By Chip Kidd. Pantheon, 384 pp, $69, hardcover

In 1966, the popularity of ABC’s live-action Batman series propelled the DC Comics superhero—whose print debut occurred in 1939—to the forefront of popular culture. It didn’t seem to matter that the TV version was a campy comedy, its protagonist far removed from the avenging dark knight originally envisioned by creator Bob Kane. The show, despite its short run of two-and-a-half seasons, was a hit, spurring sales of not just comic books, but toys, Halloween costumes, and every other type of cash-in ephemera imaginable at the time.

With the characters of Batman and Robin so popular in the English-speaking world, it’s no surprise that they were exported to other parts of the globe. In ’66, a weekly Japanese manga anthology called Shonen King acquired a licence to the rights to the characters and assigned Jiro Kuwata to create a series of original stories. Kuwata’s Batman strips ran for a year and were then essentially forgotten. Since they were never reprinted or translated, the Shonen King stories are virtually unknown to most comic-book readers and collectors, even die-hard Bat-fans. That’s where Chip Kidd comes in. A few years ago, the American author and graphic designer learned of the Batman manga’s existence and he, along with fellow obsessive Saul Ferris, set about tracking down copies of them all.

Well, not quite all. Many of the stories compiled in Bat-Manga! are incomplete, but the book is a fascinating cross-cultural document nonetheless. Working mostly in black and white, Kuwata dropped the Dynamic Duo into a world that, not surprisingly, looks a lot like the setting of a 1960s superhero manga, such as the artist’s own 8 Man. There’s no Joker, Riddler, or Two-Face here, just shape-shifting mutants, killer robots, and a seemingly undead villain calling himself Lord Death Man.

The book, which reads from right to left in the Japanese fashion, is rounded out by Geoff Spear’s photos of vintage Batman toys. Kidd also includes a small selection of unauthorized Chinese Batman comics, notable mostly for the sheer crudity of their execution, which stands in marked contrast to Kuwata’s clean, highly stylized work