Welcome to a new season of our Crushing Comics Book Club, where we discuss a classic run of comics together as both fans and critical readers. For the next few months we'll be reading Grant Morrison's Batman, but before we get started we'll be doing a few weeks of pre-reading to catch up on some of the themes and influences of the run.

Harry is our expert - he loves Batman and Morrison, and he has read this run multiple times. Fariha is our intermediate - she has read plenty of Morrison and DC. And, Peter is now the novice - he's read some of this run before, but otherwise this is his FIRST TIME reading pre-New-52 Batman!

Today, we start with a discussion of how we first found Batman (and Morrison), plus a read of Batman's debut in Detective Comics (1937) #27 as well as Batman (1940) #1 - the first appearances of Joker and Catwoman.

Then, we all read The Black Casebook for the first time! It's an unusual book - 12 of the most-outlandish Golden and Silver Age stories as selected by Morrison to hint at, explain, or reflect the themes of their Batman run. We'll talk about our FAVORITE Casebook story, the WEIRDEST story, plus give a rundown of EVERY tale in this tome - with a few hints from Harry at how they might be relevant later.

The stories are:Batman #65 - A Partner For Batman! from June, 1951Batman #86 - Batman - Indian Chief! from September, 1954Detective Comics #215 - The Batmen of All Nations from January, 1955Detective Comics #235 - The First Batman from September, 1956World's Finest #89 - The Club of Heroes from July, 1957Detective Comics #247 - The Man Who Ended Batman's Career from September, 1957Batman #112 - Am I Really Batman? from December, 1957Batman #113 - Batman - The Superman of Planet X from February, 1958Detective Comics #267 - Batman Meets Bat-Mite from May, 1959Batman #134 - The Rainbow Creature from September, 1960Batman #156 - Robin Dies at Dawn from June, 1963Batman #162 - The Batman Creature from March, 1964

Tune in next week as we read the Tales of the Demon TPB.