Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 17, 2023 | 4 comments

The Golden Age lives again, with art by Mike Perkins…

DC’s February solicitations are out Friday and there’s a doozy of a miniseries that awaits you in March: The Bat-Man: First Knight — a new, three-issue Golden Age Batman story by Dan Jurgens and Mike Perkins.

Dig the official description:

Main cover by Perkins

THE BAT-MAN: FIRST KNIGHT #1
Written by DAN JURGENS
Art by MIKE PERKINS
Cover by MIKE PERKINS
Pulp novel variant cover by MARC ASPINALL
Variant cover by RAMON PEREZ
1:25 variant cover by JACOB PHILLIPS

$6.99 | 48 pages | 1 of 3 | Prestige Plus | 8 1/2″ x 10 7/8″
(All covers are card stock)
ON SALE 3/5/24

The year is 1939. The world, still reeling from the horrors of the First World War, is on the brink of tipping into an even more gruesome conflict, as fascism is on the march—and gathering strength in America’s darkest corners.

Against this backdrop, a series of violent murders has begun in Gotham, and the recent emergence of the mysterious vigilante known as The Bat-Man has the power brokers of the city living in fear of institutional collapse.

All of the evidence in the murder investigation defies logic: the perpetrators are all men who died in the electric chair. But when the Bat- Man comes face to face with one of these sickening anomalies, he barely escapes with his life—throwing into question his ability to survive in a world that is brutally evolving around him!

Legendary writer Dan Jurgens and superstar artist Mike Perkins return to the earliest days of the Dark Knight, retelling one of his most infamous cases through an acutely modern lens, depicting a world paralyzed by anxiety and a desperate populace crying out for release!

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A few thoughts:

— Here are two of the three variant covers. The “pulp novel” cover has yet to be released:

Ramon Perez variant

Jacob Phillips variant

— DC also released thumbnails of a few pages in its DC Connect catalogue:

— Love seeing the original red Batmobile there. By the way, the solicitation calls the series a “retelling,” but it’s my understanding this is a completely new story. Nevertheless it is revisiting an era that seems more relevant now than in decades.

— The solicitation doesn’t mention it but this is a mature Black Label series — Jurgens’ first.

— Jurgens worked with the ’39 Batman in the cannibalized 2020 event Generations, but this is a completely separate project.

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MORE

— Dig This Beautiful Pulpy BATMAN Sketch by JOHN K. SNYDER. Click here.

— If You Haven’t Read MATT WAGNER’s BATMAN, You’re Doing It Wrong. Click here.