Another story arc parodied how dark the Batman comics have gotten in later years. At the time, it was probably more of a hypothetical though. In a TV show, Batman and Robin used intense methods to subdue the villains and the bad guys in the real world began to fear the Dynamic Duo. Batman wants to win his battles with one liners and friendship so he went to the station to shut down this program, but ended up getting kidnapped instead by the end. Still, the moral was that even villains always have a chance so scaring them right from the start is just not the right move this time.

We also had a nice robot arc which showed how important Batman and Robin are to the community. These robots can break and can’t think on their feet the way that the Dynamic Duo can. In the end, the police get rid of the robots because they’d rather have Batman save the day. The thing is, Batman and Robin can’t protect everyone forever and Batman acknowledges this, but says that it’s a problem for another day…maybe he’s right.

Another one was inspired by Star Trek or vice versa. Some super intelligent aliens decided to kidnap Batman and Robin so they could fight in space against a few other species. It was a 4 group free for all with Batman and Robin getting completely wrecked in each fight until they finally got the other aliens to team up with them and defeat the host. It goes to show that sometimes special powers can really come in handy.

There are a lot of other comic arcs to be found in the series, but those were just some examples. As the volumes are quite large, there’s enough time to get in quite a few adventures. I have only covered a fraction of the stories that are in the collection so if you want to see more of them, buy the volumes!

The art for the series is solid. All of the characters look fairly accurate to their traditional selves and we do get some fun fight scenes. The manga is very old which you can certainly tell as you read through the series, but it’s not dated in a bad way. It looks sharp and ultimately that’s really what matters in the end. Clear and sharp makes for a good combo when it comes to manga.

Overall, The Batman manga is a fun experience. It’s like reading through the lost season of the Adam West adventures. He fights against a large variety of villains and Bruce Wayne also gets to appear quite a bit so it’s not as if he’s Batman 24/7. Of course, this Bruce Wayne is typically pretty noble and similar to Batman, which makes for an interesting dynamic. I sort of wish Bruce was always like that in the current comics and movies as well. No reason why they can’t both be super heroic right?

Overall 7/10