Batman: Scarecrow Tales

 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-063-8

As with the appalling Catwoman film, DC produced a fine volume of reprints featuring the comic book appearances of the Scarecrow to capitalise on Batman Begins. Although having a much shallower well to draw from, there are some wonderful tales on offer (and the occasional dog, it must be admitted) with various pin-up pages and a cover gallery.

The obvious kick-off is the first adventure from World’s Finest #3 (1941), followed by his third outing in “Fright of the Scarecrow” (Batman #189, 1967) wherein scripter Gardner Fox introduces his current Modus Operandi of artificially inducing terror, rather than the forties version which consisted mostly of shooting at you until you wet yourself.

Two lesser efforts follow: “The Scarecrow’s Trail of Fear!” (Batman #262, 1975) is by Denny O’Neil, Ernie Chua/Chan and Dick Giordano and the frankly appalling duel with the Joker “The Scarecrow’s Fearsome Face-Off!” This turkey’s by Elliot S! Maggin, Irv Novick and Tex Blaisdell, and is from Joker #8 (1976). If you’re of the persuasion to think that some things can be so bad they become ‘good’ this one’s for you.

Gerry Conway wrote “The 6 Days of the Scarecrow”, beautifully illustrated by the vastly under-rated and sorely missed Don Newton, with inking by Dan Adkins (Detective #503, 1981) and Alan Davis and Paul Neary visualised Mike W Barr’s “Fear For Sale” (Detective #571, 1987). Next up is “Mistress of Fear” by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo from the one-shot (Villains: Scarecrow #1, 1998), a truly exceptional psychological thriller, with “Fear of Success” by Devin Grayson, Roger Robinson and John Floyd (Gotham Knights #23, 2002) rounding out the volume.

As a trawl through the changing nature of the industry this book is quite illuminating and in all honesty there really wasn’t a lot of material to choose from, although one glaring omission is the ignoring of the great little stories featuring the character that ran in assorted issues of the TV Cartoon based Batman Adventures. Now those were thrilling…

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