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This book, while physically excellent, suffers from something resembling a split personality in respect of its subject matter. It purports to be a guide to Batman and his world as it is now, with a few references to past history to describe how it got that way, but both the art and the text frequently spin wildly off into the full 60+ years since Detective Comics #27, thereby weakening the focus of the book; it never seems certain whether it wants to be a guide to the current world of the Bat-books or a history of the comics and character(s) therein, and so it does neither well. For instance, pictures of Batman, all of which are supposed to represent the modern version of the character, show large variations in the uniform -- gold oval or no gold oval; blue-and-grey or black-and-grey; utility belt with pouches or cylindrical containers? This even extends to the descriptive sections such as that for the belt, which shows the pre-NML version yet is supposed to describe that of the current uniform. The overall impression is that Batman changes uniform style more-or-less at whim. Similarly, the section on Bat-vehicles shows Batmobiles dating from the 1930s (when was a modern car last described as a "roadster"?) and odd aircraft of similar vintage like the Bat-Gyro and the Bat-rocket. A list of 8 or so Batmobiles is given, culminating in the *movie* version (not seen in the comics, AFAIK), which somehow leaves out the classic 1950s version, only to _show_ that car in art depicting the garage in the Bat-Cave! Of itself, each such gripe like those above is not that important, but with so many of them, the book comes over as confused; it particularly seems lacking by comparison to the equivalent Superman book, which firmly focuses on the current era and keeps historical references confined to a chapter describing major events in the history of the character from 1938 onwards. The Batman book has the same type of chapter, and very good it is, too, but the main part of the book suffers from this lack of focus. This is not the Ultimate Guide to Batman, but nonetheless a good try. It really needed an editor who could keep the author and art people concentrated on the modern era. Oh, and the exec-jet that transforms into the Bat-plane is just plain impossible...! ;-)
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