"Since his debut in Detective Comics #27, Batman has been many things: a two-fisted detective; a planet-hopping gadabout; a campy Pop Art sensation; a pointy-eared master spy; and a grim ninja of the urban night, cycling through eras of dark melodrama and light comedy and back again. He is constantly changing, jumping from page to screen and beyond, and yet he remains one of our most revered cultural icons. In this witty, wise, and fascinating history, NPR critic and self-proclaimed nerd Glen Weldon expalins why we've continued to look to this masked man in the night--and what that devotion tells us about ourselves. Spanning from the Bat's humble beginnings as Bob Kane and Bill Finger's hyphenated hero, trading blithely homoerotic double entendres with Robin the Boy Wonder, to Christopher Nolan's post-9/11 Dark Knight, delivering dire threats in a raspy Christian Bale growl, The Caped Crusade is a journey into the depths of Gotham that will delight new and old Bat-fans alike."--