I just finished reading The Batman Chronicles Volume One, which contains the first Batman stories ever published. It includes the Batman stories from Detective Comics #27-38 and Batman #1. I’m learning all sorts of interesting things about the early Batman. For example, the original Batman didn’t go for that whole “I don’t kill” morality from the later Batman comics and the movies. These stories from 1939-1940 are pre-Comics Code Authority. Batman’s adversaries and their henchmen end up dead in most of the first batch of stories (click on the image to enlarge it).  

But the most interesting panel might be the last one in Batman #1, where the reader gets advice on citizenship from Robin, the Boy Wonder. We would expect Robin, like most American teenage boys in our own time, to care deeply about obedience, industriousness, and nationalism. But who knew that a teenage boy could be so passionate about regularity?

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