Hype Machine – Gotham City 14 Miles

SequArt Research & Literacy Organization, the publishing house who has previously brought us Teenagers From The Future: Essays on the Legion of Superheroes and Minutes To Midnight: Twelve Essays On Watchmen, is bringing a new book of essays called Gotham City 14 Miles: 14 Essays On Why the 1960s Batman TV Series Matters. It is full of a variety of essays that tackle many angles on the Batman television series from nearly half a century ago. Hit the jump to get details and see why you should order this now to get a copy in your LCS in December.

Gotham City 14 Miles

This book includes 14 essays, a list of which you can see below:

• Giant Lighted Lucite Map of Gotham City”: An Introduction by Jim Beard
• Bats in their Belfries: The Proliferation of “Batmania” by Robert Greenberger
• The 1960s Batman TV Series from Comics to Screen by Peter Sanderson
• Such a Character: A Dissection of Two Sub-Species of Chiroptera homosapiens by Jim Beard
• Notes on Bat-Camp by Timothy Callahan
• Aunt Harriet’s Film Decency League by Becky Beard
• POW!: Batman’s Visual Punch by Bill Walko
• “Known Super-Criminals Still at Large”: Villainy in Batman by Chuck Dixon
• May I Have this Batdance? by Michael S. Miller
• The Best-Dressed Women in Gotham City by Jennifer K. Stuller
• “Holy Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor!”: Youth Culture in Batman by Michael D. Hamersky
• Gotham City R&D: Gadgetry in Batman by Michael Johnson
• Theatre of the Absurd: The 1966 Batman Movie by Robert G. Weiner
• Jumping the Bat-Shark: The Demise of Batman by Will Murray
• “Some Days You Just Can’t Get Rid of a Bomb”: The Legacy of Batman by Paul Kupperberg
• Afterword by Jeff Rovin
• Appendix: Episode Guide by Joseph F. Berenato
• Appendix: A Bat-Discography by Michael S. Miller

It's a wide scope of ways to cover aspects of the old Batman show. It might seem like a goofy idea to fill a book with essays about a show that many look back on with mixed degrees of horror and disdain but by really breaking the show down we might be able to find why it shold be celebrated just as much as any of the classic Batman tales.

If you access this link to the SequArt website you will be able to read more information and click a link down the page to view a PDF preview of one of the essays from the book.

Tim Callahan, one of the contributing essayists and a stalwart CBR reviewer conducted an interview with book editor, and a man who has also ponied up with his own essay, Jim Beard which you can access at this link.

This book interests me because it’s in depth writing about comics, or at least a tv show about a comic character. It’s the sort of journalism I like to read on the internet, and in actual books when I can get my hands on them. It's long form, it's still fun, but it's smart. When I can find good writing like this about things I like it's a pleasure to sit down and spend some time with it.

SequArt has a strong history of attracting solid talent and this volume isn’t lacking in plenty of cool and quirk to attract my eye. There might not be any actual comic panels but there are a smattering of great comic journalists and even a few writers familiar with the fictional side of our four coloured friends.

If you’re a Batman fan then I’d suggest procuring a copy of this book. It looks to be a stack of fun. Camp fun.

Conclusion

It’s nice to see a publishing house devoting themselves to deconstructing comic tales and critiquing them in erudite essays that entertain as well as inform. Run, don’t walk, to your LCS now to order your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles out this December.

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