The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir

Film producer Uslan tells of how a New Jersey kid turned his youthful obsession with the 1950s and ’60s superheroes of DC and Marvel Comics, like Batman and Captain America, into a “lifetime career”—culminating in his current role as executive producer of all the Batman movies, from 1989’s Batman to the Dark Knight Rises, scheduled to premiere in 2012. The problem is that Uslan spends too much time on the details of his youthful and college-era obsession and not enough on his current peak. Three-quarters of the book is a highly detailed account of the author’s life in Jersey, his work at Indiana University teaching one of the first college-level courses on comic books, and a stint as a young writer at DC Comics. Only in the book’s last quarter does Uslan tell some fascinating stories about the difficulties he had in convincing Hollywood film executives of the potential success of a movie based on the original comic book’s characterization of “a dark and serious Batman,” as opposed to the “1967 pop version” found in the Batman television show. Uslan’s writing is friendly but conventional, but his relentless linear reporting style keeps his focus all too narrow. (Oct.)