World’s Finest Goes To War

S.D. Robinson’s forthcoming biography Shadow of the Bat: The Extraordinary Life of Bruce Wayne, Playboy, Philanthropist and…Superhero? promises to be the definitive work on the man long suspected of having been behind New York City’s Batman vigilante activities. The following preview excerpt deals with Wayne’s first known philanthropic work, during World War II—and how, even in the midst of such work, Wayne could not escape rumors that he was the Batman.

American society and government during the war worked feverishly to mobilize everything for the war effort. And when they said everything, they meant everything. Even books were put into service.

In 1942 a number of prominent figures in American publishing, bookselling, and librarianship formed the Council on Books in Wartime to find ways of using books as “weapons in the war of ideas.” In the course of the war the Council examined many ideas regarding wartime books and literature, served as a liaison between the government and the publishing industry, and helped to manage an industry that was, like all industries during the war, beset by material shortages and disputes over priorities.

The presence on the Council of such noted publishing figures as Bennett Cerf and W.W. Norton surprised nobody. Rather more surprising was the participation of a New York City playboy, a man still only in his mid-twenties who had never written a book or worked with the publishing industry in any capacity.

“If you were one of the few people who really knew Dad, his interest in the Council’s work wasn’t such a shock,” says Wayne’s daughter, Helena. “Mom used to say that new acquaintances who thought they were meeting a rich ne’er-do-well were always startled to learn just how well-read he was. His belief in the power of good reading to build the mind was even stronger than his devotion to physical fitness.”

In the early months of the war Bruce Wayne worked with friends and family to gather support for the “Victory Book Campaign,” a massive nationwide book drive for service members originally organized by the New York Public Library. He was distressed to learn, sometime into the program, that a great deal of what was donated consisted of unwanted, often outdated material that merely served to clutter warehouses and waste volunteers’ time. “He found,” New York City librarian Barbara Gordon Bard has observed, “what every librarian who has ever dealt with donated books knows—that Theodore Sturgeon’s observation regarding 90% of what one receives holds true there as elsewhere.”

Bruce was pleased after this disappointment to learn of the Council on Books in Wartime’s efforts to do better by the troops—and he wanted to be a part of it. “Dad found funds to help underwrite a significant part of the Council’s operating expenses,” says Helena. “It was his first experience of raising serious money for a worthy cause. By 1943 he had gotten accepted onto the Council as a recognized member in honor of his work.”

Bruce showed great enthusiasm for the Council’s best-known project, the creation of “Armed Services Editions.” These distinctive paperbacks, first released in the fall of 1943, were special mass-market editions of works selected as suitable for distribution to the troops. Released in monthly series, the Armed Services Editions program eventually distributed over 120 million copies of over 1,300 titles. They provided millions of troops serving around the world with economical recreation and education during their off-duty moments—and during the periods of agonizing waiting often necessary during military operations.

Everything about these special books was carefully thought out. The books were deliberately sized to fit in soldiers’ pockets. To save limited paper, they were printed “two-up” on magazine presses, with two books printed simultaneously on the top and bottom of each page in such a manner that they could be split to produce two books with minimal waste. They were distributed at mail calls and on paydays to troops in all theaters, in camps and forward bases, aboard ships, and even near the front lines. Soldiers read and traded them among themselves, much as small boys read and traded comic books.

The titles were chosen to give the troops a good variety of reading experiences. Some were simple genre fiction—westerns, mysteries, and the like. There were also such popular bestsellers of the day as Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions. Some were recognized classics, like Tom Sawyer and Moby-Dick; others, such as The Great Gatsby, have since been recognized as such. There was drama, humor, and poetry, biography, the occasional work on science and mathematics, and more. Many a GI, modestly educated and far from home, had the opportunity to do a great deal of reading while in the service—and, in so doing, to encounter works and ideas to which he might not otherwise have been exposed.

Wayne became involved in the title selection process. “Dad participated in a lot of discussion and correspondence regarding what books to choose for publishing as Armed Services Editions,” says Helena. “I don’t know how much influence he wielded. His voice was only one among many involved. But he always liked to tell the story of one particular selection where he thinks he made a difference.

“Late in the war somebody proposed publishing an Armed Services Edition of George Lowther’s novel Adventures of Superman. Dad said that that proposal set off a huge debate. The selection committee had long since demonstrated that they weren’t too `high-falutin’ in their selection—they’d included scores of works of popular genre fiction. But a novel based on a comic book—not even a respectable newspaper comic strip, but a comic book? Some committee members regarded that as beyond the pale.

“But Dad always had a soft spot for the funnies. He says that he and a couple of others really went to bat for Adventures of Superman. And it was accepted, and went out to the troops in May of 1945.”

Says Barbara Bard: “If one takes the view that Bruce Wayne was Batman, then I suppose one could say that this was the closest thing in real life to a team-up between Batman and Superman. And, as always, together they were victorious.”