Here’s what I’ve been up to in my DC Finest reading and collecting.
DC Finest: Batman: The Killing Joke and Other Stories by Alan Moore, Mike W. Barr, and Brian Bolland (608 pages)
This latest Batman volume of the DC Finest reprint series collects stories from Batman 413 through 422, Detective Comics 580 through 599, and two late 1980s original graphic novels: Batman: Son of the Demon and Batman: The Killing Joke. Like the volume before it, this Batman book has an absolute masterpiece in it, Moore and Bolland’s The Killing Joke (the previous DC Finest Batman book had Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s “Batman: Year One;” this volume follows chronologically after the stories collected in that book). The other OGN is Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham’s Son of the Demon, an interesting story with decent art, but like Miller before him, Alan Moore is functioning on a whole different level with The Killing Joke. I am one of the few people who dislikes the original coloring on TKJ (by John Higgins), and I’m told it’s the version included here. It just seems overly garish to me. I also feel Moore’s Batman stories aren’t up to his Superman ones; he only did a few on each of DC’s most famous heroes, but “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” in Superman 423 and Action Comics 583 and “For the Man Who Has Everything …” in Superman Annual 11, and illustrated by Moore’s Watchmen collaborator, Dave Gibbons, and featuring Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman, are two of the best Superman stories ever.
Batman: The Killing Joke and Other Stories spine and back cover timeline (1987-1988).
The other Batman and Detective stories in this volume are mainly by Jim Starlin on Batman, and Alan Grant and John Wagner on Detective; the latter duo’s work has never been a personal fave—especially their Scarface and the Ventriliquist characters, introduced in this book—but Norm Breyfogle’s art sets himself up as one of the premiere Bat-artists of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Starlin—as a writer, not artist—has two stand-out storylines in this collection: “Ten Nights of the Beast,” drawn by Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo, and featuring incredible cover art by Mike Zeck, some of the few pieces of art he did for DC. That story introduces Russian assassin the KGBeast. The other standout (for me, at least) is Batman 421, with a story called “Elmore’s Lady,” which is brilliantly illustrated by Dick Giordano and Joe Rubenstein. The story continues in issue 422 (drawn by Mark Bright), as the Caped Crusader hunts down a serial killer.
Mike Zeck’s quarter of “Ten Nights of the Beast” covers, on Batman 417 through 420.
This is still the era of Jason Todd as Robin, but both series seem to downplay him in the stories collected here. There’s one more Batman volume coming out this year, “Red Skies,” which features the Doug Moench/Gene Colan stories, due in early September. It’ll come chronologically before Batman: Year One and Two, giving us three solid Batman volumes in a row, but I may pass on that one; I wasn’t that big a fan of Moench and Colan’s Batman.
DC Finest: Superman Kryptonite Nevermore by Denny O’Neil, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson (576 pages)
The latest Superman volume of DC Finest featuring the Man of Steel launches us into the Bronze Age of Comics. To many—myself included—Julius Schwartz taking over as editor of Superman from the retired Mort Weisinger marked the end of the Silver Age. Weisinger’s final issues were Superman 231 and Action Comics 316. Murray Boltinoff took over as Action Comics editor with 317, while Schwartz came on board with Superman 233 (232 was a giant-sized reprint issue put together by E. Nelson Bridwell).
Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore spine and back cover timeline (1970-1971).
This volume includes Action 393-406 and Superman 233-238 and 240-246. The real stars of this volume are penciller Curt Swan and inker Murphy Anderson, who do just about all the art in this book, but Denny O’Neil’s scripts on Superman, starting with 233, are also great, a departure for the previously humdrum character. Schwartz and O’Neil’s plan was to power him down a bit and eliminate Kryptonite from the Man of Tomorrow’s life, but in doing so, a chain reaction causes some kind of weird “sand creature” doppelganger of Superman who leeches off his powers whenever he’s near. It takes O’Neil through issue 241 to end this extended storyline, banishing the creature to the dimension from which it escaped, along the way teaming up Superman with Diana Prince (the heroine formally known as Wonder Woman) and her sidekick at the time, I-Ching. These stories are an improvement over Weisinger’s normal stuff, but the whole “let’s de-power ol’ Supes a bit,” quickly fell by the wayside. By the end of this book, he’s back to hurtling nuclear reactors into outer space and surviving the resultant gigantic explosion with the greatest of ease.
Over in Action Comics, Murray Boltinoff’s editing over mainly Leo Dorfman and Geoff Browne’s scripts seems more in line with Weisinger’s direction with the character, giving the two books a kind of schizophrenic look at the character when collected in the same volume, like they are here, but Swan and Anderson’s art is wonderful on both books. Anderson’s inks make Swan look his absolute best, at least in my humble opinion. O’Neil would leave the book soon after this short run and writers like Cary Bates and Elliot S. Maggin would take over, and the stories would become—for the most part—kind of silly again. I remember reading them as they came out and finding them to be pretty boring. By the time 1986 rolled around, Superman needed a major reboot, which he got from writer-artist John Byrne.
Three new additions to my Showcase Presents collection.
Showcase Presents Update
Since my last DC Finest-related post (click here to read it), where I did a comparison between DC Finest and its predecessor series, Showcase Presents, the “phone book” like reprint series which featured black and white art, I’ve acquired three more volumes of that series. Metal Men Vol. 1 (reprints Showcase 37-40 and Metal Men 1-15), The Phantom Stranger Vol. 1 (Showcase 80 and Phantom Stranger 1-21), and the rare Young Love Vol. 1 collection (39-56). I sincerely hope that Metal Men gets its own two-volume DC Finest set (that should cover the complete original series); these stories—by writer-editor Robert Kanigher and artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito—are great and I’d love to see them in color. The Phantom Stranger volume includes art by Neal Adams and very early Jim Aparo, and Young Love has some amazing John Romita, Gene Colan, Don Heck, and Jay Scott Pike stories. All three of these volumes approach original art standards with their stunning black and white art, and even on crummy newsprint paper, they look great.
Coming up next for me in the DC Finest line: Superboy: The Superdog From Krypton; Hawkman: Wings Across Time; and The Spectre: The Wrath of the Spectre. Stay tuned for more reviews and observations on the DC Finest line!
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