The Brave and the Bold: Help Wanted by Sholly Fisch, Rick Burchett, Dan Davis, et al.

The All New! Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Help Wanted

Collection published: 2012
Contents originally published: 2011
Read: February 2026

Writer: Sholly Fisch
Artists: Rick Burchett, Dan Davis, Dario Brizuela, Ethen Beavers

Colorists: Gabe Eltaeb, Guy Major 
Letterers: Dezi Sienty, Sal Cipriano

Back when my now-seven-year-old was getting into graphic novels, I got them this for Christmas with the intention of directing their interest toward DC Comics. It's based on the Brave and the Bold tv show than ran from 2008 to 2011, but my suspicion was that it would work just fine for someone who hadn't seen the show as a source of kid-friendly DC superhero adventures. And indeed, it worked out; my kid has become a big DC stan. This was Christmas 2024 and at a certain point it occurred to me there was a DC trade paperback in my house that I had never read! Certainly this could not be permitted.

The book features six stories: team-ups with the original Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Aquaman, Hawkman, Jonah Hex, and Zatanna, plus a more offbeat one I'll get to later. Writer Sholly Fisch, as any DC reader with discerning taste knows, is the king of fun superhero comics, and these stories are all solid adventures; in most, he's teamed with Rick Burchett and Dan Davis on art, two kings themselves. (Burchett is one of those artists who is impressively adaptable: he's done very adult stuff like the 1980s Blackhawk revival, classic superhero stuff like Justice Society and Justice League America in the 1990s, and kid-focused stuff like this; Dan Davis has done a lot of good work as well, most relevant is probably is run as inker on Stargirl.)

Of those five stories, my favorite was the first one, which is actually a flashback story to the early days of Batman's career: a retired Alan Scott takes an interest in this new superhero who's appeared in his home turf of Gotham. Fisch gets some good dynamics out of this team-up, with Batman seeking Green Lantern's approval, but Green Lantern disapproving of Batman's propensity for terror. An excellent done-in-one story of Batman's early days, and if you're willing to squint, I think it would fit just fine into the post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint iteration of the DC universe. My other favorite was the Zatanna team-up, which makes good use of the classic House of Mystery characters Abel and Cain. The art is by Ethen Beavers; back in the day he illustrated a few installments of Dark Horse's Clone Wars Adventures, but my favorite stuff by him are his truly excellent illustrations for Little Golden Books' Star Trek tie-ins.

This bit made me laugh; my seven-year-old didn't get it.
from The All New! Batman: The Brave and the Bold #7 (art by Rick Burchett & Dan Davis)

The oddball story is the title story, "Help Wanted." This is told from the perspective of a perpetual henchman: he works for the Toyman, then the Clock King, then Ocean Master, and so on; each time, the supervillain he works for is defeated by a superhero teaming up with Batman. How can this guy get back on his feet? Does he deserve another chance? A really charming look at the flipside of superheroics, and my favorite story in the book. 

She is the world's most patient wife.
from Batman: The Brave and the Bold vol. 2 #10 (art by Rick Burchett & Dan Davis)

If you like DC not for its complicated continuity and endless events, but for its fun characters and interesting histories, this book is a perfect little slice of it. Highly recommended.