Now Read This!

 

By Bob Kane & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-431-5

This edition of the economy collections of Batman’s early adventures takes us from December 1940 to April 1941. By reprinting the Caped Crusader’s exploits in chronological order this way we get to see the strip develop, but also learn that as he became more popular and his appearances more widespread, our yearly progress slows greatly.

Detective Comics #46 features the return (and last appearance until 1977) of our hero’s most formidable scientific adversary. ‘Professor Strange’s Fear Dust’ is followed by issue #47’s drama on a more human scale, ‘Money Can’t Buy Happiness’. This action-packed homily of parental expectation and the folly of greed leads into Batman #4 (Winter 1941) and features ‘The Joker’s Crime Circus’, the piratical plunderings of ‘Blackbeard’s Crew and the Yacht Society’; ‘Public Enemy No.1’ tells a gangster fable in the manner of Jimmy Cagney’s movies such as Angels With Dirty Faces, and ‘Victory For the Dynamic Duo’ involves the pair in the turbulent world of sports gambling.

Detective Comics #48 finds them defending America’s bullion reserves in ‘The Secret Cavern’, and they face an old foe when ‘Clayface Walks Again’ (Detective Comics #49, March 1941), as the deranged horror actor resumes his passion for murder and re-attempts to kill Bruce Wayne’s old girlfriend Julie.

Detective Comics #50 pits Batman and Robin against acrobatic burglars in ‘The Case of the Three Devils’, leading neatly into Batman #5 (Spring 1941). Once again the Joker is the lead villain in ‘The Riddle of the Missing Card’, and then the heroes prove their versatility by solving a crime in Fairy Land via ‘The Book of Enchantment’. ‘The Case of the Honest Crook’ follows, and it is one of the key stories of Batman’s early canon. When a mugger steals only $6 from a victim, leaving much more, his trail leads to a vicious gang who almost beat Robin to death. The vengeance-crazed Dark Knight goes on a rampage of terrible violence that still resonates in the character to this day.

The last story from Batman #5 ‘Crime does Not Pay’ once again deals with kids going bad and potential redemption, and the volume closes with the eerie murder mystery ‘The Witch and the Manuscript of Doom’, which came from World’s Best Comics #1 (Spring 1941 – and destined to become World’s Finest Comics with it’s next issue.)

These are the stories that forged the character and success of Batman. The works of writer Bill Finger, artist/creator Bob Kane and his multi-talented assistants Jerry Robinson and George Roussos are spectacular and timeless examples of perfect superhero fiction. Put them in a thrifty, nifty package like this, include the pop art masterpieces that were the covers of those classics, and you have pretty much the perfect comic book. And you really, really should have it.

© 1940-1941, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-325-4

Many comics fans share a variation of the same dream. They will awake sweaty, desperate and poignantly despairing because they have seen, touched and read a lost issue, produced by their favourite creator or creators, from their most artistically productive period – which just happens to be the dreamer’s most well-beloved – only to awaken to the gloomy realisation that they already have a complete collection and the dream artefact will never be part of it. Spitefully, images and fragments of the lost issue will tantalisingly return to them for days and months thereafter.

In the 1970s Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin produced a run of stories in Detective Comics (collected as Batman: Strange Apparitions, ISBN 1-84023-109-2) that managed to be nostalgically avant-garde and iconoclastically traditional at the same time, setting both the tone and the character structure of Batman for more than a decade to come, and leading, indirectly, to both the award winning cartoon series and the blockbuster movie of 1989. What could be closer to that cruel dream than the reuniting of these talented artists to tell one more story their own magnificent way?

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and if I’m totally honest, there are oh, so brief moments where I’m a blown-away kid again, but mostly this feels like a school reunion where you forget yourself for a moment, then catch yourself pogo-ing to “God Save the Queen” in the bar mirror. That was then and you just look like an idiot doing it now.

This plot has once-in-a-lifetime romance Silver Saint-Cloud returning to Gotham City as the fiancé of an aspiring State Governor. She once more meets Bruce Wayne and they take up their old affair. She decides to dump her current man and stay with Wayne, whom she only originally left because she couldn’t cope with his being Batman. But events are further complicated by the Joker whose latest scheme can be best described by his own slogan “Vote for Me …Or I’ll Kill You”.

As well as The Joker’s gubernatorial aspirations Batman also has to deal with the Scarecrow’s unwitting release of Bruce Wayne’s repressed memories of a murder attempt upon himself the night after his parents were killed, Two-Face’s frankly ludicrous clone-plot and a cheesy dream allowing the creators to do their version of many of the Dark Knight’s Rogue’s Gallery.

On a personal note, the co-conspiratorial habit of naming Gotham locations after various Batman creators of the past was charming then, but it’s tired, over-used and not a little annoying now. Just let it go, guys.

Their vision of Batman is a unique and iconic one, and it should never have been shoe-horned into current continuity. It would have been fairer to position it, like many out-of continuity Bat-tales, in its own private universe, perhaps in those distant days of thirty years ago, or even the 1950s.

Not a hoax, not a dream, and definitely not a good use of some very talented people or my childhood memories.

© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin & various (DC Comics/Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-109-2

In the mid 1970s Marvel Comics were kicking the stuffing out of DC Comics in terms of sales if not quality comic book product. The most sensible solution seemed to be to poach the top talent. That strategy had limited success but one major defection was Steve Englehart, who had scripted groundbreaking work on the Avengers and Dr. Strange titles.

He was given the Justice League of America for a year but also requested, and was given the Batman slot in the flagship DC title Detective Comics. Expected to be daring and innovative, he instead chose to invoke a classic and long-departed style which became a new signature interpretation, and one credited with inspiring the 1989 movie mega-blockbuster.

Initially Englehart was paired up with artists Walt Simonson and Al Milgrom for the series. ‘…By Death’s Eerie Light!’ and ‘The Origin of Dr Phosphorus’ from Detective #469, May 1977, introduced not only a skeletal, radioactive villain but also the corrupt city council of Rupert “Boss” Thorne, and had the Caped Crusader outlawed in his own city. The team also provided the sequel ‘The Master Plan of Dr. Phosphorus!’ which introduced another landmark character, the captivating ‘Modern Woman’, Silver St. Cloud.

With issue #471 (August 1977) relative newcomers Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin took over the art chores and the magic truly began. As the scripts brought back golden-age and ‘A-list’ villains the art captured the power and moodiness of the strip’s formative years whilst adding to the unique and distinctive iconography of the Batman. Last seen in Detective Comics #46 (1940 and reprinted most recently in Batman Chronicles volume 3, ISBN 1-84576-431-5), quintessential Mad Scientist Hugo Strange came closer than any other villain to destroying both Bruce Wayne and the Batman in ‘The Dead Yet Live’ and ‘I Am The Batman!’ (Detective #471 and #472 respectively).

Robin returned to the strip in #473’s ‘The Malay Penguin!’ as the wily Napoleon of Crime challenges the Dynamic Duo to an entrancing duel of wits, and the next issue featured the second ever appearance of Deadshot (after an initial outing in Batman #59, 1950). So reinvigorated was this third rate foe by his treatment in ‘The Deadshot Ricochet’ that he’s seldom been missing from the DC Universe since, starring in a number of series such as Suicide Squad and Secret Six, and even in a couple of eponymous miniseries.

Englehart saved the best for last with all the sub-plots concerning Silver St. Cloud, Boss Thorne, Gotham City Council, and even a recurring ghost culminating in THE classic confrontation with The Joker. Detective #475 and #476, ‘The Laughing Fish!’ and ‘The Sign of the Joker!’, comprise one of the most reprinted Bat-tales ever concocted, and was even adapted as an episode of the award winning TV show Batman: The Animated Adventures in the 1990s. In fact you’ve probably already read it. But if you haven’t… what a treat you have awaiting you!

Having said all he wanted to say, Steve Englehart left Batman and quit comics for a good few years. After a reprinted story in #477, Marshall Rogers drew one last adventure (in issues #478 and #479). Len Wein scripted ‘The Coming of… Clayface III’ and ‘If a Man be Made of Clay…’ whilst Dick Giordano replaced Terry Austin as inker on a tale of obsession and tragedy as another Golden-Age villain got a contemporary make-over. Sadly it just wasn’t the same. The magic moment was over, leaving us all wanting more. And surely that’s how it should be.

© 1977, 1978, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.