Showcase Presents: Batman, Vol. 6

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.

Batman Odyssey

Neal Adams returns to some of his most beloved characters in the DC Universe. But man, is this book a stinker. Throughout two miniseries, Batman asks the question 'Is a Batman who kills still Batman?' And as he tries to find the answer, he becomes embroiled in a caper of unimaginable silliness.

Bruce Wayne constantly flying off the handle. Ra's al Ghul in need of the Dark Knight Detective from his League of Assassins and is kinda a wimp. A hollow land in the middle of the earth made up of evolved Dino-hybrids. A caveman Caped Crusader! A solid state and visible Deadman. A Boy Wonder, almost eaten by trolls. And Batman gets giddy as a school boy when he breaks a bucking pterodactyl!

It all really doesn't make much sense. 

Here's the deal- if Adams hadn't tied everything up in a very nice, shiny package, Batman Odyssey may very well be the worst comic book I have ever read. 

On several occasions, I was ready to give up on this book. I took a couple of medium sized breaks from it as well. (To take a breather any longer would mean possibly forgetting just what exactly was going on.) I adore Neal Adams' work. I don't know what the hell this was!

Age is not the friend of an artist. The joints swell. The eyesite fades. And that stamina to do an all-nighter is gone. And the quality of Neal's work has definitely seen the affects of time. 

It's like when I watched Disney's The Black Hole after years of enjoying and marveling at it as a child. Returning to it as an adult was not pretty. The sci-fi movie I loved so as a wee child was in reality garbage. Sometimes, it's best to allow the good things of your past stay there. For me, that means not reading anything of Neal Adams' that was published after 1999.

Not Worth Consuming!

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars.

Batman '66 Meets Wonder Woman '77

A decades spanning epic starring the cast of Batman '66, Wonder Woman '77 and Ra's al Ghul!

Jeff Parker does a masterful job starting the story in the 1940s in which the first season of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series was set. Then we jump to the 1966 era Batman and finally we end up in 1977 where we meet an aged and retired Batman, a grown-up Robin now Nightwing and a new Commissioner Gordon.

To me, there was one BIG continuity error as the first act had the Eartha Kitt Catwoman. But in the second two-thirds of the story, she's white. Jeff Parker claimed that he did this in order to honor all three actresses who played Catwoman during the run of the Batman TV show. However, in previous issues of Batman '66, it was established that both the Eartha Kitt and Lee Meriwether  Catwomen were 'copy-cat' thieves taking advantage of the Julie Newmar's Catwoman being incarcerated in Arkham. So while the tribute is great and all that, it contradicts canon that Jeff Parker himself had established in this franchise of Batman '66 titles.

Regardless of the mistake, this was a really good story. I only hope that this isn't the end of the Batman '66 tales. I really would like to see Batman '66 meet Superman '78 and Flash '90. That last one might be a little too far in the future to really happen. Though the Flash does have the ability to time travel. But maybe we'll see those Legends of Superheroes characters one day. 

Hey, a comic book collector can dream...

Featuring some great covers by two of my personal favorites Alex Ross and Michael Allred!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Year One: Batman/ Ra's al Ghul

   The nearly 600 hundred-year-old Ra's al Ghul is  finally good and dead. To prevent his resurrection the Batman had him cremated and then destroyed all of the world's Lazarus Pits, the source of Ra's near immortality. It seems that the terrorist leader has no viable way of returning to life. But when a letter from beyond arrives at Wayne Manor, it signals the beginning of a global catastrophe!

   The dead have arisen and are mysteriously healing. Plus, those who have been brutally murdered or recently suffered fatal injuries aren't dying either. Now the hospitals are overrun with the infirmed and the streets of Gotham run red with blood and the regenerating dead.

   It appears that mother earth doesn't like there not being any Lazarus Pits and thus thrown the world it out of balance. To restore entropy to its rightful place in the circle of life, the Dark Knight must embark on a global quest to recreate the Lazarus Pit formula or the entire planet with regress back into nothing. Should this happen al Ghul's dream of an earth unadulterated by the pollution of man with come to fruition posthumously.

   I chose to read this book in anticipation as to when I'll be seeing Batman V Superman next weekend. I'm going to go out and say it- I don't like Ra's al Ghul! I love Damian Wayne. I'm fascinated by Talia al Ghul. But the man known as the Demon's Head just doesn't excite me like a Riddler or Penguin.

   Filled with 'zombies' galore and not being rated for mature readers, this book is pretty graphic. Decapitations, blood, gore, and maimings in general, this book's favorite color appears to be scarlet. Plus, you add the incoherent ramblings of Ra's letter that act as the narration of this story- it all adds up to a really awful read, filled at least with a great couple of plot twists at book's end.

   If I'm not a fan of Ra's, then why buy this book? Well, being a 'Year One' story, which I collect, I thought this would be a good addition to my plunder. With flashbacks that reveal Ra's al Ghul's origin story, as well as a look at one of the earliest encounters between the ecoterrorist and the Detective, this book fits the Year One guidelines. 

   But I would've like to have the very first meeting between the two characters, first explored by Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams back in Detective Comics #232 (June 1972) recounted in this book. Maybe it would've helped me to better understand and like the character of the Demon's Head. But, I doubt it.

   Not Worth Consuming

   Rating: 4 out of 10 stars.