This addition to my collection was thanks in part to that brief period in time when wholesale emporium Ollie's bought several dozen truckloads of DC and Vertigo overstock. I think it was 2017 or 18 when those of us fortunate to live near an Ollie's could go to the discount shop and buy massive treasuries of DC's finest for pennies on the dollar. I lived within an hour of 6 locations and I was able to make huge additions to my collection without hurting my budget.
Unfortunately, being that DC's inventory was being liquidated en masse, it really was a crap-shoot as to what each store got. For instance, the Durham, NC location got 30 copies of the Strange Adventures trade from 2010 but only 1 copy of the Silver Age Suicide Squad Omnibus. That's how I ended up with Showcase Presents Batman, Vol. 6.
The black & white reprints of Showcase Presents were highly coveted by us bargain hunters. I was able to get both volumes of The Atom's exploits. I got all 3 Aquaman books. I even found a copy of the massive collection of reprints of the events of the Great Disaster, featuring the Atomic Knights. Yet, for some reason, every location in central North Carolina got dozens of Batman, Vol 6. No 1,2,3,4 or 5. Just #6!
This volume covers the beginnings of the Denny O'Neil era of the Caped Crusader. (His first run. After a 6-year return stint to Marvel, O'Neil would begin a second memorable stint as a Batman writer in 1986.) The first thing O'Neil and his Green Lantern/Green Arrow collaborator Neal Adams would do to Batman was make him the Dark Knight again. The 1960s ABC series would make the Batman Family quite campy. Now it's the 1970s and everything is dark again.
Batman would face one of his greatest foes in this run, Ra's al Ghul. Whereas with a villain like the Joker or Two-Face, Batman would beat the crap out of them and return them to jail quick. With Ra's, Batman plays the long game. It's further complicated by the addition of Ghul's daughter Talia, with whom the Batman has a mutual attraction with. Over the course of a half-dozen issues, Batman and Ra's al Ghul have a worldwide pissing match, with the eco-terrorist trying to size up The Detective as his potential replacement and Batman trying to figuring out just what his new foe is up to.
That's just the Batman books. In the pages of Detective Comics, Frank Robbins, Dick Giordano and others are making Batman earn his reputation as the World's Greatest Detective. These stories are a mixed bag. They don't feature any of Batman's main villains. Mostly just small time crooks, murderers and in one case, a prison riot full of white supremacists and black power soldiers.
Robbins' art is excellent. His ability to be the next Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is something else. Some mysteries are really good. Many are missing something. Mostly clues. Well, they're there because Batman reveals them at the end of each story. Frank Robbins just seems to forget to let the readers in on things.
Thankfully, you don't need Volume 5 to get caught up on things in this edition. Unlike the Marvel black and white reprints (Essential Marvel), the DC collections don't make readers have to get the next volume in order to wrap up a storyline. I would love to get my hands on the first 5 volumes. What I really wish is that there was a volume 7, and then 8, and then 9. One of the biggest crimes against comic books was having both DC and Marvel scrap these fan favorite collections in favor of very expensive, page lacking color collections. That's big business for ya...
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment