First, in the spirit of Bronze Age Marvel, I'm kicking off with a crossover between this blog and its sister Materioptikon, where I have been reviewing the DC 100-page Super-spectaculars in my collection...
The local cinema sports an imagistic poster for Christopher Nolan's upcoming Dark Knight, the final instalment in his portentous trilogy, where a grim Batman is juxtaposed with 21st century urban anomie. But my ur-Batman is of course Adam West, rather than Frank Miller's hulking vigilante. As I was learning to read though, the Caped Crusader changed from this:
to this: essentially a horror/supernatural comic in the space of a year or so, from my childish perspective.
My earliest encounters with the Gotham Guardian were actually in British comics: Smash! reprinted Batman newspaper strips in colour on the cover for a couple of years before I went to primary school:
Although I remember it best for The Mysterons, Disney's Scarecrow and the Fighting Prince of Donegal, Solo in 1967 featured a spoof strip, Fatman and Sparrow which became confused in my memories with Smash!
Dig the crazy Mod logo, you cats!
I read several issues of TV Tornado,where I first discovered The Phantom, Magnus: Robot Fighter, Flash Gordon and The Invaders, the alien conspiracy tv show. Batman appeared as a weekly, illustrated text story:
Something about this image unsettled me but in my memory, I'd reversed the composition to a mirror image! Anyway, for years, I thought "catacombs" meant counter-balanced cages.
By the early 70s, Solo, TV Tornado and the Power Comic Fantastic were mouldering scraps that would occasionally turn up, yellowing and eaten by mice, in the old smithy my dad used as a garage. Kirby was launching his Fourth World at DC and Batman was embroiled with Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins. The Adams/O'Neil iteration had obliterated the campy costumed villains but an older style of Masked Manhunter was still available in the Giants.
I love the yellow logo "popping" out of the red balloon; even in early 1971 the tv show's visual style was still resonating. This is an entertaining collection of themed stories from the 50s. Outlaw Town USA sees B&R infiltrate a sanctuary for criminals. In The Duplicate Batman, gang chief "Fish" Frye grooms an imposter who then becomes amnesiac and thinks he really is Batman. My favourite reminds me of an Avengers episode: in The Doors That Hid Disaster, doomed villain Checkmate lures B&R into replicas of traps they'd escaped in the past.
I first read the final Giant Batman (before the Super-Spec era) in May 1972, during my stay in Stonehouse Hospital . That cafeteria and shop was a Sargasso Sea of comics in the early 70s. During the same period, I was given copies of Thor 151 and ToS 99 from 1968!
Again, this giant has a striking, almost funereal cover.
Jim Mooney's The Death-Cheaters of Gotham City is another Avengers-ish plot where the members of a macabre club are picked off by a rejected crook called, ahem, Little Dougy. It's probably one of the most memorable stories in this collection. The Other Bruce Wayne is a cousin and private eye and another relative is introduced in the farcical Bruce Wayne's Aunt Agatha-no relation to Dick's Aunt Harriet.
The Murder of Bruce Wayne is another noir-ish howdunnit with a tragic and demented villain but my favourite is The Crime of Bruce Wayne. Robin and Kathy Kane have to save Bruce from Death Row when he is framed by a suave villain called the Collector. Although I prefer Batgirl-Babs, I have a fondness for the earnest, adventurous Batwoman. She really deserved to be in the original line-up of the JLA.
These clever and diverting tales represent one of my favourite eras in the Bat-canon.I don't have a copy of the fourth 100-page Batman issue but the next in my collection - the sixth- features the Princess of Plunder, seen here in the "Mod" style she wore in our earliest encounters:
The concluding part of this crossover takes place on my Materioptikon blog, Frantic One!
Next: Taisbeanadh Comaig Eadar-naiseanta na Gaidhealtachd
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I've still got my copy of that black-covered Batman Giant above. Funny thing about hospital shops - they always seemed to have a good supply of comics not available elsewhere. I was toying with the idea of doing a post on the subject recently - think i will now.
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