Shrewdly timed to the theatrical release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture takes longer to consume, yet provides far more entertainment. A companion of sorts to his 2013 tome on the Man of Steel, the book excels as a work of cultural history … provided you can overlook the whiplash appearances of the occasional stuffy phrase (“slyphs in organza gowns”) and dropping of hipster lingo (“mansplaining”).

The book traces the Dark Knight’s “life,” from his 1939 “birth” in Detective Comics #27 to anchoring several DC Comics titles today. With the exacting fervor of someone who may consider The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as “light reading,” Weldon details Batman’s many, many changes with the times and trends along the way — not just as a four-color character, but one who has leapt beyond the page to infiltrate the media of radio, television and, of course, the movies.

In comparing the Batman co-created by Bill Finger and liar/thief Bob Kane to the Batman of the 1966 camp television series to the Batman of Frank Miller’s 1986 revisionist graphic novel to the Batman of Christopher Nolan’s brooding film trilogy — to say nothing of all the Batmans in between, including Joel Schumacher’s much-reviled “urban-landscape-as-roller-disco” Batman — The Caped Crusade wildly succeeds. You’ll learn, for example, of an era in which your justice-seeker absolutely used guns and killed people, even on purpose.

Less successfully, Weldon attempts to couch this history of Gotham City’s No. 1 crime fighter as being congruent with the ascent of “nerd culture” from something the mainstream derides to something it now embraces. It’s a theory I’m not 100% subscribed to, and his endless, binary talk of “normals” and “nerds” sends my buy-in down a few notches with each chapter. Still, it makes for interesting reading nonetheless, which is exactly what you hope and expect from such a book, and he is not so beholden to his love of/for comics as to deny that their storylines have grown ridiculously dense.

By and large, Weldon is a fun writer to read, especially when he lets his considerable wit off the chain, whether referring to Boy Wonder sidekick Robin as “achingly kidnappable” or describing Adam West’s line delivery on the aforementioned 1960s TV program — and subsequent cash-in film — as being riddled with “pauses that are not merely pregnant but two weeks overdue.” (Even the footnotes are playful.) The sheer amount of times the author refers to something as “kinda gay” would be troubling if Weldon weren’t gay himself; however, this fact will go unnoticed unless one pays attention to the acknowledgments at the book’s end or has heard him mention his husband on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast.

Which brings us to the book’s elephant-in-the-room caveat: If you have been or currently are a listener of that podcast, for which Weldon appears almost weekly as one of its primary hosts, it is impossible to read The Caped Crusade without hearing his voice in your head. Personally, that’s a negative, as his speaking method strikes me as so overly scripted and prepared to a fault, he often comes off as that smug know-it-all who, enabled by the rush of liquor to his bloodstream, corners people at parties and proceeds to cheerlead his own pomposity via $10 words. It’s not endearing.

And yet, like mines on a battlefield, you never know when his prose will unleash a vocabulary bomb that speaks above his target audience: agar, prolix, Derridean, caesurae, augured, febrile, noisome, tincture, bathetic, mesomorphic, abstruse, eschatological, elide, caromed, biliousness. Worse, several others appear multiple times: fealty, bolus, anodyne, gouaches, Sisyphean, lingua franca, mien, evince, gewgaws. Geegaws! That’s a word so goofy and cringe-inducing, it should only be uttered by preschoolers attempting to get the attention of their grandmother.

I mean, once you’ve read the cowled subject described as “po-faced,” “laconic” and “badass” for the third or fourth time, you understandably ache for a little variety. After all, there is nothing wrong with “disapproving,” “terse” or “intimidating,” is there? Holy Roget, Batman! —Rod Lott

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Maybe it’s just me, but the title of Bill Warren’s Keep Watching the Skies! may serve as a warning, i.e., you could get so wrapped up as to lose all sense of time. That’s certainly not a stretch, although arm strain could cut your reading session short. Subtitled American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, the book is such a behemoth that McFarland & Company has split it into two volumes (not sold separately) whose 1,000-plus pages collectively weigh nearly 6 pounds! First published in 1982, Keep Watching has been revised cover to cover (to cover to cover) for this 21st Century Edition, as Warren has revisited every film featured — now arranged alphabetically, from Abbott and Costello Go to Mars to X the Unknown — as well as added new entries. To call this massive undertaking a life’s work is not hyperbole. If each movie were represented by a mere pithy capsule review, a thumbs-up would not be automatic; instead, Warren affords each with a full, thought-out essay. Illustrations abound, with color pages of original posters inserted in the center of both volumes, kicking this project into that rarest of recommendations: unequivocally essential for the bookshelf of every cult-film fanatic.

Fresh from counting down the subjective 100 Greatest Science-Fiction Films, author Douglas Brode returns — this time with tongue a-waggin’ — to ogle luscious ladies in Deadlier than the Male: Femme Fatales in 1960s and 1970s Cinema. For the BearManor Media trade paperback, Brode profiles more than 100 of not necessarily the silver screen’s most golden goddesses, but those who also played it rough as villainesses. Thus, we get a lot of Bond girls and Hammer vixens, but dozens more hailing from the seamier side of exploitation cinema. Each woman is introduced with quick vital stats, such as her measurements (when available), before Brode digs in for a big-picture overview of her life and career, often with appropriately tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. For example, of Barbara Steele, he writes that “mostly her work consisted of being bound and gagged in old castles.” This goes a long way in mitigating Brode’s crime of misspelling names: Dianne Thorne, Silvia Kristel and Carol Baker, to point out just three errors. Among 522 jam-packed pages, rarely a spread goes by without a photo, almost all of which are dead-sexy. And, like the actresses’ films, several shots contain nudity, so keep away from prying eyes! I read this front to back over the course of several weeknights; if I were 14, it would be embarrassingly dog-eared … and not so much from “reading,” per se. 😉

Don’t let the highfalutin word in the subtitle keep you from Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television. Edited by Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer, this is a highly accessible look at why a franchise-crazed Hollywood is so fond of using and reusing the same concepts and stories. (The short answer: Because audiences pay in droves to see them.) From Dumbledore to mumblecore, this wonderful collection of 17 essays brims with sharp insights; for instance, the practice of capitalizing on familiarity dates back to cinema’s infancy, as Thomas Edison released a film based upon a popular novelty postcard in 1905. Standouts in this University of Texas Press trade paperback include Chelsea Crawford’s piece on American remakes of J-horror hits; Constantine Verevis’ use of the Jaws series to illustrate the When Animals Attack-style trend of the 70s (although calling Steven Spielberg’s undisputed classic a “disaster film” is terminology I take umbrage with); Robert Rushing considers how the waves of peplum, from Steve Reeves’ Hercules to the more recent Brett Ratner and Renny Harlin versions, play with sexuality; and Kathleen Loock’s examination of the major studios’ current fascination with reviving properties of the 1980s. However, another Kathleen — Williams — provides the most interesting chapter, on the YouTube phenomenon of retooled trailers, both by fans and, in the unique case of Snakes on a Plane, by execs.

Godzilla, Gamera and all their oversized, radiated ilk: Are they worthy of the intense critical examination afforded to “important” foreign films? Jason Barr sure as hell thinks so, and The Kaiju Film: A Critical Study of Cinema’s Biggest Monsters sure as hell serves as proof. Published in trade paperback by McFarland, this may be the most sober book ever written and that ever will be written on the subject, as Barr takes these films very seriously. Irked at pop culture’s broad view of these movies as greasy kids’ stuff, he takes a slight dig at William Tsutsui’s Godzilla on My Mind for being “flippant” in tone, yet at least that 2004 book was a delight to read. Barr clearly has won the war of expertise, because chapter by chapter, he illustrates an incredible depth of knowledge not just in the aforementioned franchises, but as the giant-monster genre as a whole is informed by Asian traditions predating cinema and interested in making pointed political statements (not all of which lurk as subtext — Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, anyone?). The Kaiju Film is intelligent, all right. I just wish it also were fun. It’s essentially a thesis, not a reference work; take that into account as you decide responsibly. —Rod Lott

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One of my favorite books from last year, Spectacular Optical’s Satanic Panic, did a thorough job of looking at one 1980s trend as peculiar today as Jams and parachute pants: the widespread hysteria among preachers, teachers and suburban creatures that Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal and the like were corrupting our children. It is an excellent read that comes at its subject from a multitude of angles.

But that feverous movement is just one portion of a far larger story; full-blown, coast-to-coast delirium doesn’t just happen overnight. After all, tales of devilish temptation are as old as the Book of Genesis, so how did these media items become public enemies? George Case looks at the sordid, start-to-finish tale in Here’s to My Sweet Satan: How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies and Pop Culture, 1966-1980. Don’t let the serial killer-looking cover scare you away.

Why jump in at 1966? Because that’s when, on its April 8 cover, Time magazine famously inquired, “Is God Dead?” As Case notes in his introduction, “After World Wars I and II, fascism and the Final Solution, and the atomic bomb, the presence of a benign God watching over humanity became less plausible to the average mind than ever.”

As restrictions on media slowly laxed, especially with regard to the MPAA, creatives increasingly pushed the envelope in turn, resulting in such zeitgeist magnets and game changers as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen; the early novels of Stephen King; a host of rock records, from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album to Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”

With each piece of media earning its own “making of” story, all of these and more paved the way to “redirect the middle of the road to the occult,” eventually leading to PMRC LP bonfires and hysteric vilification of mazes and monsters — the aforementioned “satanic panic,” to which Case devotes the seventh and final chapter. Structurally simple but effective, the chapters before that segregate the subsets of motion pictures, music and literature from one another. Even greasy kids’ stuff à la Ouija boards, horror comics and Count Chocula cereal earns a section of its own.

No matter the chapter and from the very beginning, the author approaches his main topic for what it really is: one big business. (We could gauge just how big if only we were privy to the tax returns of Alice Cooper, Gary Gygax and Bill Blatty.) He writes, “While Black Masses, evil spirits, and poltergeists continued to bring customers to the Warlock Shop and the Metaphysical Center, they were also ringing up sales at pharmacies, airports, malls, and department stores.”

By now, I assumed that everything there was to be told about, say, The Exorcist, had been told long before. I was wrong. With Case’s examination of that 1973 Oscar-winning blockbuster and other artistic works that leveraged Christian America’s fear of the unholy into big bucks, there’s real heft to Here’s to My Sweet Satan: factually, culturally, intellectually. —Rod Lott

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Sex begins with a kiss, which must be why the 1896 featurette The John C. Rice-May Irwin Kiss — all 47 seconds of it — provoked such a uproar among a puritanical public. Distributed by Thomas Edison’s company, The Kiss (as it is better known) depicted just that and nothing more — a fleeting peck, really, between two completely clothed and consenting adults — yet was viewed as obscene, an affront to Christianity and this country’s very moral fiber.

As Jeremy Geltzer tracks with frightening precision throughout Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures, the then-new art form known as cinema often was targeted as Public Enemy No. 1. This was a time when boxing dramas were perceived as a threat, when courts ruled that film censors did not infringe upon First Amendment rights because the movies were “mere entertainment, not speech worthy of protection.”

Available in both hardcover and trade paperback, the University of Texas Press release finds Geltzer, an entertainment and IP attorney, suggesting that to trace the history of free speech is tantamount to tracing the history of film. He is correct. His story is one of … well, if not good vs. evil, one of good-intentioned vs. evil. As such stories should, the villains bear unique and memorable names like Lloyd T. Binford, Damon Huskey, Judge Michael Musmanno and Maj. Metellus Lucullus Cicero Funkhouser; they just happen to have been real people. The only thing scarier is that they were real people with power, which they wielded to legislate their own narrow worldview and belief system to everyone else.

From film’s infancy to the legal skirmishes still challenging the pornography industry today, Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures by and large chronologically covers each legislative and/or community battle over the so-called “epidermis epidemic,” documenting each slam of the gavel, every swipe of the censor’s scissors. While the hygiene pictures and porno-chic movement obviously play large parts in this true-life account, so do utterly innocuous works as Howard Hughes’ 1943 Western, The Outlaw, for accentuating Jane Russell’s (covered) bust, and 1955’s Son of Sinbad, another Hughes production, for its inclusion of “lust provoking” dance scenes by stripper Lili St. Cyr, here non-stripped.

Not every controversy was over S-E-X, either. Take Curley, Hal Roach’s 1947 attempt at creating another Little Rascals, which dared depict white kids and black kids as social equals in the classroom. Some things have yet to change.

The sheer number of examples is alarming — just one element that makes Geltzer’s book a great, smart read. As eye-opening as it is pulse-raising, Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures entertains as it informs. It also will surprise you, starting with its foreword by Alex Kozinski: Yes, you really will read, enjoy and appreciate a book whose intro comes from the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It is ordered! —Rod Lott

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For whatever reason, our nation’s finest film critics have been feeling very nostalgic of late, writing books that look back on their entire careers. In 2014, Kenneth Turan gave us Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film; Richard Schickel followed in 2015 with Keepers: The Greatest Films — and Personal Favorites — of a Moviegoing Lifetime; and now 2016 brings us Owen Gleiberman’s Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies.

I don’t mean to suggest Gleiberman has latched himself onto a bandwagon like an opportunist caboose — far from it. In fact, he has surpassed those efforts of his better-known, longer-at-it peers, both of whose works I loved reading. By infusing their decades-encompassing critical acumen with the cinema-as-a-drug zeal of comedian Patton Oswalt’s Silver Screen Fiend confessional from last year, Gleiberman has given us this year’s best biography you didn’t know you wanted, auto- or otherwise.

Besides, can you imagine Schickel or Turan having the guts to go into detail about their porno turn-ons? (And would you want them to?)

Ask someone — anyone — at a party, “How did you get to be a [insert job title here]?” The answer will be boring — incredibly, mind-numbingly boring, so much that you wish you had an extra gin and tonic to minimize the suffering. One gets the sense Gleiberman knows this, too, and thus, has taken great pains to make his story compelling. Of course, it helps if you love movies — really, really, really love movies.

I do. Most of us know Gleiberman’s name from his 24-year stint at Entertainment Weekly, starting with its debut issue. I recall that very edition, feeling like I had found a kindred spirit because of his straight-A review of Men Don’t Leave, a quirky dramedy starring Jessica Lange that I adored, yet the rest of America ignored. I have been addicted to Gleiberman’s writing ever since. In Movie Freak, he tells us how he landed that “dream job,” by way of The Boston Phoenix and a good word from Pauline Kael, and how he managed to nearly fuck it up so often, for so long.

It’s a story of an affectionless father, brazen naiveté, superficial relationships with the opposite sex (particularly notable: a six-month cocaine-and-S&M bender) and even more superficial relationships with his fellow film critics. Cursed with a potent mix of insecurity and jealousy, they can be raging bullies, as his dealings with Kael and David Edelstein attest. His description of Rex Reed as “Blanche DuBois-with-a-hemorrhoid” is as dead-on as his perception of Roger Ebert as “far too perceptive a man to give a tongue kiss to as many mediocre movies as he did.”

It’s also a tale of clubbing with Oliver Stone; drinking with Russell Crowe; watching Sid & Nancy director Alex Cox eat a booger; hitting on Gillian Flynn, pre-Gone Girl; and pissing off Denis Leary and Robert Duvall.

As gossipy as all that sounds, Movie Freak forgets not the cinema. In reconnecting with his past, Gleiberman revisits and reconsiders his favorites since the 1970s; most critics would err on the side of snobbery rather than champion something as genre-soaked as Michael Mann’s Manhunter or as comic-violent as Stone’s Natural Born Killers, yet the author is as ballsy to go out on that professional limb as he is about rendering his personal life transparent.

Reading these revitalized quasi-reviews is a kick. Whether one agrees with his opinions or not, these pages electrify. His passion for these and other films makes you want watch them again or, if you’ve never seen them, elevates your curiosity into urgency. That’s the joy of absorbing solid film criticism … so it’s nice to have the rarity of being able to pay him back. Allow me to explain: Regarding a passage on the increasing surplus of highly specialized music documentaries at film festivals, he writes, “I fully expect to see entire films devoted to the life and times of Clarence Clemons, the poetic genius of Bernie Taupin, and the sonic miracle of the Moog synthesizer.” Regarding the latter, Mr. Gleiberman, allow me to point you to 2004’s Moog! (Its double-disc soundtrack album is awesome, natch.) You are welcome.

If there are negatives to Gleiberman tackling the long form, they are minor. Like millennials, he literally overuses “literally.” More than once, he uses “kiddie-corner” when he means “kitty-corner.” And, speaking of “kiddie,” he misidentifies the runaway-robot comedy Short Circuit as a Paramount Pictures release, whereas Tri-Star handled that one; it’s an important distinction given that the anecdote in question is about inadvertently making studio enemies by bailing on the flick’s junket before its conclusion.

I can relate. Less about junkets, however, and more about heading for the exit when a movie proves insufferable. As with our shared fondness for Men Don’t Leave, Gleiberman joins me in going against the grain — and pretty much all of civilization — in openly detesting Peter Jackson’s needlessly bloated Lord of the Rings time-wanks. Fight on, beleaguered white man! —Rod Lott

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