Retro Japanese Batman

I stumbled across this really interesting post about the existence of Batman in 1960′s Japan. Being of Japanese background and being a Batman buff – I really should have known this, but this was fascinating and new to me.

Apparently in 1966 Jiro Kuwata (who’s most famous for writing the original 8 Man manga) was commissioned to do a regular Japanese manga version of Bob Kane’s Batman comics, to tie in with the Japanese launch of the Batman TV show. Anyway it was understandably localised for the market and the result was a bizarre Japanese take on the classic American super hero.

So these comics were completely lost for decades and it seems resurfaced in private collections recently – this subject is so interesting Chipp Kidd has made a book about it, aptly titled Bat-Manga.

I really really want to get my hands on these comics. I’d safely assume they’d be pretty much priceless.

Check out Boing Boing’s post about it.

And there’s some scans of book on flickr.

And Chip Kidds book Bat-Manga.

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