Weldon breezes through this oft-told history with authority and ease, highlighting the big moments in Batman's timeline while providing rich, witty commentary ... Winks and in-jokes for the hardcore fan abound; casual Bat-lovers, though, won't be lost. Weldon navigates Batman's history with an expert step.
...a sharp, deeply knowledgeable and often funny look at the cultural history of Batman and his fandom ... The Caped Crusade is a great read for those who are proud Gothamites, those less initiated, and those who flip the switch on the Bat-Signal in order to find themselves.
The book is, in many respects, a roaring getaway car of guilty pleasures — film gossip, comic-book esoterica, hilarious tales of nerd rage ... There are a few times when the biggest villain in this book is not the Riddler but the Straw Man, a rhetorical device of which Mr. Weldon can be overly fond. And occasionally, Mr. Weldon becomes Comic Book Guy in spite of himself, writing with the same pedantry and fastidiousness.
What Weldon ultimately achieves here is a character and comic-franchise history that is itself flexible enough to become what the reader needs it to be. 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.
Mr. Weldon’s vividly written history of Batman and his fans is smart, witty and engrossing ... Mr. Weldon has his own essentialist interpretation: underlying all the permutations, Batman is defined by his oath to prevent what happened to him from happening to others. This is the heroic figure who engaged in 'self-rescue' through self-sacrifice, a creature of the night who represents hope rather than darkness. It’s an inspiring conclusion to Mr. Weldon’s Batman v. Nerds.
