Writers:
Gardner Fox, Bill Finger, (and various uncredited Golden Age writers),
Denny O'Neil, Frank Robbins, Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Len Wein,
Alan Brennert, Bob Rozakis.
The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told 1988 (SC TPB) 352 pages
Writers:
Gardner Fox, Bill Finger, (and various uncredited Golden Age writers),
Denny O'Neil, Frank Robbins, Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Len Wein,
Alan Brennert, Bob Rozakis.
Art Bob Kane, Dick Sprang, Jerry Robinson, Jack Burnley, Jim Mooney, Sheldon Moldoff, Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Frank Robbins, Jim Aparo, Alex Toth, Marshall Rogers, Walt Simonson, Michael Golden, Joe Staton.
Many early comics featured a number of shorter stories in one issue, so that most of those stories don't represent the whole comic; even up into the '70s and '80s some of these comics featured back up stories or, indeed, the story included here was the short back-up story!...1940s: "Batman vs. the Vampire" (Detective Comics #31-32), "Dr. Hugo Strange and the Mutant Monsters" (Batman #1), "Knights of Knavery" (Batman #25), "1001 Umbrellas of the Penguin" (newspaper strip), "The Origin of the Batman" (Batman #47) - 1950s: "The Birth of Batplane II" (Batman #61), "Operation: Escape" (Star-Spangled Comics #124), "The Jungle Cat-Queen" (Detective Comics #211), "The First Batman" (Detective Comics #235), "Origin of the Superman-Batman Team" (World's Finest #94) - 1960s: "Robin Die at Dawn" (Batman #156), "The Blockbuster Invason of Gotham" (Detective Comics #345) - 1970s: "Ghost of the Killer Skies" (Detective Comics #404), "Half an Evil" (Batman #234), "Man-Bat Over Vegas" (Detective Comics #429), "The Batman Nobody Knows" (Batman #250), "Deathmask" (Detective Comics #437), "Death Haunts the Skies' (Detective Comics #442), "There is no Hope in Crime Alley" (Detective Comics #457), "Death Strikes at Midnight and Three" (a text story from DC Special Series #15), "The Deadshot Ricochet" (Detective Comics #474), "Bat-Mite's New York Adventure" (Detective Comics 482), "A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman at Bay" (Batman #312) - 1980s: "To Kill a Legend" (Detective Comics #500), "The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne" (The Brave and the Bold #197)
Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
Additional notes: commentaries by Dick Giordano; Mike Gold; Robert Greenberger; creator bios.
I always seem to have mixed feelings about "Greatest" collections and "Best of..." assemblages.
On one hand, what's not to like? A wide variety of stories collected between a single cover -- some undoubtedly quite rare and hard to find. And stories that have already been vetted by editors, so that you can be pretty sure they're all of at least decent quality. It's a grab bag of tales, and really, that's all you can ask. And assuming the price hasn't changed much...that's a pretty good deal (350 pages for the price that normally wouldn't get you half those pages).
On the other hand, if the promise is that these really are the "greatest" you can kind of expect a certain level of quality, mixing significant, "classic" tales with just well told stories. And that's where my mixed feelings can come in. Because I've rarely read a "greatest" collection that entirely lived up to its name. This one included.
On a technical level, The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told tries to cover most of the key bases. It reprints stories from over a four decade span, and features appearances by a number of familiar foes such as Catwoman, Penguin, The Scarecrow, Two-Face, the Joker (the latter only in one tale since he got his own TPB collection). And there are lesser recurring nemeses such as Hugo Strange and the first appearance of Blockbuster. There's some interesting variety as well, including a Sunday newspaper strip story line, and a text story. Although published in the late 1980s, after DC's "new" post-Crisis reality had taken effect, all the stories here are pre-Crisis tales, and reflect that mythos -- including a couple of 1950s tales fleshing out Batman's origin: "The Origin of the Batman" (detailing his hunt for the man who murdered his parents, Joe Chill) and "The First Batman" (in which he learns Chill was hired by Lew Moxom); both of which are no longer considered canon (though combine to create a complex origin for the caped crusader).
I'm also appreciative of how much of the book is devoted to Bronze Age (ie: 1970s and later) material.
Other noteworthy -- or just plain better-than-average tales -- include a couple of Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams collaborations: the moody "Half an Evil" (with Bats battling Two-Face -- a story I'd read before so I may view with undue nostalgic affection) and "Ghost of the Killer Skies" which is a bit clumsy as a mystery as Batman investigates sabotage on a film set, but the climax in World War I fighter planes over barren fields is eerily effective (meant as an homage to Robert Kanigher-Joe Kubert's Enemy Ace). "Robin Dies at Dawn", owing a bit to a certain "Twilight Zone" episode, is a surprisingly effective tale from the early 1960s, beginning with a spookily illustrated sequence on an alien world, before reverting to more familiar Gotham City terrain, but boasting (for the time period) some good character stuff. And the Frank Robbins written and drawn "Man-Bat Over Vegas" is fast and energetic, with an interesting plot twist.
A 1950s battle with the Catwoman is entertaining enough, while a newspaper strip story line involving the Penguin is thoroughly enjoyable, even if modern, anal retentive fans would no doubt rage at the light-hearted premise (Batman and Robin agree not to arrest the Penguin until after his ailing aunt, who is unaware of his criminal career, has visited him, leading them to pass themselves off as the Penguin's friends to explain why they're hanging around).
Head and shoulders the best of the collection are the final two stories, both, ironically, by Alan Brennert (a writer with only a handful of comicbook stories to his credit). "To Kill a Legend" tells an intriguing, dramatic tale of Batman being offered a chance to save his parent's lives...on a parallel world; but Robin wonders whether doing so is the right thing, as it will rob that other world of its Batman. It was first published in the over-sized 500th issue of Detective Comics which also included a lot of nice back up stories, including Hawkman, Elongated Man, etc -- just FYI. The final story, "The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne" is, literally, the perfect tale to close out the collection, telling a tale of the Earth 2 Batman (I told you these were all pre-Crisis stories) whose feelings for reformed villainess Catwoman come to a head when they team up to battle the Scarecrow, whose fear gas exposes their secret terrors. Brennert crafts an intelligent, emotional tale, delving into the characters, examining the (possible) root causes of their motivations, to make for the ideal summation of the man who is the Batman. And the art team of Joe Staton and George Freeman is lively and infectious.
Ironically, another Brennert-written tale, not included here, I included in my list of one of the all-time great comics stories.
Early tales of battles with Hugo Strange, or a vampire tale featuring Darla and the Monk (who re-appeared in what I consider a classic saga from the 1980s) are interesting for their relevance to later stories, but aren't very good in and of themselves.
For all the good or great stories, there are a lot that just make you go: uh, why this one? Obviously, one can argue: is the point to assemble "great" stories...or merely representative stories? After all, maybe the editor's didn't want to send a false message about what Batman stories are like by picking too many high-minded, artistic tales. But one might expect a collection like this to detail how the character, and the medium, has evolved over the years. Instead, there are 1970s tales like "A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman at Bay" that, frankly, could've been written in the 1940s (though, sour puss that I am, after a second reading, I realize there is a certain harmless charm to it). And even such semi-classic tales like O'Neil's "There is No Hope in Crime Alley" turned out to be a major disappointment: simplistic, and emphasizing fisticuffs over human drama. The flavour of different eras is strangely ignored (other than showing a more ruthless Batman in the earliest stories). The 1950s and 1960s were supposed to be a time of "goofy" Bat-tales involving a lot of time travel and alien worlds, but little of that is represented here -- which means a later joke filler involving Bat-Mite has no context, since no Bat-Mite stories are included from his hey-dey in the early 1960s. During the '60s TV series, Batman comics apparently became campy, while during the late '60s/early '70s there was a move toward a more urban realism -- neither style is represeted here, in favour of basically forty years of battling super villains.
Someone on the editorial team must've been a big aviation buff, though, because a disproportionate number of stories seem to climax in aerial dog fights!
Artists are also represented inconsistently. Legendary Neal Adams gets two stories (fair enough) while Jim Aparo only gets one, and artists like Irv Novick and Don Newton, both long serving Bat-artists, aren't represented at all! While Alex Toth's only Batman story is included...but it's a pretty minor story. While on the writing side, none of Bob Haney's Brave and the Bold stories were, apparently, deemed worthy enough.
Obviously selecting stories is a tricky matter, particularly when the editors admit certain tales were left out simply because they had already been reprinted a few times over the years. It's hard to argue with that (even then, some of these stories I'd already read in other reprint venues). Still, it's curious to read the closing afterword, mentioning stories that were considered but didn't make the cut, such as "Night of the Reaper", a thought-provoking tale of Batman hunting Nazi war criminals. Leaving it out, in favour of some of the stories included, just seems inane (though I think it was included in a subsequent TPB, Batman in the Seventies).
Ultimately it's a decent collection, with most of the stories being enjoyable enough, but only a few really warrant being considered "great" (most notably the final two Brennert-scripted efforts) while not enough care is given to trying to represent the various stylistic eras. Which, maybe, could explain the nature of comics. After all, the fact that the editors seem to be selecting a lot of, frankly, run-of-the-mill, occasionally mediocre action tales as the "greatest" stories ever could explain the nature of a lot of monthly comics.
Original cover price: $20.95 CDN./ $15.95 USA.
The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told 1988 (SC TPB), 288 pgs.
Reprinting: Batman #1, 4, 63, 73, 74, 110, 159, 163, 251, 321, Detective Comics #168, 475-476, World's Finest #61, 88, Brave & the Bold #111, Joker #3, 1948 Newspaper strip, 1966 Batman Kellogg's Special. (Note: many early comics featured more than one story per issue, so many of the early issues listed are reprints of individual stories, not the entire comic)
Featuring: "Batman vs. the Joker" (untitled); "The Case of the Joker's Crime Circus"; "The Joker and the Sparrow" (newspaper strip); "The Man Behind the Red Hood"; "The Joker's Crime Costumes"; "The Joker's Utility Belt"; "The Crimes of the Batman"; "The Crazy Crime Clown"; "Superman's and Batman's Greatest Foes"; "Crime-of-the-Month Club"; "The Great Clayface-Joker Feud"; "The Joker Jury"; "The Joker's Happy Victims" (cereal giveaway); "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge"; "Death Has the Last Laugh"; "The Last Ha Ha"; "The Laughing Fish"/"The Sign of the Joker"; "Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker-!".
By: variously Finger, Kane, Robinson, Burnley, Roussos,
Moldoff, Sprang, Paris, Kaye, Mooney, others; and Bridwell/Infantio/Anderson;
O'Neil/Adams/Giordano; Haney/Aparo; O'Neil/Chan/Garcia-Lopez; Englehart/Rogers/Austin;
Wein/Simonson/Giordano
Colours: various. Letters: various. Editors: various.
Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: some stories once, others, more.
O.K., firstly, I think the title of this Batman collection -- The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told -- is a bit of an oxymoron. The Joker is a fine villain, but he's pretty one-dimensional and stories featuring him tend, likewise, to be lacking any real emotional or intellectual depth. And since Batman, moreso than some characters, had a pretty consistent look from the 1940s to the mid-60s, a big chunk of the book is pretty repetitive. So, with my biases up front, The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told remains an O.K. if unspectacular collection.
The earliest stories reflect an intriguing, dark ambience. There are some decent stories throughout, though only six comics (representing five stories) are printed from the post-'60s (when story and art styles were more adult-friendly).
Memorable stories include the 1st appearance of the Joker; "The Great Clayface-Joker Feud"; the classic Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge", easily the best comic in the collection and one of the moodiest comic book stories I've ever read; and others. There are off-beat stories and curios that, if not always great, nonetheless show a real commitment on the part of the editors and give the collection some zing. These include the Joker's origin; a complete newspaper strip story line; a rare 6 page breakfast cereal give-away; and an issue of the Joker's own, short-lived comic (featuring the superhero the Creeper, though written poorly out-of-character, I thought).
Added 2003: Yet for all that these are supposed to be "the greatest" Joker stories ever, I recently picked up World's Best Comics, an ultra cheap one-shot comic (.99 cents, US) DC published in October 2003 reprinting some Golden Age stories (as a way of encouraging readers to buy their extremely expensive Archive editions collections). In addition to Superman, Wonder Woman and Plastic Man, included was a Batman-Joker story from the early 1940s -- "The Riddle of the Missing Card" -- that actually struck me as better, and more ambitious, than a lot of the stories included here!
The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told also exposes a certain myth about the Joker. Since the '70s, the character has been portrayed as a homicidal psychopath, stories featuring him invariably resulting in death. All of which is justified, writers and editors say as though a mantra, because they are returning the character to his pre-'60s, pre-campy Caesar Romero TV version incarnation. But looking at these stories, the Joker was only a killer in the very, very earliest tales. In fact, in one story, "The Crazy Crime Clown", the Joker has to feign insanity to be admitted to an asylum. That doesn't make the current interpretation of the character wrong, but it means Denny O'Neil and company have to take responsibility for the level of violence in their stories, instead of passing it off onto some imagined "tradition".
Cover price: $18.95 CDN./$14.95 USA
Or back to:
The Untold Legend of the Batman Published
in 1982 by Tor Books, re-issued in 1992 - Black & White