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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 3, 2018 17:42:39 GMT -5
I can't say I've ever been much of a fan of Anarky in any version of the character. He first appeared in Detective Comics #608 and #609, and I probably read these or skimmed them when they first came out. I definitely remember not much liking the character in the ensuing years when I wasn't reading Batman and Detective regularly, but I was picking it up from time to time. I can't say I specifically remember anything from these first two issues, aside from the Anarky suit including a mannequin head that the kid (Anarky) balances on his real head, and that nobody notices that his arms protrude from his ribcage. That costume might work in the Golden Age, maybe in a Newsboy Legion or Boy Commandos story. ("Hey! The Bronx Bruiser is just a kid … like us!" "No wonda his arms stuck outta his ribcage!" or "Zut alors! Ze Butcher of Bremen eez a shrimpy little keed!" "No wonda his arms stuck outta his waist!") But I have a hard time imagining Bob Haney trying to get away with this, even in the 1960s! (Well, maybe that's going a bit too far! Haney was SHAMELESS … and maybe he could have pulled it off in The Teen Titans!) So I don't hate this two-part story, but it's never been something that made me eager to re-read the Wagner/Breyfogle issues! Coming up next - A Penguin story that I definitely remember from 1989. I've never had any trouble expressing how much I like this one! |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 5, 2018 14:05:12 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that, when I hit Detective Comics #589 a few weeks ago, I had read 200 issues of Detective Comics in a row!
That's a record for me. There's been a few times when I read 140 to 150 issues of some series in a row. Mostly involving some Bronze Age Marvels, notably Hulk, Fantastic Four and Avengers. I had every issue of Daredevil from #1 to #240, but I don't remember ever reading that many issues consecutively. Maybe #80 to #200?
But that was a long time ago. The 1980s. A few years ago, when I had just started to fill in the big holes in my Detective Comics collection, I read every issue of Detective Comics from Knightfall to #800. That's almost exactly 140 issues of Detective Comics (but doesn't include numerous cross-over issues during things like Knightfall or Prodigal).
It's fun to spend months of your life reading one or two issues of the same comic book series every night!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2018 21:34:56 GMT -5
Hoosier X -- I call that Dedication ... Congratulations !!!
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 10, 2018 2:03:04 GMT -5
Next up is a two-part Penguin story in Detective Comics #610 and #611. Despite my long-time disdain for this period, I've long had a fondness for both Penguin storylines from 1990, "Snow and Ice" in these issues and then the Penguin Affair in Batman #448, Detective Comics #615 and Batman #449. "Snow and Ice" begins with the Penguin's funeral. He's not really dead. But his henchmen have to free Kadaver from prison in order to bring their boss back to life because he has withheld the REAL way to revive the Penguin from a death-like state. Kadaver doesn't long survive his double-cross. Really, Kadaver. You're not half as clever as you think you are, and you were really pushing it trying to compete in the big league. And from there, we get into the middle of a Penguin plot that's worthy of the Fowl Felon. This isn't just a good Penguin tale, it's a great Penguin scheme! Maybe it's not quite "Bargains in Banditry" or "Parasols of Plunder," but I rank this one pretty high! And then we have a few that aren't very good. I've never thought much of Detective Comics #612. And this time reading it, my opinion didn't improve. I suppose I might like it if I had never heard of Catman or Catwoman. "Trash," in Detective Comics #613 is also pretty bad. It's about a kid writing a paper for school about garbage. And his dad is a garbageman, so he rides around with his dad in the garbage truck. So anyway these generic Gotham garbage thugs threaten the dad because he's an independent contractor with the city and picking up the garbage in their territory can be DANGEROUS, if ya get my meaning, pal. Anyway Batman gets involved and the kid hides on top of the garbage truck when his dad drives to the big showdown at the city landfill and tragedy ensues. Also, this is Vicki Vale's first appearance in Detective Comics after quite a long absence. She might have been in the regular Batman comic before this. I wouldn't know because I haven't read most of those. This one's OK. Some young punks are marked for a major beatdown by the Street Demonz gang when they accidentally lead Batman to the gang's hide-out. Batman uses it as a teaching moment to try to get the kids to stay in school and not be scummy generic Gotham hoodlums. "The Penguin Affair" is so awesome! I think it's even better than "Snow and Ice"! Another great scheme on the part of the Penguin! Plus, he has a great henchwoman, an Amazonian chauffeur named Lark. And he rescues a tech genius hunchback named Harold who will become part of the Batman family until eventually a future writer will realize that everybody forgot about him, and poor Harold suffered the fictional-character equivalent of starving to death because the editorial staff forgot to feed him during vacation. Also, the Penguin develops an obsession for a TV actress who plays a scheming seductress on a weekly soap opera. Her name in the show is Heron and the Penguin kidnaps her! Marv Wolfman wrote the first part and the concluding part, but Alan Wagner did a great job on his chapter. Jim Aparo inked by Mike DeCarlo in the first part, and Mark Bright art in the second. In the Detective issue, the art is Breyfogle and Mitchell. (And it's all great!) You know what? I'd rather pretend that Detective Comics #616 didn't happen. Detective Comics #617 is a prelude to a two-part Joker story in Batman #450 and #451. It uses a tarot card theme as Batman stops a thief from robbing a fortune teller, who then reads Batman's cards. The card known as The Fool (or Le Mat) indicates a Joker story is in the future. My only problem with this idea is that a tarot-themed series of crimes would be great for the Joker! But they never go anywhere near it! I rather like the Joker story in Batman #450 and #451. After recovering from his latest death in a helicopter crash, the Joker is back with a series of murders. But his latest crimes are a little bit off because the jokes are so bad. A judge known as "the hanging judge" is found with a noose around his neck, dead in his home. To illustrate a shaggy dog story, some shaggy dogs kill some people. It's fairly awful, and Batman begins to suspect that it's somebody pretending to be the Joker. As a matter of fact, the jokes are SO BAD that the Joker returns from the dead to protect his reputation! Part of the beauty of this story is just how bad the jokes are. And the fake Joker is constantly explaining the jokes to his henchmen and the victims and the witnesses and whoever. "Get it? He's a hanging judge! So I hanged him! Ha ha ha!" I actually could see the Joker doing a series of theme crimes based on really bad puns, but he wouldn't be bothering to explain the jokes so pathetically. He would just kill anybody unwise enough not to pretend that he's hilarious! I've read up to Detective Comics #620, but I'm still in the dreary storyline about how Tim Drake's mother was killed in Haiti and his father was paralyzed. I had forgotten how much I hate this story! So #617 seems like a good place to stop commenting for a few days. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 10, 2018 11:47:12 GMT -5
I finished Detective #621 last night just so I could get through this four-part story about how Tim Drake's parents go through hell at the hands of voodoo practitioners just so they can drink poisoned water at the end after Batman has saved them from being cast in the fire pit. Tim's mother dies, Tim's father lives, but he is in a sorry state, and one of the ongoing features of Tim's life will be helping with his father's recovery. I always liked Tim Drake when I started reading Batman comics regularly a few years after this, but I have never liked this four-part story, which I would call Tim Drake's Origin: Year Two because it just seems to go on and on. There is just no reason for this to be four parts. Up next is a three-parter with Dick Sprang covers! And John Ostrander writing! And a trippy little comic-book-within-the-comic-book that is seems like something you would pick up at a newsstand in Gotham City. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 12, 2018 23:04:03 GMT -5
I'm up to Detective Comics #627, which is a minor milestone for me as #627 was the first brand-new issue of Detective Comics that I bought fresh from the newsstand after dropping the title as of #580. Celebrating the 600th appearance of Batman in Detective Comics, #627 reprints the six-page "Case of the Chemical Syndicate" from Detective Comics #27 (which I've read about a zillion times). (And it's actually the 601st appearance of Batman in Detective.) It also reprints an homage from Detective Comics #387 (from the 1960s) written by Mike Friedrich with art by Bob Brown. I've read this pretty recently, when I got my own copy of #387 several months ago. And there are two more treatments of the same basic story by the then-current Batman creative teams from Batman's comic and from Detective Comics - Marv Wolfman, Jim Aparo and Mile DeCarlo on one hand, and then Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell on the other. I remember thinking this was a lot of fun back in 1991, and it holds up pretty well. Especially that Aparo/DeCarlo art! |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 14, 2018 18:51:45 GMT -5
I'm up to Detective Comics #632, which is the second (and concluding) part of a storyline about the Gotham City golem. Batman slowed it down by dropping a statue of Ganesh on it and then persuaded the old Jewish man (who created the golem) to rub the "e" off "emeth" in order to transform it back to ordinary clay. But I really wanted to talk about Detective Comics #630! This is the one with Two Tone, the two-headed assassin! One of his heads is black and the other one is white! And he otherwise dresses like a generic Gotham City gangster of the 1950s! Here's the scene where Two Tone rams a bus into the Gotham Bus Terminal! He is so cray-cray! The story starts with Batman finding Two Tone dead, and then reminiscing about that epic struggle. So most of the story is a flashback. I used to think of Two Tone as the official worst Batman villain! But he's actually kind of fun! I have certainly done my share of making fun of him over the years. He's more like "What if Edward D. Wood Jr made up a Batman villain?" and so he's very entertaining even if he makes no sense! (A truly bad Batman villain would be Abbatoir, who's been in a few of the issues of Detective I've been reading lately. He's just bad. No charm at all. No jokes about Abbatoir come to mind.) If I was writing Batman, I would bring back Two Tone SO FAST! But only once. I'd have the Joker in an alley at a bad moment in his latest caper. He's managed to escape the Batman and the police, but for how long? He runs into Two Tone in the alley. He thinks he's saved! "This bottom-feeder in the Batman rogues gallery will simply JUMP at the chance to help a Gotham Underworld star like me! Then I'll just leave him to the wolves when the time is ripe." But before he can say a word, Two Tone beats the hell out of him. It seems that Two Tone is still mighty sore about being left out every time the rogues gallery gets together to carry out one of their periodic complicated schemes to get rid of Batman once and for all! The Joker barely manages to drag his mangled body into the nearest GCPD patrol car to give himself up. And Two Tone walks away, grinning, ready for the next Ambush Bug Special. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2018 19:04:58 GMT -5
I have never, ever seen this far out cover - almost futuristic in design ...  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 15, 2018 15:59:39 GMT -5
I'm up to Detective Comics #636. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 15, 2018 16:01:37 GMT -5
Something I am looking forward to in the next 20 issues of Detective Comics: "The Return of Scarface!"
Something I am NOT looking forward to: "The Idiot Root!"
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 16, 2018 18:55:27 GMT -5
Well, I was going to read "Destroyer" (in Batman #474, Legends of the Dark Knight #27 and Detective Comics #641) this afternoon. But I pulled out the next batch of Detective issues a few nights ago, and I was flipping through them, and I saw there's several storylines that flow through multiple different comic-book series. But I file the Batman issues (#475 and #476) of "The Return of Scaface" with my Detective Comics collection. And "The Idiot Root" was so bad in the Detective Comics issues (#639 and #640) that I never bought the Batman issues (#472 and #473) , so I don't have to worry about that. However, "Destroyer" is a storyline that I bought when it first came out (late 1991) and I didn't like it very much and I don't think I've read it since the early 1990s. So I have never gotten around to pulling out the non-Detective issues and filing them with Detective Comics #641. I pulled out Legends of the Dark Knight #27, but I forgot to pull out Batman #474. And when I went to get it this afternoon, the foster cat Harley (we call her Harley Quinn because she's a tortoise-shell kitty and her ragdoll appearance gives her some small resemblance to a harlequin) was asleep on the box that contains a bunch of my early 1990s Batman comics. Harley is a little sweetheart who loves EVERYBODY as soon as she meets them (including our 80-pound pit bull!) and I just couldn't bring myself to disturb her. And she's been taking a very long nap on that box. (Harley has a hard life. She's appointed herself mother to a group of three-month-old foster kittens, and they are a handful! She belonged to a hoarder and she has a chronic sinus infection. Her terrible ear infection cleared up but she has a ruptured eardrum and doesn't hear very well in the other ear. She sleeps like a rock! I never saw a cat that sleeps so soundly.) Hopefully, I will get to Batman #474 tonight when I get off work. It hasn't been my plan lately to report on every issue of Detective Comics that I read. This period has its ups and downs. (I don't know if I'm going to comment on "Destroyer," but I will have to make some time for the next two stories, "The Return of Scarface" and "Library of Souls.") "The Idiot Root" is a four-part story that ran in two issues of Batman (#472 and #473) and two issues of Detective (#639 and #640) and I bought the two issues of Detective Comics in 2011 or 2012 when I was filling in the gaps in my 1990s Detective Comics collection. And I didn't like them at all, so I never bought the Batman issues. And I didn't like them this time. Maybe I shouldn't be too harsh since I've never read the whole thing, but I really have no desire to find those two issues of Batman and I very much have my doubts that reading the whole thing will improve my opinion. I will say that I've softened my formerly harsh view of Peter Milligan as a Batman writer. There's still quite a few of his stories that I don't like, but I'm warming to a few of these stories that I used to think were pretty bad, and I now feel like giving him some credit for experimenting. Some of these experiments are pretty good. And some of them … well, let's just say they're not among my favorites. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 18, 2018 0:32:37 GMT -5
I read "The Return of Scarface" (from Batman #475, Detective Comics #642 and Batman #476) over the last couple of days. I still love it … but it's not quite the classic I remember. Oh, the scenes with Scarface are still great! Scarface and his gang are hilarious! (In a morbid way, if you are amused by this kind of thing.) The Ventriloquist and Rhino have to put Scarface back together, but with a few scraps of wood and some paint and some glue, Scarface returns, better than ever! And then it's time to get the gang back together, kill a stoolie, rub out the competition and maybe just maybe KILL THE GATMAN! What I didn't like was that Scarface and his gang took care of the Street Demonz (with a US Army tank that "fell off a truck," I guess) and ended up back in their old Gotham City crime niche, and then didn't have a showdown with the Batman. It ended with Batman unaware that Scarface was back! So the story isn't really resolved, it's just a set-up for another epic battle that I never saw. (Maybe Scarface returned in an issue of Batman that I've never seen. But the next place I ever saw the Ventriloquist and Scarface was in Knightfall.) Another thing that rubs me the wrong way is the Vicki Vale subplot. Vicki is wounded in her role as a Gotham City photojournalist, and while she's recuperating, Bruce Wayne decides to call off the relationship. Which is fine in the context of this story because this version of Vicki Vale is kind of dull! In the Wein/Moench years, I used to find her kind of annoying, with that orange perm and her pseudo-Lois Lane vibe. But she's grown on me over the years. I like her now. But I don't really like her in "The Return of Scarface." She has the name (Vicki Vale), the job (photojournalist) and a new hair-do. Wherever they stuck her perm, they stashed her personality along with it, and I'm not liking the change. I just read "Library of Souls" in Detective Comics #643, but it's getting late and I'm a bit tired, so I'm going to reserve my comments on this classic-of-a-kind for later. As I'm pretty busy tomorrow, you might have to wait until Thursday. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 19, 2018 13:50:16 GMT -5
I love Detective Comics #643 so much! When I first read it six or seven years ago, I thought it was just so dumb. So dumb dumb dumb. But over the years, I've come to realize the wonderful stupendous MAGNIFICENT nature of its dumbness. SPOLIER! - I'm going to put a spoiler here. Dedicated Batman fans who are curious about this era of Detective Comics should just stop right now and not read any more about "The Library of Souls." Because part of the charm and amazement (for me anyway) when I first read it was that I had no idea this story even existed. So stop right there! Months from now, YEARS from now, you will come across "The Library of Souls" and you will be AMAZED and you will be thankful that I stopped you from reading my comments so that you could experience the WONDER for yourself. So don't read any more of this post if you want to read "The Library of Souls" eventually! Written by Peter Milligan. Art by Jim Aparo. There's a new deadly menace in Gotham City. It started with skeletons showing up in random places around the city. But soon, the perpetrator started providing his own corpses, freshly murdered for his brutal and confusing plan. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the pattern of the killings. The dead are wearing jackets, each with a three-digit number sewed on. It turns out - there IS a pattern! And it's known to only one man - Stanislaus Johns! And oh what a wondrous whacko is he! He was a librarian but he was discharged because he was too much of a whacko even to work in the Gotham library system. He was so obsessive that he was annoyed by what he saw as a flaw in the Dewey Decimal System, and he developed his own system, a slightly modified Dewey system, that he persistently tried to push on his superiors. After his mother died, he just got weirder and weirder. He started hearing voices at the cemetery. It was the voices of the DEAD! They were upset that the cemetery was so disorganized and so messy and so uncoordinated! So Stanislaus Johns made his own grid of Gotham City, with each section dedicated to one number of his modified Dewey Decimal System, and he started digging up bodies and leaving them in the corresponding section of the city. He used the dead person's occupation to assign their number. Thus, a dead psychologist would be placed in the section labeled "130" because that's the designation for psychology. With a "130" tag sewed onto his jacket. I look at Stanislaus Johns as the ultimate theme villain, and "The Library of Souls" is a brilliant parody of the theme villains stories of the Golden Age. (If that wasn't Peter Milligan's intent, then that makes it an accidental parody, which is even more awesome!) I'm thinking of someone like Joe Coyne and his obsession with pennies. "My criminal life was caused by pennies! Thus, I, Joe Coyne, will dedicate my career to theme crimes revolving around PENNIES! The penny will be my crime symbol!" (Batman also has a villain who made a similar speech about rocks. And Green Arrow has a villain who used ropes. Give us a break, guys! The Penguin never made a fist-raised vow to plan his crimes around birds and umbrellas. He just did it!) So Stanislaus Johns - who should be known as The Librarian - must have had a moment where he made his vow: "I am alone and have no job because of the Dewey Decimal System! I hate the Dewey Decimal System! So, as a weird Gotham City psycho, I will kill people, sew numbers on their bodies and place them around the city based on my own Dewey modification! My crime symbol will be jackets with the numbers of my modified Dewey Decimal System!" And so a new criminal genius was added to the firmament of stars for the Batman rogues gallery. But just for this one adventure. Unless I missed it, he has never appeared again. P.S. I should add that the early victims have been placed based on the parts of the Dewey Decimal System that Stanislaus Johns is stlll using. So it's not until he gets a few victims under his belt that he places a corpse with a number based on the Stanislaus Johns modification. He has placed a sports instructor in 990. Now that's not the Dewey Decimal System number for Sports. That's the first clue for the librarian helping Batman that Stanislaus Johns might be involved. And I'm such a nerd that I knew that "990" wasn't Sports! "990" is in the "History" section. I assumed it was a mistake at first … but a few page later, it turns out to be a major clue! |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 20, 2018 0:01:29 GMT -5
And now … Chuck Dixon is writing Detective Comics! The first storyline is "Electric City" in Detective Comics #644 to #646. This is a pretty good one, with two electrically powered villains roaming around, one of them killing the people who witnessed his execution (he got better, it seems) and another guy hunting down the first one. And then we get another three-part story, Detective Comics #647 to #649. And three great Matt Wagner covers! I didn't buy "Electric City" when it first appeared, but I couldn't pass up these Matt Wagner covers back in 1992 when they first came out. Written by Chuck Dixon, with art by Tom Lyle and Scott Hanna, this storyline brings back the Clue-Master! He's out of prison and working on a pretty big score. The cops want to stop him, Batman and Robin want to stop him, and the Spoiler wants to stop him! That's right! Detective Comics #647 is the first appearance of the Spoiler, Stephanie Brown, the Clue-Master's daughter! Stephanie is one of my favorite characters. I loved it when she was the Spoiler, and also when she was Robin, and her series as Batgirl was so much fun. I didn't love it so much when she was beaten to death by the Black Mask in "War Games." But she got better. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 20, 2018 12:15:29 GMT -5
Detective Comics #651 has two plots going on. And one of them involves Harold! You remember Harold, even if the Batman writers forgot about him half the time. He was the hunchback techmaster who had been duped into helping the Penguin but was recruited by Batman to work in the Bat-Cave for a while. He had his own quarters and, in #650, he even has his own dog! In this issue, he has his own adventure, going far into the Bat-Cave as an explorer and then falling off an underground cliff into a chasm and having to somehow find his way out. I like this story a lot. I honestly don't remember it at all. I also don't remember #651 at all either. I must have got these two issues in a batch. I did that a few times when I was filling in the holes in my Detective Comics collection in 2011 and 2012. These issues were so cheap back then! I might get 20 comics for $30, and that included postage and handling! So I probably skimmed these two issues and then never looked at them again. Until now! Poor Harold! He just lives in the Bat-Cave, and the way that he disappears for months at a time, you get the impression that Bruce and Tim and Alfred would forget that he existed. I'm half expecting that, a few months from now, I'll read an issue from around 2002 or so where they find the remains of Harold and his dog. And when they finally remember who he is, Bruce and Tim and Alfred will feel bad because they forgot to feed him.  I forgot to mention that Renee Montoya was introduced in the issues I've read recently. She was first in Batman #475 (the first issue of "The Return of Scarface") and she's appeared quite a few times since then. I've always loved Montoya! We're getting up to a period where I was reading Detective Comics regularly and a lot of other Batman projects (like the GCPD mini-series and Gordon's Law) where you could always count on Montoya to be a part of the proceedings a lot of the time. She was Bullock's partner for a long time. (He's another favorite of mine.) It's very nice to see she was a great character from her first appearance. I guess I knew that because I remember some of the storylines from the time when I first read them in 2012 or so, but I don't think I realized that these were her first appearances. (Just to be complete, I should add that Wikipedia says that Montoya was created for Batman: The Animated Series, but her first comic-book appearance came out before her first appearance on the TV show.) The reason I decided to mention Montoya's first appearance in conjunction with Detective Comics #651 is that this is the first appearance of the Dixon/Nolan/Hanna team! And as I was flipping through it, it really struck me - this is Renee Montoya! This is how she looked for YEARS while Nolan and Hanna were drawing the series regularly issue after issue. Dixon, Nolan and Hanna had all worked on Detective before. Dixon had been the regular writer since #644 and Hanna had inked a few issues. And Nolan had penciled the story with Harold that I just mentioned. But #651 is the first issue they did together … and there would be many more! (I just read #652 before sitting down to comment, but it's a three-part story with the Huntress, so I'll be saving my comments for later. I had to mention it because it ends with a "diplomatic immunity" twist cliffhanger … and that always means "bad story" coming up. I vaguely remember not liking this storyline, but as I was reading the first part, I couldn't remember why I didn't like it. But I got to the end and saw that word balloon about "diplomatic immunity" … and I think I've got a pretty good idea about why I didn't like this story.) |
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