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.

Batman: Blackhawk Down by Royal McGraw, Marcos Marz, et al.

The last pre-Flashpoint Blackhawk story was Blackhawk Down, which appeared in four issues of the continuity-light Batman title Batman Confidential. In this story, Batman investigates a theft at Blackhawk Industries only to run into Zinda "Lady Blackhawk" Blake who is investigating the same thing, and faces machinations of various Blackhawk villains... only to discover that the supposedly long-dead Janos "Blackhawk" Prohaska himself is actually alive!

It is, to be quite honest, pretty bad, full of twists for the sake of twists and an execrable ending where Blackhawk and Lady Blackhawk become a romantic item for no reason other than to demonstrate that old men deserve hot women as long as they are alive. Lady Blackhawk is particularly poorly done by here, serving as a damsel-in-distress and no more. The art is muddy and dull in a way that feels annoyingly typical of 2010s comics. It's one of those comics that's so bad but so uninterestingly bad, that I can't even must up any enthusiasm for writing a detailed negative review. Read it if you're a completist (I am) but know what you're in for if so.

Did not expect a Sky Skull reference in the year 2010! At least Royal McGraw read his classic Blackhawk issues. (Or perhaps the DC wiki.)
from Batman Confidential #38

The only to thing to like here, as far as I am concerned, is the book's catholic approach to Blackhawk continuity. Blackhawk is called Janos Prohaska, as he was post-Crisis, when Lady Blackhawk was Natalie Reed... but Lady Blackhawk is Zinda Blake, as she was pre-Crisis, back when Blackhawk was Bart Hawk. Obviously there have been post-Crisis stories with Janos and post-Crisis stories with Zinda, but I think this is the first story to mix the two. There's a lot of other pre-Crisis Blackhawk continuity thrown in here, too, like Ted Gaynor, the Chop-Chop substitute from the Evanier/Spiegle run (see item #9 below); references to the clone Blackhawk, also from that run; a subplot about Zinda's time as Queen Killer Shark (see #5); and even the Sky Skull from the short-lived late 1960s revival (see #6), the first time that's ever been referenced as far as I know. Post-Crisis it can be pretty hard to tell what "counts," but I appreciate any writer whose attitude is that it all counts.

The artist was so proud of this that on the full page, it's got their enormous signature emblazoned on it.
from Batman Confidential #38

Blackhawk Down originally appeared in issues #36-39 of Batman Confidential (Early Jan.–Late Feb. 2010). The story was written by Royal McGraw, pencilled by Marcos Marz, inked by Luciana Del Negro, colored by David Baron, lettered by Sal Cipriano, and edited by Mike Marts.

This is the penultimate in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The last installment covers their post-Crisis continuity. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
8. Blackhawk (1982) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 
10. Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1987-89)
11. Blackhawk vol. 3 (1989-92) 
12. Guy Gardner: Warrior #24, 29, 36, 38-43 / Annual #1 (1994-96)
13. JLA: Year One (1998-99) 
14. Guns of the Dragon (1998-99) 

DC Animated Universe Hybrid Chronological Viewing Order

My seven-year-old is a fiend for DC Comics, and it's been making me nostalgic for the way I was introduced to a lot of DC characters, the DC Animated Universe. So I started thinking about trying to get them to watch it with me... which of course meant I wanted to work out a proper order!

Lots of people have made timelines, of course, but the problem with timelines is that there were two series set in the future compared to the others, but watching those at the end doesn't make sense; the assumption of the series is that when Terry from Batman Beyond pops up in Justice League or Static Shock, you know who the character is because you've already seen Batman Beyond. I suppose one could watch in a strict broadcast order, then, but that seemed to have its own downsides; I wanted something that captured more of a chronological flow, where you were moving back and forth between shows that happened simultaneously instead of watching in big chunks as seasons aired.

So here's my attempt:

The first tab shows the broad-strokes organization; the second gives you an episode-by-episode breakdown. Similarly, I'll give a broad-stroke explanation here, and then drill down into the details.

Broad-Strokes Organization 

The episodes of Batman: The Animated Series are notoriously confusingly ordered, either as produced or as broadcast. I used this Reddit thread as a guide to a totally new order, with some small tweaks based on the comments. I timed Superman: The Animated Series relative to it and The New Batman Adventures, such that the two crossovers between the two characters ("World's Finest" and "The Demon Reborn") lined up correctly. 

Once both shows come to an end, they are replaced by Batman Beyond, Justice League (later Justice League Unlimited), and Static Shock, so at the same time you are following the Justice League and Static in the present, you are following the new Batman in the future; thus when he pops up in both shows, you know who he is. Finally, there's the other DCAU future-set show, the Batman Beyond spin-off The Zeta Project; I timed this to start when Zeta first appears on Batman Beyond and wrap up around the same time JLU ends.

There are obviously some times when there are big gaps between when things aired: for example, B:TAS finished airing Nov. 1994, while New Batman Adventures didn't start until Sept. 1997. Similarly, there was a big gap between when NBA and S:TAS ended (Jan. 1999 and Feb. 2000, respectively) and when Justice League started (Nov. 2001), where just Batman Beyond and Static Shock aired. But in all of these cases, I just had things carry through as continuously as I could.

Detailed Organization

Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures 

I used Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures as the organizing spine of the first half of the timeline. I added in the Batman-adjacent DCAU movies based on the Reddit thread above:

• Mask of the Phantasm between "Prophecy of Doom" and "Night of the Ninja"
• SubZero between B:TAS and NBA
• Mystery of the Batwoman after "Sins of the Father"

This gave me 105 installments of Batman, which I numbered sequentially. (I did accidentally leave out "Two-Face, Part II," so it got added in as 15.50. I hope I didn't miss out anything else!)

Justice League and Justice League Unlimited

The two Justice League–focused shows ran the longest of everything that came after B:TAS and NBA, so I used them as the organizing spine of what was left. The regular stories were thus numbered 106 to 167 on my list. Then, at the end we got:

• 168. Justice League vs. the Fatal Five: released years later, supposedly in continuity with the DCAU, after the end of JLU
• 169. "Epilogue": the season two finale of JLU, but entirely set in the future timeline of Batman Beyond and designed to function as a coda to the whole DCAU

There's also a Batman & Harley Quinn movie that takes place between seasons of JLU, so I numbered it 154.50. 

Superman: The Animated Series

This began during the gap between B:TAS and NBA, and continued in parallel with NBA. S:TAS and NBA crossed over in the S:TAS story "World's Finest," which is set before "Sins of the Father" (80.00), the first episode of NBA. I thus numbered "World's Finest" as 80.50. I decided that prior to that, I'd like it if the shows just pretty much alternated, so I numbered all the preceding stories of S:TAS backwards from there: the one immediately before "World's Finest" ("Father's Day") would be 79.50, the one before that ("Ghost in the Machine") 78.50, and so on. Working backwards, this gets you to the series premiere, "The Last Son of Krypton," as 56.50, so basically, fifty-six B:TAS stories in, you begin alternating the two shows up until you get to the crossover.

The next key story was "The Demon Reborn," which is another crossover with NBA. This story sees Batman and Superman teaming up, and so many place it simultaneously with the NBA episode "Girls' Night Out" (97.00), where Superman and Batman are away on a mission. So I numbered "The Demon Reborn" as 97.50. In between "World's Finest" and "The Demon Reborn," I just distributed stories evenly, which came out to intervals of 0.89. So mostly alternating between NBA and S:TAS, but sometimes you'd get two S:TAS stories between stories of NBA.

That left just one S:TAS episode, the series finale "Legacy." I decided to make both NBA and S:TAS wrap up at about the same time, and thus numbered it 104.50, placing it before the last episode of NBA, "Mad Love" (105.00). This creates a decent gap between the last two S:TAS episodes, but that actually reflects how they were broadcast, months apart.

Static Shock

Static Shock started out totally standalone, but ended up crossing over with the wider DCAU a few times. The first of these is "The Big Leagues," a crossover with NBA, which probably goes after the end of that show according to the fine folks on Reddit.

There are then two Justice League crossovers, "A League of Their Own" and "Fallen Heroes." These both need to go before the Justice League episode "Starcrossed" (130.00), before the league was reorganized as the Justice League Unlimited. So I numbered "Fallen Heroes" as 129.50.

I then decided that I'd like Static Shock to pretty much just start when S:TAS came to an end, so that there wouldn't be a point after the end of S:TAS before the debuts of the other shows where you were only watching NBA. Thus I numbered its first episode, "Shock to the System" as 98.50, picking up right off from S:TAS's "The Demon Reborn" at 97.50.

I then distributed the Static Shock stories between those two episodes evenly, which meant they occurred at intervals of 0.76. So between NBA stories (and later, Justice League stories), you'd typically have one or two episodes of Static Shock. Doing this gave "The Big Leagues" a placement of 108.33, so after the NBA finale (105.00), which was right, and "A League of Their Own" a placement of 120.43, so again, in the right spot.

After Static Shock came to an end, the character appeared in the JLU story "The Once and Future Thing" (142.00). So I set the last episode of Static Shock ("Power Outage") as 141.50, and distributed all the episodes between "Fallen Heroes" and "Power Outage" evenly at intervals of 1.33.

Batman Beyond

In terms of broadcast sequence, Batman Beyond picked right up from the end of NBA, so I set its first episode, "Rebirth," shortly after NBA's final episode (105.00) at 106.50. Batman Beyond had forty-nine stories, plus a movie, Return of the Joker. There is a Static Shock episode where he travels to the future and meets the future Batman, "Future Shock" (127.23). The DCAU wiki suggests that Return of the Joker must take place before "Future Shock," so I numbered Return of the Joker as 126.85.

That meant I simply distributed all Batman Beyond stories evenly between those two points, at intervals of 0.42. So you are watching quite a lot of Batman Beyond in between episodes of the Justice League and Static Shock.

The Zeta Project

The last thing to place was the other DCAU future-set show, The Zeta Project. Zeta first appeared in the Batman Beyond episode "Zeta" (117.30). There actually was a decent-sized broadcast gap between Zeta's first appearance in Batman Beyond and their own show debuting, but I decided it was more satisfying to pick up right away, and thus set the first episode of Zeta Project ("The Accomplice") at 117.51. Zeta Project crossed over with Batman Beyond again in the episode "Shadows," which the DCAU wiki says occurs after the Batman Beyond episode "Countdown" (126.44), so I set "Shadows" as 126.65. I then distributed the intervening episodes at even intervals of 1.31. 

Lastly, I decided it would make sense to wrap up Zeta Project before the future-set episode of JLU, "Epilogue" (169.00), so I set its series finale ("The Wrong Morph") to 167.50. I then distributed the episodes in between "Shadows" and "The Wrong Morph" evenly at intervals of 2.40.

Epilogue 

I think that's everything! In practice, this gets you the following periods:

1. fifty-six sequential stories from Batman: The Animated Series
2. alternating stories from Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series
3. (roughly) alternating stories from New Batman Adventures and Superman: The Animated Series
4. (roughly) alternating stories from New Batman Adventures and Static Shock
5. lots of Batman Beyond, with interspersed stories from Static Shock and Justice League
6. lots of Batman Beyond, with interspersed stories from Static Shock and Justice League and the occasional episode of Zeta Project (four shows at once!)
7. (roughly) alternating stories from Static Shock and Justice League Unlimited, with occasional episodes of Zeta Project
8. Justice League Unlimited, with occasional episodes of Zeta Project

The caveat here is, of course, I haven't watched it this way! And it's been a long time since I've watched any of this; if you have any advice or corrections, I'd love to hear them.

Batman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Sergio Cariello, et al.

Batman/Wildcat

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 1970-98
Acquired: March 2023
Read: April 2023

Writers: Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Bob Haney

Pencillers: Sergio Cariello, Irv Novick, Bob Brown, Jim Aparo
Inkers: Art Thibert, Danny Miki, Jaime Mendoza, Tom Palmer, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo

Colorists: Jason Wright, Pat Garrahy

Letterers: Kevin Cunningham, Clem Robins

As I said when writing up Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper, the discovery of a preexisting Ted Grant–Selina Kyle relationship in JSA Classified had me curious as to its origins; one of the stories that lead me to was a 1998 miniseries called Catwoman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, and Sergio Cariello. I discovered it had been collected along with a 1997 mini from the same team, Batman/Wildcat, and five issues of The Brave and the Bold from the 1970s where Batman teams up with Wildcat. So, I picked up the whole collection.

Batman/Wildcat is fine. Like many Wildcat stories, it has to contrive some way to be about boxing. In this case, it's that old standby: the forced fight. Criminals are kidnapping people, mostly supervillains, and forcing them to fight each other on a super-secret pay-per-view channel (hey, it was the '90s). A mentee of Wildcat's get scooped up in it, though, and is forced to duke it out in a Wildcat costume, and so Batman and Wildcat run parallel investigations, then get kidnapped and forced to fight, and of course team up to dismantle the entire operation. I could probably go the rest of my life without reading another story where superheroes are forced to fight so rich people can gamble on it, to be honest; there's nothing about that premise that's ever interesting. What beggars belief is the bad guys don't even take Batman's and Wildcat's masks off to find out who they are; indeed, they put extra masks on them so they can't see who they're fighting! I think the story would have also benefited from making Ted's status quo clearer; at the end, he comes out of retirement to go back to fighting crime as Wildcat, but that was the moment I learned he was in retirement to begin with! (This would be set after the Justice Society falls apart in Zero Hour, before it reunites in Justice Be Done.)

Oracle! Ah, 1990s Birds of Prey nostalgia...
from Batman/Wildcat #2 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello and Art Thibert, Danny Miki, & Jaime Mendoza)

The follow-up, Catwoman/Wildcat, is a bit better. Catwoman travels to Las Vegas to carry out a heist where, coincidentally, Ted Grant is in some kind of exhibition match. The heist, honestly, was very confusing. Selina's competing with like two other groups of criminals and there's a lot of double-crossing, and a lot of characters I didn't care about. What was consistently fun was the flirting between Selina and Ted. Selina knows who she is dealing with right away, but it takes most of the story for Ted to figure out who she is (there's a brief flashback to Her Sister's Keeper, despite Catwoman: Year 2's implication it didn't count), and so he doesn't get why this attractive younger woman is coming on to him. Whenever the story focuses on the antics of the two of them it is fun; whenever it focuses on the other characters, I hoped it would get back to Ted and Selina. Thankfully boxing has little to do with it.

It's a very different Selina to the one who seemed shocked at what Ted Grant might ask of her for defense training!
from Catwoman/Wildcat #3 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

Both stories are pencilled by Sergio Cariello who has a... I guess I would say perfectly adequate 1990s style. It's not my jam, and I think he draws Selina/Catwoman a bit weird, but it's a good artistic fit for Chuck Dixon's over-the-top action-focused style of writing.

Cats in heat.
from Catwoman/Wildcat #1 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

The five stories from The Brave and the Bold run the gamut. Each has to have some weird reason for Batman to pull Wildcat into the case; some are more compelling than others. The first, "Count Ten... and Die!" is probably the best. Bruce Wayne is coaching the American team in the World Youth Games in fencing, while Ted Grant is coaching the boxing team. Ted is heckled by the coach of the Russian team, but then also there's a lot of stuff about a spy and needing to transfer a secret tape. Boxing is worked in pretty organically here, and it has its moments, even if it can get a bit contrived. (At one point, Ted Grant sneaks out of a boxing match he is participating in to track Batman to a river in the countryside, rescues Batman from kidnappers after a pitched battle, and returns, all while forcibly dragging his opponent with him... and no one notices this because the lights are out!) I thought the culmination of Ted being goaded was going to be him rising above it, but Batman points out that if Ted Grant doesn't wallop this Russian guy, America may as well give up the Cold War, so Ted punches his lights out for patriotism.

If your story is set in Cold War Vienna, it is mandatory to have a key scene set on the Wiener Riesenrad.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #88 (script by Bob Haney, art by Irv Novick & Mike Esposito)

A couple feel like they could have been about any character, and Ted is barely even in them: in "The Smile of Choclotan!" he's mostly in a trance, in "A Very Special Spy!" Ted is for some reason an exec at an energy firm, and in "Dead Man's Quadrangle" he's running a health spa in the Caribbean. I guess post-JSA he made a run a lot of different businesses?

For some reason, everyone in Mexico calls him "Bat-Hombre." Not, say, "Murciélago Hombre"... or just, you know "Batman"!
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #97 (script by Bob Haney, art by Bob Brown & Nick Cardy)

I was able to embrace the goofiness in "May the Best Man Win Die!" In this, Wildcat does an exhibition boxing match at a Gotham prison... only the guy he fights is a potential witness against the Joker, and the Joker uses the opportunity to infect Wildcat's opponent with a rare tropical illness, and soon the whole prison is in danger. A biologist brings a dog in whose blood he's incubated antibodies to Gotham, but the dog is stolen by the Joker, then it escapes from the Joker, and so Batman, Wildcat, and the Joker are all searching Gotham for a dog who has the key to hundreds of lives. So wacky you've got to love it! I even didn't mind the obligatory Batman/Wildcat slugfest, because it's really just an opportunity for the Joker to infect them with the disease too.

Like, a page later, Batman admits that he has no idea if this is true or not.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #118 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Bob Haney is certainly a wacky writer. In "May the Best Man Die!", Batman goes to the Gotham pound to pick up the dog, but is told someone claiming to be the dog's owner already picked it up... a weird guy with green hair! Like, how could you live in Gotham and see a guy with green hair and not think, "Hmmm... is that the Joker!?" In "Dead Man's Quadrangle," Batman travels to the Caribbean via a commercial flight... in costume! There he is just chilling in first class; the guy seated next to him just casually chatting him up. In the 1970s was airport security so lax? Or does Batman get an exemption? And is a Batsuit really comfortable clothing for a long flight?

Batman has the same annoyances on a flight as us regular folks.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #127 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Some continuity notes: When these stories came out they were evidently controversial, because they feature the "regular" Batman of DC, i.e., the Earth-One Batman, but Wildcat is from Earth-Two! The explanation (given in letter columns, I guess, because it never appears in the stories themselves) was that this was the Wildcat of Earth-One, a character who only appeared in these five issues of The Brave and the Bold and one issue of Super-Team Family. Thus, we are left to infer most of his history: an older superhero, seemingly not active anymore... but in this world there was no JSA. Post-Crisis, I think we can just imagine that these events did happen (approximately) as depicted here, with the new post-Crisis Batman and the new post-Crisis Wildcat. By publication sequence these would go in the period after the JSA kind of came out of retirement for its JLA team-ups, before the JSA was revived full-time in the 1970s issues of All Star Comics, and I think this depiction of Wildcat fits well with that.

Lastly, there's a weird bit in "Dead Man's Quadrangle," where Ted thinks that on his second comeback tour he accidentally killed a man ("Kid O'Hare") in the ring, and thus gave up throwing punches ever again. He gets over it, of course, but this was never mentioned before and thus must have happened in the year since his previous Brave and the Bold appearance yet is just kind of tossed in as if we already know about it! As far as I know, it never comes up again either.

This post is forty-third in an ever-expanding series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers volume 3 of Justice Society of America. Previous installments are listed below:

Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman Supplement: The Big Noise

Our Worlds at War Aftermath!: Casualties of War!: The Big Noise: "Rumble Face" / "Benediction Redux" / "Righteous Destroyer" / "The Final Solution"

Superman/Batman #68-71 (Mar.-June 2010)

Writer: Joe Casey
Co-Writer: Joshua Williamson
Pencils: Ardian Syaf and Jay Fabok 
Inks: Vicente Cifuentes, David Enebral, Norm Rapmund, Marlo Alquiza, Prentis Rollins, Rebecca Buchman, Derek Fridolfs, and Walden Wong
Colors: Ulises Arreola and Pete Pantazis
Letters: Rob Leigh
Assistant Editor: Rex Ogle
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

Joe Casey's return to his run on Adventures of Superman slots in, as far as I can tell, between issues #596 and 597 of his original run. The details seem to line up fine: Earth in general and Metropolis in particular are rebuilding in the wake of the Imperiex War, Luthor is president, the JLA uses a Watchtower on the moon, and so on. The discontinuity that I noted is that Superman's chest logo uses a yellow backing, rather than the black one he adopted in mourning in #596. Maybe it was felt that would be confusing to casual readers. Though if they were worried about casual readers, maybe they shouldn't have marketed it as a tie-in to an eight-year-old event. (I did like the retro trade branding on the cover, admittedly.)

Anyway, this is kind of a bog-standard Superman story with a not very important role for Batman that ultimately becomes terrible. So far in reading Casey's Adventures of Superman, I'd say we've moved between Big Events like Return to Krypton and Our Worlds at War (where Casey can't really cut loose, though he did manage a really good installment of All-Out War!) and intriguing one-issue stories like "Don't Cry for Me, Bialya" (#590) and "Shipbuilding" (#596). So I was interested to see what he might do with a four-issue story of his own devising.

from Superman/Batman #71
(script by Joe Casey, art by Jason Fabok and Prentis Rollins,
Rebecca Buchman, Derek Fridolfs, & Walden Wong)

The answer turns out to be: not much. Superman discovers the hijacker of the ruined ancient Kryptonian star destroyer is on Earth, a shapeshifting Durlan (of Invasion!, Legion, and L.E.G.I.O.N. fame) disguised as a secretive financial backer of S.T.A.R. Labs. The Daxamite, Anderson Gaines, sends a bounty hunter after Clark Kent. Superman fights the bounty hunter, Batman goes to space, Superman and Batman win. Somehow this all takes four issues. The dialogue is often terrible; the bounty hunter tells the robots guarding the Fortress of Solitude, "If you two are searching your database for any info on me, let me make it easy for you-- I'm filed under NRG-X! Next time you'll know." Later when NRG-X tells Superman he doesn't know the meaning of "surrender," Superman even calls out they've descended into cliché... but I think calling your bad superhero dialogue "cliché" is as much a cliché as writing it at this point. There are lots of big fight scenes with no creativity or interest to them.

The story sets up interesting ideas that go nowhere. Batman insists that since Gaines is battling like a traditional insurgent, they should use usual counterinsurgency tactics instead of bringing in the JLA. This is an okay idea, of Superman having to be more Batman-like in fighting a Superman threat that uses Batman-like tactics... but not much of interest is actually done with it. Gaines's "insurgency" is to send a flaming fire man after Superman; Batman's "counterinsurgency" is to lure Gaines into space. Genuine character work is pretty minimal.

from Superman/Batman #68 (script by Joe Casey,
art by Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes & David Enebral)

Plus the story has some weird dead ends. There's this whole thing in the first issue about how Clark interviews Garrison Slate, a redheaded reclusive S.T.A.R. Labs backer with bad facial hair... who is different from Anderson Gaines, the redheaded reclusive S.T.A.R. Labs backer with bad facial hair that Superman is fighting. Why? The other guy doesn't even add anything to the story, and in a later issue, it's claimed Clark interviewed Gaines, so even the writer got them confused.

There were times it clearly aspired to saying something about something, but this was tedious by its end. Mediocre decompressed hollow action comics at their worst. I don't know why this was written or what its point was imagined to be, and I look forward to getting back to the real Adventures of Superman soon.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman #596: The Aftermath of Our Worlds at War

"Shipbuilding" / "Prelude to The Big Noise: Three Months Away"

The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #596 (Nov. 2001)
Superman/Batman #64 (Nov. 2009)

Words: Joe Casey
Pictures: Mike Wieringo and Scott Kolins
Inks: Jose Marzan, Jr.
Letters: Bill Oakley and Rob Leigh
Colors: Michael Atiyeh
Asst. Edits: Tom Palmer, Jr.
Associate Editor: Adam Schlagman
Edits: Eddie Berganza 

Here we have two issues that follow up (or may have followed up) on Our Worlds at War. I'll tackle them in turn, because there's not much unity between them, aside from both being written by Joe Casey. "Shipbuilding" (Adventures of Superman #596) is a quiet issue, taking place as the world reconstructs following the devastation of the Imperiex War (I don't think anyone ever calls it that, but I need to call it something). While the JLA is stretched thin doing reconstruction, though, and President Luthor is making media appearances, Superman is largely sitting it all out: staying at home in his Clark Kent guise, watching the news. As the end of Our Worlds at War pointed to, he's questioning how is it all worth it if his parents can die.

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #596
(art by Mike Wieringo & Jose Marzan, Jr.)

It's not a funk that lasts long, though-- one conversation with Plastic Man and the Martian Manhunter, and Superman is back at it, fighting Flash villains in the Antarctic and saving a construction worker who tumbles off a dam. Luthor chastises Superman for not doing all the reconstruction himself, but Superman gives a speech about how "[h]umanity has to rebuild itself. If I do it for them, it means nothing." Luthor calls it "[c]onvenient," and I agree, though for more metatextual reasons. Superman can't rebuild the Earth because it would break the premise of Superman comics... but I feel like there must be millions of homeless and displaced people who probably would think it would still be quite meaningful if someone rebuilt their homes for them. As always, I feel like ongoing superhero comics are better off not calling attention to this problem than trying to explain it.

Anyway, the construction worker whose life Superman saved comes to his defense, and Superman and Luthor both go back to doing what they do best. It's a fine issue; I'm glad we finally got some emotional fall-out to Our Worlds at War and I hope we get more going forward, but the trajectory of the whole thing was pretty predictable. It wasn't likely to end with Superman not being helpful, was it?

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #596
(art by Mike Wieringo & Jose Marzan, Jr.)

Two other points: 1) Superman debuts a new costume, where the yellow in his S-shield is replaced by black, presumably as a sign of mourning. I wonder how long this will last going forward. 2) This issue can be hella expensive on its own. At the time I purchased my complete run of Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman, the cheapest copy on MyComicShop was $20, for example. (It's since come down a little; it's $4.80 as of this writing.) Thankfully, I picked it up as part of a 29-issue set on eBay for $55, absorbing the cost. Anyway, this is apparently because it features an image of the smoking LexCorp Towers, which were damaged in Our Worlds at War. The LexCorp Towers are very obviously visually based on the World Trade Center... and this issue's cover date of Nov. 2001 means that it was actually distributed to comic shops on September 12, 2001! So it's become a sort of collector's item. But here's the panel; I just saved you $20. You're welcome.

The other issue is Superman/Batman #64, the prelude to a Superman/Batman story arc called The Big Noise (#68-71), which I'll be reviewing next week. Joe Casey returned to Superman over five years after his run on Adventures was over to pen an additional story arc set during it. I only had a rough idea of when it was set when planning my readthrough, so I had to do some guesswork. The main Big Noise storyline is cover-branded "Our Worlds at War Aftermath!: Casualties of War!", leading me to place it after "Shipbuilding," and I guessed that the Big Noise prelude might fall between those.

from Superman/Batman #64 (art by Scott Kolins)

It's okay, bordering on meh. It's very much a prelude, and very much an example of overly decompressed comics. We see a spaceship in the time of ancient Krypton fight another Kryptonian spaceship that's been taken over by aliens... then we jump ahead to the present where the commandeered Kryptonian ship is found abandoned in the asteroid belt by Batman and Superman, who realize an escape pod means one of the alien hijackers is on Earth. The whole thing probably could have been done in 5-10 pages, or maybe have even just been implied backstory. Seeing it all happen in detail is kind of pointless.

As for placement, I think I got it wrong. While the main Big Noise series definitely goes where I guessed (as of this writing, I've read three of its four issues), the prelude takes place earlier. I'm deducing that it goes before Return to Krypton, as some of Superman's dialogue makes me think he has not yet ever been to Krypton; for example, he says, "seeing their [his people's] fate...and my inability to do anything about it except bear witness to the aftermath... time and time again... that's been my primary relationship with my own heritage." Those do not sound like the words of someone who travelled back in time to before the disaster and actually averted it (even if it was a Phantom Zone projection)! So, I am retroactively slotting it between Adventures #588 and #589 in my reading order.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Review: Batman: Year 3 by Marv Wolfman, Pat Broderick, John Beatty, et al.

When I did my big readthrough of all of Batman's "Year One" stories (and related tales), there was perhaps one very notable omission: Batman: Year 3 by Marv Wolfman, Pat Broderick, and John Beatty, which was originally published in issues #436-39 of Batman vol. 1 in 1989. This is because Batman: Year 3, unlike Batman: Year One, Batman: Year Two, or indeed spin-offs like Batgirl: Year One and Two-Face and Scarecrow: Year One, has never been collected.

When you read it, though, it's easy to see why. Year One and Year Two were both interruptions to the ongoing narrative of Batman. Even though they originally appeared in issues #404-07 of Batman vol. 1 and issues #575-78 of Detective Comics vol. 1, respectively, they had nothing to do with what preceded or followed them-- they were sort of miniseries within an ongoing series. Year 3 is different: it was published between A Death in the Family and A Lonely Place of Dying, and has a frame story set during that time, with Batman dealing with the emotional fallout of the death of Jason Todd (Robin II) at the hands of the Joker.

"Frame story" is actually kind of misleading, as I would estimate that probably more of the story is set in the "present" than the "past." Year Three is when Dick Grayson's parents died, and he became Robin; the present-day storyline partially deals with the fact that Dick's parents' killer, Michael Zucco, is about to be released from prison. The flashbacks we see are primarily to provide context for this: the death of the Graysons, the hearing where Bruce adopted Dick, Dick's introduction to the Batcave, Dick's training and debut as Robin, and so on. (Much of this would later be re-depicted in Dark Victory and Robin: Year One.)

This means the bulk of the story focuses on Zucco's imminent release, and a gang war occurring in Gotham at the same time, which Batman handles with much more brutality than is typical. Part of the purpose of flashbacks is to show how parterning with Robin caused Bruce to soften from the Frank Milleresque way he was depicted in Year One-- and how now that a Robin is dead, his old brutality is reemerging. Wolfman is very good with the characters of both Bruce and Dick, and between this and A Lonely Place of Dying, I would definitely read more Batman stories by him.

But Wolfman's success with this is probably also the reason this story hasn't been collected. Batman: Year 3 is a good depiction of how Batman started to fall apart following the death of Jason Todd, but despite its title, it's not a very good standalone adventure in the early years of Batman: it's no Year One, that's for sure, but it's not even a Year Two. It ought to be collected, but not on its own. Better would be along with Wolfman's A Lonely Place of Dying, as it sets up Batman's need to always have a Robin, and Tim Drake (who becomes Robin in Lonely Place) even puts in a cameo at the circus during the flashback to the death of the Graysons.

Batman: Year 3 originally appeared in issues #436-39 of Batman vol. 1 (Early Aug.-Late Sept. 1989). The story was written by Marv Wolfman, pencilled by Pat Broderick, inked by John Beatty (#436-38) and Michael Bair (#439), colored by Adrienne Roy, lettered by John Costanza, and edited by Denny O'Neil.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LVII: The World of Flashpoint featuring Batman

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2011)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2016

The World of Flashpoint featuring Batman

Writers: Brian Azzarello, J. T. Krul, Jimmy Palmiotti, Peter Milligan

Artists: Eduardo Risso, Fabrizio Fiorentino, Mikel Janin, Alejandro Giraldo, Joe Bennett, Tony Shasteen, Alex Massacci, John Dell, George Pérez, Fernando Blanco, Scott Koblish

Colorists: Patricia Mulvihill, Ulises Arreola, Kyle Ritter, Ander Zarate, the Hories, Tom Smith, Brian Buccellato
Letterers: Clem Robins, Patrick Brosseau, Dave Sharpe, Travis Lanham, Rob Leigh

I don't know if these World of Flashpoint books are getting better or if I'm just acclimating to their style and purpose, but I think this volume was the best of them so far. It doesn't have the best individual story in it (that's probably "Project Superman"), but it has three decently enjoyable tales and only one real dud. The reading sequence I devised/picked/was given continues to work well, too: the Booster Gold story in the previous volume alluded to the fact that there was something not right about this timeline's Batman, and in this volume we get to see what that is.

If you thought Batman was grumpy, wait until you see his alternate universe Batman dad.
from Flashpoint: Batman: Knight of Vengeance #1 (script by Brian Azzarello, art by Eduardo Risso)

"Knight of Vengeance" is a gritty noir tale from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Azzarello excels as this kind of thing. I'm not sure there was really a story here, but it provides an effective series of snapshots of this universe's Batman and Joker, who manage to be even more broken than those of the primary timeline. We see Batman's crime-fighting empire and criminal(!) empire, his relationship with Jim Gordon (yay!), and the dark twisted night that changed everything for him. Batman alludes to the existence of the primary timeline in a conversation with the Joker; I suppose I'll get to see how he knows about it when I reach the main Flashpoint book. Eduardo Risso on art also impresses. I don't think I've ever seen any of his work before, but his simple style works really well for communicating the darkness of this story. Less a tale and more a demonstration of the need to change this world back, "Knight of Vengeance" leaves me more eager to get to the main event.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Gotham Central, Part Ø: Batman: Gordon of Gotham

Before plunging into my next comics project, I want to cycle back to some old ones and read some books related to them that have come out since then. The first of these is Gotham Central, which I read over five years ago now.

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2014 (contents: 1996-98)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2016

Batman: Gordon of Gotham

Writers: Chuck Dixon, Dennis O'Neil
Artists: Klaus Janson, Jim Aparo, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dick Giordano
Colorists: Kevin Somers, Ian Laughlin, Pam Rambo, Jamison

Letterers: John Costanza, Clem Robins

This book collects three four-issue miniseries that feature Commissioner Gordon and/or the Gotham City Police Department; it's a precursor of sorts to Gotham Central, though I am pretty sure that the only main character here who is also a main character there is the ubiquitous Renee Montoya. Each of the stories here has a slightly different focus.

"Gordon's Law" is pretty squarely focused on Commissioner Gordon himself, as he discovers that there's possibly some corruption in the GCPD, which means he can't trust anyone on the force-- and to make things worse, he only wants cops to go after cops, which means he rejects Batman's offer of assistance as well. The story is kinda complicated; there are a lot of characters, and most of them were new to me (if not new to everyone), and though I really like the gritty tone established by Klaus Janson's artwork, he didn't always make it easy to remember who was who. Its biggest weakness is probably that it's one of those stories where tons of "old friends" we've never seen before turn up, and the narrative expects us to be surprised when an "old friend" we've never seen before turns out to not be altogether trustworthy. And that's not the only obvious twist, but there were some good ones as well. Overall, it's an okay tale: some good crime fiction influences, but it doesn't really have anything to say about Gordon, about the GCPD, or about Batman.

I love how sleazy/creepy the face of this guy (he's an informant) looks.
from Batman: Gordon's Law #1 (script by Chuck Dixon, art by Klaus Janson)

"GCPD" is the most like Gotham Central of all the stories here; the commissioner is just a minor part of a sprawling, ensemble tale of various members of the GCPD pursuing various cases. Harvey Bullock struggled with anger management, a new partner, and a serial killer; Renee Montoya goes undercover as a diplomat's wife to help catch an assassin; two cops named Kitch (a trained lawyer) and Cav (a grizzled old vet) track down art thieves and an insurance same; an administrator named Hendricks tries to figure out who's stealing stationery. As you might imagine, some of these stories are better than others: I always enjoy a Montoya tale, but Chuck Dixon doesn't really her very unique, and the circumstance she ends up in seems incredibly contrived to say the least. (Do local cops really handle assassination plots against foreign officials? Would there really be no plan for cancelling the operation when it all goes wrong and the diplomat deliberately endangers Montoya's life?) On the other hand, I did enjoy the Harvey Bullock plot. This was my first real exposure to the character (he was retired during Gotham Central), and he gets to do some good old-fashioned investigating that shows off his intelligence as well as his human side, and I liked his contentious relationship with his new partner.

Jim Aparo just can't resist giving Gordon that dandyesque mustache curl, though.
from Batman: GCPD #3 (script by Chuck Dixon, art by Jim Aparo & Bill Sienkiewicz)

The Kitch/Cav plot had its moments, but some of its beats were very familiar. Is the lawyer-turned-cop who is mocked for his education by the cops and for his slumming it by the lawyers, and flirts with going back to law only to be reminded that lawyers are corrupt, a thing? I am pretty sure I read this exact story last year in Fort Freak. I liked Cav, though. The best character of all, however, was Hendricks: of course a desk officer grimly determined to catch an office supplies thief in the fact of mockery from his colleagues was my fave. The law begins and ends with him! I've previously struggled with Jim Aparo art on stories of the "gritty" type, but to my surprise, he paired really well with Bill Sienkiewicz on inks: Aparo does great figures and great storytelling, but Sienkiewicz's rough inks add the right tone for an urban cop story. Best art in the book.

CHILL OUT JIM!
from Batman: Gordon of Gotham #1 (script by Dennis O'Neil, art by Dick Giordano & Klaus Janson)

"Gordon of Gotham" is even less about the GCPD than "Gordon's Law," as it's mostly a present-day Gordon telling Batman about his last year as a Chicago cop, leading into the events of Batman: Year One. As anyone who read my review of that story would know, I love Jim Gordon, and Dennis O'Neil really captures what it is that I like about him. Gordon is just a man trying to do the right thing in a world that will never reward him for it, because it is a world that needs Batman. Gordon argues with his wife (there's a callback to his struggle with domestic violence from Night Cries, another quality Jim Gordon tale), but ends up stopping a diner holdup almost by accident, then decides to go after corruption, but the world itself is corrupt, and he quickly gets in deeply over his head and ends up making choices that violate his moral core... or so he had thought. O'Neil piles on the twists and the action in a compelling way, and I really liked how this set us up for the  Gordon on Year One, down to his decision to grow a mustache. The only real weakness is the frame; I wonder why they didn't just do this story in pure flashback.

I didn't quite buy that everyone would recognize a "hero cop" so readily, but I guess more people watched local tv news back in the 1980s.
from Batman: Gordon of Gotham #1 (script by Dennis O'Neil, art by Dick Giordano & Klaus Janson)

Next Week: And now I'll be catching up on the expanded universe of The Sandman, beginning with the long-delayed collected edition of The Children's Crusade, Free Country!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXXVI: Batman: Year 100 and Other Tales: Deluxe Edition

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 1998-2006)
Borrowed from the library
Read February 2016

Batman: Year 100 and Other Tales: Deluxe Edition
by Paul Pope

Colorists: José Villarrubia, Ted McKeever, James Jean

Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, John Workman, Ken Lopez

Year One Hundred
It's been fourteen months since I kicked this whole Batman project off by reading Batman: Year One, but for Batman it's been 99 years, as I'm wrapping up with Batman: Year 100. In the future, America seems to be a wasteland ruled over by tyrants, but the Bat-Man of Gotham, the last of the superheroes, still stands for justice, along with the few who aid him, including a new Robin. The story is ostensibly about an overcomplicated murder mystery, but it's really about what Batman stands for: standing up and saying "no" to unjust systems.

Not a guy you want to meet in a dark alley. Or anywhere, really.
from Batman: Year 100 #2

Paul Pope both writes and draws the whole book, and I found myself engaged more by his unique visual style than by his writing. His Batman is a terrifying enigma, seemingly over a century old but as full of energy as ever, and his Gotham is a bleak dystopia where the Gotham City Police Department seems to operate out of a pile of trash, and the rest of America doesn't seem much better off. He establishes the grotesque nature of this world perfectly, from its attack dogs to the tragic ways that even criminals are treated in the future. But the story itself felt somewhat rote to me, and what the ending conflict turns out to be doesn't really resonate thematically with what Pope is trying to say about Batman.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXXV: Batman: Dark Detective

Comic trade paperback, 136 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 2005)
Borrowed from the library
Read February 2016

Batman: Dark Detective

Writer: Steve Englehart
Penciller: Marshall Rogers
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: John Workman
Colorist: Chris Chuckry

Year Nineteen, November
I'm reading this because it's a sequel to Strange Apparitions, reuniting the all-star team of Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin, and bringing back Silver St. Cloud, one of the great loves of Batman's life, now engaged to Senator Evan Gregory, now running for governor. Strange Apparitions wove a thread about Boss Thorne through its various issues; Dark Detective weaves in Gregory's bid for office, especially the Joker's declaration that he'll also be running. Meanwhile, Bruce's meeting with Silver rekindles old feelings, and Two-Face and the Scarecrow both put in appearances.

Word and image. WORD AND IMAGE!
from Batman: Dark Detective #4

Sometime when you get the band back together, they don't play as well: Dark Detective is not quite as grabbing as Strange Apparitions, but it's still very good. Rogers and Austin are still an unbeatable Batman art team, capturing the twisted gloom of Gotham in all its splendor. They're slightly let down by Chris Chuckry on colors, who makes Silver St. Cloud's hair white instead of, well, silver, which I found very distracting.