TF Views

The Batman Golden Age Omnibus vol. 1 arrived in the mail today. I'll swipe the Amazon description to summarize the contents:

"The stories that catapulted Batman to legendary status are collected here in a single, massive volume. These original stories from DETECTIVE COMICS #27-56, BATMAN #1-7, NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR COMICS #2, WORLD'S BEST COMICS #1 and WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #2-3 include the origin of the Dark Knight, as well as the debuts of Robin, Commissioner Gordon, Professor Hugo Strange, The Joker, Catwoman and more! BATMAN: THE GOLDEN AGE OMNIBUS VOL. 1 features the work of such luminaries as Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, Jerry Robinson and more!"

The book essentially has every Batman story from May 1939 to November 1941, and runs over 800 pages. The cover design is very similar to the Golden Age Superman omnibus, down to the Darwyn Cooke retro cover image, lettering style, cover from the first appearance on the spine of the book, and a retro logo on the cover. I have Batman Chronicles vol. 1, meaning I already had the first 25% of this book, but it's like upgrading from VHS to Blu-ray. The paper is better, the book is larger, and the art reproduction is sharper and clearer, particularly on the story from Detective Comics 27. All the previous collections had used the redrawn version from 70s reprints, while this volume uses the correct original and gives Batman his purple gloves from that first story. I've read that a Golden Age Superman vol. 2 has been spotted on Amazon, so maybe both Superman and Batman will continue. I'm hoping that's the case. The omnibus format is the ideal way to collect this old material.

I sometimes wonder what made Batman so much more successful than most other characters of the 1940s, to the point that he survived and continued publication when almost all other superheroes were gone (other than Superman and WW, of course). It's not as though the stories and art are miles ahead of other 1940s DC characters. Maybe the origin story strikes a chord with readers, or the look of the character, or the supporting cast... it's hard to say. I guess in a lot of ways Batman is simply a more well-developed and versatile character than the Flash, or Hawkman or Green Lantern.

Batman's First Year
JT and I have both gone over this material before since both of us own volume 1 of the Batman Chronicles, the chronological paperback series that DC was publishing for a while. It looks like the omnibus collections have replaced the Chronicles, and I think that's a good thing. The Chronicles were cheaper, but I was never a fan of the paper used in them. Each of the omnibus collections contains the equivalent of four Chronicles, printed at a larger size on better paper. Of course this is the third time this material has been reprinted in collected form, first in various archive series (Batman, Batman The Dark Knight, World's Finest Archives), and then in the Chronicles. DC spent the money on restoration long ago, so I would guess the overhead is less and the profits are higher every time they sell the same material again.

Batman's origin and first year of stories feel very familiar. The modern day interpretation of Batman could be plugged into them with very few changes. He's even wearing black and gray at first, with blue highlights, though the blue will come to dominate in a very short time. Many of the familiar components are there right from the start. Bruce Wayne, bored socialite. Commissioner Gordon and the police, who are as willing to capture Batman as they are to go after the criminals. As far as they're concerned, Batman is one of the criminals. Batman is a detective as well as a skilled hand to hand fighter. There is murder, street level thugs, crime, and death traps, all in six pages. The stories that follow add some supernatural elements like the Monk, a werewolf/vampire hybrid. It's easy to see what Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams drew on for their "back to his roots" Batman stories of the early 1970s. Bruce Wayne is also engaged, interestingly, to an aspiring actress named Julie Madison. I think Scott Snyder is currently using the character in the modern day Batman series.

Very soon, the character and series begin to change. I doubt it's more than six to eight months before the costume is more blue than black, and Batman is beginning to throw quips at the thugs that he fights. He gets an origin story about eight months into his existence, and as is typical of the 1940s, it takes only two pages to detail the murder of Bruce's parents by a gunman in an alley, Bruce's vow to spend the rest of his life fighting crime, and the sequence where Bruce trains himself in body and mind. The last few panels show him puzzling over his need for a disguise, when he is inspired by the bat at the window. "I shall become a bat!" Call it the more shallow characterization of older comics if you like, but Bruce Wayne never comes across as driven or obsessed or crazy. He simply determines the direction his life will take, and all his energies are directed towards accomplishing his goal. He sees that goal as one he will pursue for the rest of his life.

The introduction of Robin is what will finally change the series into a more lighthearted adventure strip, and transform Batman into a father/big brother character as he trains Dick Grayson to be a crimefighter like himself. Dick Grayson loses his parents to crime just as Bruce Wayne had, and it's clear that Bruce empathizes with the boy. It's implied that Bruce's original intention was just to allow Dick to stay long enough to deal with his parents' killers, but Dick elects to remain and continue fighting crime. If there is ever anything that even to this day depicts Batman's roots in the more innocent comic book storytelling of the 1940s, it's the fact that he took a child dressed in bright red, yellow and green with him to fight thugs, gangsters and supervillains. That is still a part of the character's history, 75 years later. Writers have tried to rationalize the decision to make it work in the more cynical age of comics that we live in, but Dick Grayson's existence still requires a pretty willing suspension of disbelief, no matter how often they redesign the Robin costume.

At the end of the first year, Batman #1 is published, and with that book comes the Joker. He gets his first story and then a return, both in the same issue. In between we get a throwback solo Batman story vs. Hugo Strange, and the first Catwoman story. Even at this early date, Batman is smitten with Catwoman (the Cat, as she's called here), and has to remind himself that he has Julie, while Robin looks on without a clue. We had some early attempts at establishing a rogue's gallery for Batman with Hugo Strange and Doctor Death, but characters that will stand the test of time finally appear in this first issue.

To summarize: Batman's first year is spent first setting up the character as someone who is more than a little ruthless, and someone who fights criminals and supernatural menaces while staying clear of police. All of this is then deliberately thrown out in favor of a lighter, brighter persona for Batman, who gains a colorful kid sidekick and colorful villains. And that's the way he would stay for the next 25 years, until the "New Look" of the mid 60s.

Your review nicely sums up my problem with Batman, which I have only been able to articulate in the last few years.


Conceptually, I like shorter (no more than 3 issues) Batman stories. I like the street-level (and occasionally supernatural) adversaries. But, stylistically (in terms of tone and quality), I prefer post-Bronze Age comics. There is very little over-lap between short subject and modern. (Still not sure why I like short-subject bat-books, rather than proper long-form.)

The Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run of Batman stories is my idea of a good, solid use of the character. It pits him against street level crime, the occasional supernatural menace, and incorporates his villains into the story from time to time, as well as adding new ones. I really like the early 70s O'Neil/Adams stories as well, though there is a lot of 70s Batman I have yet to read.

So needless to say, when it comes to 1940s Batman, that first year is closer to the type of stories I like to see, and the lighter approach is more of an acquired taste. And it's not as though the elements are tossed aside entirely. The first Clayface story is a murder mystery, and very much like the first year in tone and substance, even though Batman himself is certainly more establishment than vigilante. It's an odd mix.

I was flipping through the book looking at covers, and the last story reprinted features Gordon deputizing Batman. It really doesn't seem to fit the character at all, but it happened. One of the newspaper strips actually has Batman refer to the approach of sneaking around, preying on the fears and superstitions of criminals as "the way we used to do things".

Moving through Batman's second year, the series generally stabilizes and just tells stories with the new status quo of Batman and Robin. The first year is where they establish and then evolve the character, but the second year is much more stable.

- There's a proto-Harvey Bullock character in the form of Detective McGonagal who tries to capture the Batman, and even succeeds once or twice, but he's ultimately easily outwitted by Batman.
- Batman is still wanted by the police, so he stays out of their way.
- Robin is much less of a "kid in distress" than I thought he would be. He does get captured and have to be rescued on more than one occasion, but he's often a very effective fighter against men twice his size. And he ends up rescuing Batman in several instances. In addition, the writers build several stories around the fact that a kid can sneak around the city streets and be ignored where a grown man could not. One story has a murder in an exclusive boys' school, so Dick Grayson is able to go undercover to investigate.
- The costumed villains (Joker, the Cat) are usually confined to the main Batman title, while Detective Comics deals with either garden variety criminals, or one-shot villains. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but by and large it seems like the two titles try to maintain some level of distinctiveness.
- Bruce Wayne's fiance Julie is written out of the series after having a very minimal presence in it.
- There's still no Alfred or Batcave, though Batman's car is referred to as the Batmobile for the first time. There are rudimentary beginnings of the idea of a secret base for Batman. It seems for a long time as if he lives in the city, but later on he's in a house on some land with a barn nearby, and the barn has a hidden tunnel to his house. He even uses this to fool a gangster who has (correctly) deduced that Bruce Wayne is the Batman based on the fact that Wayne is always hanging around with Commissioner Gordon.
- Batman makes just as many wisecracks while fighting thugs as Robin does.
- returning villains include Hugo Strange, the Joker, the Cat (who has a thing for Batman and vice versa, even at this early date) and the first Clayface, Basil Karlo. The Joker's return from seemingly certain death is explained on more than one occasion. As with the tying up of loose ends with Julie Madison, the writers do make an effort to keep up with continuity. We don't have ongoing storylines, but when characters come and go, it's always explained.

Having nearly finished the Batman omnibus, and thus having read the first two and a half years of both Batman and Superman, I have to say that the art and storytelling on Superman was generally much better. Batman is a fairly standard crime series with some supernatural villains thrown in from time to time, and a few appearances by his early rogues. I definitely prefer Superman's "social justice warrior" approach, and of course the classic Clark/Lois/Superman interaction is present almost from day one,while over in Batman we're missing so many of the now standard cast and settings. There's no Batcave, no Alfred, and limited appearances by Commissioner Gordon. It's still a series in development.

All of this is not to say that Batman hasn't been enjoyable, but I think it's the lesser of the two series. And it's interesting that it sold better than the other series of the day, because the quality of the writing and art aren't really all that different from the Flash, or Green Lantern, or Starman, etc. Something about the character just clicked with the readership I suppose.

Blackest Night

I'm not a big fan of the zombie genre, which may be why I skipped this series when it was published. Blackest Night is "zombies in space" more or less, and it's "everyone vs. Nekron", an entity who wants to destroy all life in the universe, apparently because it will give him some peace and quiet. He's not exactly a complex villain.

Two things make this story work very well.
1. it attempts to address the never ending problem of character death and resurrection in comic books. One of the things this story emphasizes is the sheer amount of characters that have been killed off by DC in the years between 1985 and 2010, or whenever this story was published. It turns out that Nekron is the one who sent them all back to life, as part of his plan to ultimately control them and kill the white entity, extinguishing all life in the universe forever. That's not a bad plotline as these things go. At the end of the story, Hal says that he thinks "dead means dead" and we all know that's never going to happen, but the effort to make some in-universe sense of the trope is a nice idea.

2. The sheer amount of characters and continuity woven into this story should make it confusing, but it isn't. Johns has a good grasp on the history of which characters are dead, and what their relationship to the still living was, and he uses that to tell his story as the black lanterns feed on emotions. Aquaman was dead at the time, so he's used to taunt Mera. Dolphin and Tula go after Aqualad/Garth and kill him. The dead Elongated Man and his wife attack Hawkman and Hawkgirl. On and on it goes. In many ways the story revolves around character history and relationships (which means it couldn't be told post Flashpoint). It's very plot heavy, but it's character driven as well. If there's ever an argument about the usefulness of DC's long history and continuity to build an event, Blackest Night is an example of how to do it right.

Despite the fact that just about every DC character gets a cameo or a part in the story, the main characters are Hal Jordan and the recently resurrected Barry Allen, so we have a Silver Age team taking part in a very dark, modern storyline. I'm not a big fan of Barry Allen, but the character does come across better here than he did in his own 12 issue pre-Flashpoint series. And his presence is thematically appropriate in a story about death and resurrection since he was the first real major DC character to be killed off back in Crisis, something Nekron even alludes to. Johns has a generally good grasp of characters here, down to the point where the rings deputize various characters. Barry Allen gets a blue ring, Lex Luthor ends up with an orange ring (and is as useless to the fight as Larfleeze), Mera gets a red ring, and in a brilliant move, the Scarecrow gets a yellow ring and is giddy with delight.

It's a strong story overall, with some great Ivan Reis artwork. It really is Geoff Johns on top form, showing what he can do when he really puts his mind to it.

Johns' big problem is that he is too much of a fanboy at heart, and often seems more interested in "fixing things back the way they were in "the good ol' days" than in doing something new. (I have still not forgiven him for bringing back Jordan Lantern and Allen Flash.) \

In some ways, he is the new Mark Gruenwald. If there something that needs to be papered over, or pieces to be moved, he is probably the best around. But, that is not the same as doing something new.

andersonh1 wrote:Blackest Night

Am I in the right thread? I mean, this only came out 6-7 years ago...

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of zombies either, but this I have to say was a great story which Johns had been building towards since Green Lantern Rebirth. And it does not disappoint. While I do think DC went a little overboard with all of the tie-ins, I am glad they expanded it to being a company wide crossover, given death is something that has touched the lives of every character in the DC universe. And they really were able to show that full scope in this story.

Dominic wrote:Johns' big problem is that he is too much of a fanboy at heart, and often seems more interested in "fixing things back the way they were in "the good ol' days" than in doing something new. (I have still not forgiven him for bringing back Jordan Lantern and Allen Flash.)

In some ways, he is the new Mark Gruenwald. If there something that needs to be papered over, or pieces to be moved, he is probably the best around. But, that is not the same as doing something new.

I really have to disagree with you Dom. Johns doesn't "fix things back to the way they were". Sure he brought back Hal and Barry, but in doing so he didn't ignore all the history that had happened since they died either. These weren't characters that simply returned to the good ol' days, they had to deal with how the world had changed in their absence. And that's something Johns seems to excel at. Taking an old idea and does something new with it at the same time. I mean, look at all the new stuff that Johns introduced in Green Lantern during his time on the book.

Sparky Prime wrote:

andersonh1 wrote:Blackest Night

Am I in the right thread? I mean, this only came out 6-7 years ago...

Yeah, but it didn't seem to belong in the current comics thread. I debated a bit and finally went with Retro. If nothing else, this story simply could not be told in the same way in current DC continuity, given how much it depends on character history and relationships that no longer exist, so it's definitely retro.

And that's something Johns seems to excel at. Taking an old idea and does something new with it at the same time. I mean, look at all the new stuff that Johns introduced in Green Lantern during his time on the book.

Agreed, and that's his main strength as a writer. He seems to have a huge grasp of DC history and continuity, and he can take a jumble of old stories and ideas and do something new with them.