AltWeeklies Wire » Books » Nonfiction

So You Want To Be Batman...

By J. Caleb Mozzocco
Columbus Alive | June 9, 2005
Poor Batman. Not only did he watch his parents get gunned down in front of him when he was only eight years old, but when he began his unswerving war on crime, there was no how-to book. He had to make it up as he went a long.

You won’t have the same problem, thanks to The Batman Handbook: The Ultimate Training Manual (Quirk Books). Basically a Batman version of the popular Worst Case Scenario books from a few years back, The Batman Handbook tells you everything you need to know to be Batman—how to throw a batarang, how to slide down the bat-pole, how to take out a roomful of goons, how to win a whip fight and sundry other acts of crime-fighting and -solving.

Written by comics writer Scott Beatty and featuring crisp, clean instruction manual-style drawings by comics artist David Hahn (Private Beach, Bite Club), it’s probably more fun to flip through than to actually read (it is an instruction manual, after all). Lest the publisher or author get sued by any poor saps that break their legs rappelling down skyscrapers, it opens with a “Warning from the Batcave” stressing that it’s merely a work of fiction. But they probably shouldn’t worry too much—unless you’re a billionaire who can afford a gas-powered grapnel gun, a bulletproof rocket-powered car and a cave to keep them in, chances are your DIY caped-crusading career will be short-lived anyway.
Tags: Batman, Batcave, David Hahn, Quirk Books, Scott Beatty, The Batman Handbook, The Batman Handbook: The Ultimate Training Manual, whipfight

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