The Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon
The Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon
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The Caped Crusade
Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture

Author: Glen Weldon

Narrator: Glen Weldon

Unabridged: 9 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/22/2016

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

“A roaring getaway car of guilty pleasures” (The New York Times Book Review), Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade is a fascinating, critically acclaimed chronicle of the rises and falls of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes and the fans who love him—now with a new afterword.

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. Yet, despite these endless transformations, he remains one of our most revered cultural icons. In this “smart, witty, and engrossing” (The Wall Street Journal) cultural critique, NPR contributor and book critic Glen Weldon provides “a sharp, deeply knowledgeable, and often funny look at the cultural history of Batman and his fandom” (Chicago Tribune) to discover why it is that we can’t get enough of the Dark Knight.

For nearly a century, Batman has cycled through eras of dark melodrama and light comedy and back again. How we perceive his character, whether he’s delivering dire threats in a raspy Christian Bale growl or trading blithely homoerotic double entendres with Robin the Boy Wonder, speaks to who we are and how we wish to be seen by the world. It’s this endless adaptability that has made him so lasting, and ultimately human.

But it’s also Batman’s fundamental nerdiness that uniquely resonates with his fans and makes them fiercely protective of him. As Weldon charts the evolution of Gotham’s Guardian from Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s hyphenated hero to Christopher Nolan’s post-9/11 Dark Knight, he reveals how this symbol of justice has made us who we are today and why his legacy remains so strong. The result is “possibly the most erudite and well-researched fanboy manifesto ever” (Booklist). Well-researched, insightful, and engaging, The Caped Crusade, with a new afterword by the author, has something for everyone: “If you’re a Bat-neophyte, this is an accessible introduction; if you’re a dyed-in-the-Latex Bat-nerd, this is a colorfully rendered magical history tour redolent with nostalgia” (The Washington Post).

About Glen Weldon

Glen Weldon has been a theater critic, a science writer, an oral historian, a writing teacher, a bookstore clerk, a movie usher, a PR flack, an inept marine biologist, and a slightly-better-than-ept competitive swimmer. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Slate, The Atlantic, The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other places. He is a panelist on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour and reviews books and comic books for NPR.org. The author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography and The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, he lives in Washington, DC.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mizuki

Let's open this review with the hilarious Lego Batman's self composed death metal song--which should have been the theme song for all of the Batman movies! (Youtube video here: [URL not allowed] Darkness! No parents! Continued Darkness! Get it? The opposite of light!" And who ca......more

Goodreads review by Mike

So just who, or what, is Batman? Is he the dark prowler of the night that protected the rich from working class thieves (often throwing them gleefully off tall buildings) as he was originally conceived back in the 1930's? Is he the wacky Adam West character whose TV show showed the lighter side of th......more

Goodreads review by Jim

I knew Batman had undergone quite a few changes since he first appeared in a detective comic in 1939. After all, my father gave me some of his old comics in the 1960s, so I knew he used to get in gun fights, but developed a family of Bat-friend & then I watched Adam West doing the Batusi. Later, I h......more

Goodreads review by David

It's 1939, and tired of The Shadow getting all the love, a host of comics similarly tried their hand at millionaire vigilantes. You've probably heard of The Green Hornet and of course his fellow copycat crusader The Batman. Now The Bat-Man, as he was known back then, didn't come out of the gate quit......more