Posted inTheater Review

Villainy and vindication

Every superhero saga needs a villain, and Mark Pracht’s new play The Mark of Kane—an origin story for the comic-book character Batman—provides one in the figure of Bob Kane. In Pracht’s account, Kane was an ambitious freelance illustrator who, in 1939, came up with the concept of a crime-fighting vigilante who could fly with the […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Blame it on Kane

I first met Batman battling villains from the Hall of Justice with the other Super Friends, part of the Saturday morning cartoon lineup of the 1970s, and soon afterward I caught the campy reruns of the 1960s live-action TV show. This led me to scour my brother Aaron’s Bronze Age collection of DC Comics, the […]