A new DC Black Label comic is taking Batman to his humble, Golden Age beginning with a new story that promises to be one of his most curious cases yet. DC Comics has revealed details of its upcoming three-issue miniseries, The Bat-Man: First Knight, a tale that harkens back to the Caped Crusader’s earliest adventures, with a few modern twists.
Next March, DC Comics will release The Bat-Man: First Knight, a new miniseries under the mature-only DC Black Label imprint. The story is written by Superman legend Dan Jurgens with art by Mike Perkins (Action Comics, Swamp Thing).
Inspired by the cases in Batman’s early years, The Bat-Man: First Knight is set in 1939 and sees Gotham being plagued by a string of murders. The Bat-Man begins investigating these strange crimes only to discover the perpetrators are men who have died via electrocution. As Bat-Man digs deeper into this eerie mystery, he only discovers more anomalies that defy all logic and threaten everything he knows.
The Bat-Man: First Knight Gives Batman a Horrifying, Pulpy Twist
The Batman of the Golden Age is quite different from the hero fans are familiar with today. The ‘Bat-Man’ was still a costumed vigilante who protected his beloved city and his earliest stories saw him investigating dark cases involving crime bosses and murders. But Batman’s strict moral code hadn’t been defined yet. He often used a gun and was even willing to kill criminals during his intense adventures. Over the years, Batman’s image was softened slightly and the character became more of the iconic superhero he’s seen as today and less of a bleak, noir-style detective.
The Bat-Man: First Knight brings Bruce back to his earliest days, investigating the most baffling and deadly cases haunting the streets of Gotham. Jurgens and Perkins’ work also promises to look at this era of the World’s Greatest Detective through an “acutely modern lens“, no doubt digging in deeper and exploring more complex mysteries than his earliest cases ever were. The books in the DC Black Label imprint often go to darker places than the titles set in DC Comics’ prime universe. This new examination of Batman’s earliest days no doubt will be an interesting character study into the hero’s very foundation.
The Bat-Man: First Knight Provides New Look at Batman’s Earliest Stories
The Golden Age of Batman’s stories laid the groundwork for the character DC fans know and love today. It will be interesting to see the pulpy and hard-hitting detective side of Batman in a more modern context. The Bat-Man: First Knight will also serve as a reminder of how far the character has come since he debuted nearly a century ago. This new DC Black Label series might be a bit different for fans unfamiliar with the hero’s Golden Age era, but it’s undoubtedly going to be a fascinating look back at Batman’s history.
The Bat-Man: First Knight #1 is on sale from DC Comics on March 5th, 2024.
