Batman: big in Japan

Forty-two years ago, when pop culture was in the grip of Batmania thanks to the ultra-camp TV show, a Japanese Manga anthology commissioned its own Batman & Robin strips. A year later, the strip abruptly halted; never collected or translated. Chip Kidd's marvellous feat of Comics excavation, Bat-Manga!, finally sheds light on this long-lost moment of Bat-History, collecting hundreds of pages of art alongside photographs of very rare - and often bizarre - Batman toys. The strips' distinctly Japanese, Atomic-Age twist - as The Dynamic Duo battle aliens, mutant dinosaurs et al - adds a further level of gleeful satisfaction.