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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 2, 2015 0:48:22 GMT -5
I plan on reading every issue Shaxper covers asap, since the start of Wein's run to around 1992 is my overall favorite era of Batman. Once I start that I'm going to come back and read Shaxper's reviews issue by issue. Since my Marvel review thread is going strong, I'm thinking about doing one for Golden Age Batman (I have all the Chronicle trades) since that's my second favorite era.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jun 2, 2015 1:33:23 GMT -5
I haven't read this thread in awhile, but I was curious about the general consensus of the Post-Crisis era of Batman circa 1986-1992 (Pre-Knightfall). I've read DKR's, Year One, A Lonely Place of Dying and A Death In The Family but haven't yet read the whole era. Best overall era for Batman? I'm currently partway through the Moench/Kelley era (although I haven't read in a while), having started at the Post-Crisis "relaunch." I have to say, I really love the post-Knightfall stuff where each book has a stable team and a clear purpose. The pre-Knightfall stuff is a mixed bag, as is Knightfall itself (although Knightfall contains my all time favorite Batman moment) but the Grant/Breyfogle stuff is often quite good. Having read this much Batman I have to say I understand the praise Snyder is currently getting more. On its own I don't think it's amazing and it doesn't hold up to the truly great stories but compared to the decade or so of Batman I've read it's easily on the top shelf. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jun 2, 2015 10:51:28 GMT -5
'I can't think of anything else I've seen in O'Neil's (now) four year tenure that would count as a "social issue".' Steroids/drug enhancement - Venom storyline & eventually tied into Bane's story line - it was an issue then, but kind of prescient considering how sports have gone in the past 25 years. Good point. Not familiar with this one yet. Thanks for the heads up. O'Neil wasn't involved in anything Grant and Breyfogle did on Detective beyond The Mud Pack and Rites of Passage. For the most part, he wasn't even aware of what they were doing on that title. |
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Post by shaxper on Jun 2, 2015 10:55:05 GMT -5
Best overall era for Batman? For me, it's the second half of Conway's run through Moench's run and up to the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Essentially the entire time Len Wein was running the Bat Office. Solid continuity and supporting cast of characters, the best art the Bat franchise ever saw, and generally solid stories and writing. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 2, 2015 11:07:33 GMT -5
Best overall era for Batman? For me, it's the second half of Conway's run through Moench's run and up to the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Essentially the entire time Len Wein was running the Bat Office. Solid continuity and supporting cast of characters, the best art the Bat franchise ever saw, and generally solid stories and writing. This is definitely the era I want to read the most. I've read very little of it and it seems to be grossly underrated. Particularly in the wake of DKR's and Post-Crisis. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 2, 2015 11:13:56 GMT -5
Best overall era for Batman? For me, it's the second half of Conway's run through Moench's run and up to the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Essentially the entire time Len Wein was running the Bat Office. Solid continuity and supporting cast of characters, the best art the Bat franchise ever saw, and generally solid stories and writing. I love this era too. Nocturna. Gene Colan. Don Newton. Harvey Bullock. Vicki Vale. Killer Croc. Pre-Crisis Jason Todd. The weird Batgirl backup series in Detective.
It was so much fun to read Batman back then!
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Post by earl on Jun 3, 2015 18:17:19 GMT -5
Batman is my favorite comic series and I think there are plenty of good ones in the 80s, but I think when you add it up O'Neill's editor with the character was really amazing. I love Grant/Breyfogle and Moench/Kelley Jones (& others) Batman. Legends of the Dark Knight to me is THE title of that era of Batman, the first 50 issues are just amazing and really most of the first 100 are ace. In total, I think that series has boodles of good Batman stories. If anything that is what I really miss about current Batman as you just don't get those type of short, tight plot centered comics. That said, I think those early huge Batman crossover stories are good too, it's really one of the few titles that pulled it off even if some individual chapters are not all that hot. Moench also managed to pull off a couple tie-in stories that hold up on their own quite well, even without ever reading the main mini-series. It's rare that works, but Moench's Man-Bat story that tied into Final Night I thought was pretty good.
I think 70s and 80s Batman (up to Batman 400) is really still kind of under-rated as DC has done such a shoddy job reprinting them. I think they should have ALL of those comics in print and it has been done in such a slipshod manner.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jun 3, 2015 18:47:33 GMT -5
Batman is my favorite comic series and I think there are plenty of good ones in the 80s, but I think when you add it up O'Neill's editor with the character was really amazing. I love Grant/Breyfogle and Moench/Kelley Jones (& others) Batman. Legends of the Dark Knight to me is THE title of that era of Batman, the first 50 issues are just amazing and really most of the first 100 are ace. In total, I think that series has boodles of good Batman stories. If anything that is what I really miss about current Batman as you just don't get those type of short, tight plot centered comics. That said, I think those early huge Batman crossover stories are good too, it's really one of the few titles that pulled it off even if some individual chapters are not all that hot. Moench also managed to pull off a couple tie-in stories that hold up on their own quite well, even without ever reading the main mini-series. It's rare that works, but Moench's Man-Bat story that tied into Final Night I thought was pretty good. I think 70s and 80s Batman (up to Batman 400) is really still kind of under-rated as DC has done such a shoddy job reprinting them. I think they should have ALL of those comics in print and it has been done in such a slipshod manner. Not having gotten there yet, it's my impression that O'Neil starts doing a much better job as editor around the time of Knightfall. I can't agree that he's doing a very good job at this point (and Legends of the Dark Knight was outside of his office, while he was completely uninvolved with Grant and Breyfogle until they moved to Batman). Of course, by the time of Knightfall, was it him, or was it Kahn throwing her best talent and assistant editors at DC's most profitable but then declining office? |
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jun 3, 2015 19:23:27 GMT -5
Batman is my favorite comic series and I think there are plenty of good ones in the 80s, but I think when you add it up O'Neill's editor with the character was really amazing. I love Grant/Breyfogle and Moench/Kelley Jones (& others) Batman. Legends of the Dark Knight to me is THE title of that era of Batman, the first 50 issues are just amazing and really most of the first 100 are ace. In total, I think that series has boodles of good Batman stories. If anything that is what I really miss about current Batman as you just don't get those type of short, tight plot centered comics. That said, I think those early huge Batman crossover stories are good too, it's really one of the few titles that pulled it off even if some individual chapters are not all that hot. Moench also managed to pull off a couple tie-in stories that hold up on their own quite well, even without ever reading the main mini-series. It's rare that works, but Moench's Man-Bat story that tied into Final Night I thought was pretty good. I think 70s and 80s Batman (up to Batman 400) is really still kind of under-rated as DC has done such a shoddy job reprinting them. I think they should have ALL of those comics in print and it has been done in such a slipshod manner. That Man-Bat story was really good. And as far as massive story derailing year long uber events go, I think No Man's Land is downright fantastic. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 3, 2015 19:30:00 GMT -5
It seems to me that a lot of what DC was doing in the late 70's to 1985 was and is underrated. Marvel was riding such a huge surge in popularity thanks to the X-Men, Daredevil, Thor, FF, etc, mainly due to the talent they had on those titles, that DC's efforts were muted. It's strange that it took so long for the "Dark Knight" persona, brought back by O'Neil and Adams in the early 70's, to catch on with the readers. He'd been back a long time before Frank Miller's work.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jun 3, 2015 22:14:30 GMT -5
It's strange that it took so long for the "Dark Knight" persona, brought back by O'Neil and Adams in the early 70's, to catch on with the readers. He'd been back a long time before Frank Miller's work. Meh not really. The book looked moody but DKR was a whole other beast. |
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Post by foxley on Jun 4, 2015 2:31:43 GMT -5
It's strange that it took so long for the "Dark Knight" persona, brought back by O'Neil and Adams in the early 70's, to catch on with the readers. He'd been back a long time before Frank Miller's work. Meh not really. The book looked moody but DKR was a whole other beast. Yeah. A completely psychotic one. I consider Miller to be most overrated Batman scribe, and DKR to be have been elevated to a status completely beyond anything it deserves. |
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Post by shaxper on Jun 4, 2015 5:07:00 GMT -5
Meh not really. The book looked moody but DKR was a whole other beast. Yeah. A completely psychotic one. I consider Miller to be most overrated Batman scribe, and DKR to be have been elevated to a status completely beyond anything it deserves. DKR's greatest success was its shock value. People who wrote Batman off in the 1960s suddenly took notice in droves. Sure, it took what had been handled with substance and eloquence on the pages for well over a decade and amped it up to the level of oversimplification and parody, but it brought back the readers. And that's what got Denny O'Neil's reputation etched in stone from Day One as an editor, both for DC and for the mass public. As a result, he spent the next half decade essentially trying to repeat what happened there -- spectacle over substance. We'reat a point now in '91, after the significant delays in the release of the second Tim Burton Batman film, where O'Neil has finally fallen back and is rethinking that approach, with less major story arcs and events, and more done-in-one stories. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 4, 2015 8:56:53 GMT -5
Meh not really. The book looked moody but DKR was a whole other beast. Yeah. A completely psychotic one. I consider Miller to be most overrated Batman scribe, and DKR to be have been elevated to a status completely beyond anything it deserves. There are some parts of TDKR that are so badly written that they still make me cringe.
But "most overrated Batman scribe"? That would be either Grant Morrison or Jeph Loeb.
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Post by shaxper on Jun 4, 2015 9:22:19 GMT -5
Yeah. A completely psychotic one. I consider Miller to be most overrated Batman scribe, and DKR to be have been elevated to a status completely beyond anything it deserves. There are some parts of TDKR that are so badly written that they still make me cringe.
But "most overrated Batman scribe"? That would be either Grant Morrison or Jeph Loeb.
1. Frank Miller (moreso for Year One being the "definitive" Batman origin than for DKR) 2. Alan Moore 3. Grant Morrison 4. Alan Grant (John Wagner rocked; Norm Breyfogle rocked; Alan Grant was just sort of there with them) 5. Jeph Loeb |
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