Batman 1978

Pin-up from Batman Family.

Comics weren't doing so well in the later 1970s. At a convention just after the bicentennial, a young Dave Olbrich approached Marv Wolfman and asked what he could do to break into comics. "Don't," said Wolfman. "In 5 years there isn't going to be any comics."

Wolfman was wrong of course - in the early 80s, the industry was booming  - but at the time, it was a reasonable view; all signs pointed to imminent collapse. At DC this was especially true. 1978 was the year of the DC Implosion, with cancellation of almost half the company's titles and mass layoffs.

Much to the Joker's delight, this spread some (mild) chaos in the titles Batman appeared in.

All-Star Comics folded, and the JSA wandered between the worlds before settling in Adventure Comics, as we'll see in 1979.

Power Girl landed in Showcase.

And the Huntress followed in Black Canary's footsteps and went over to Earth-1.

They teased her doing so for a few months before she finally introduced herself. (EDIT: I'm told this is not the Huntress but Catwoman, which would indeed make sense, given that she's walking around with a cat and all. I could have sworn something indicated elsewhere that this was the Huntress, despite that detail, but now I can find no corroboration of this.)

FURTHER EDIT: Yep, I was 100% wrong. Here's Selina Kyle introducing herself to Bruce Wayne in Batman #308. (She's removed the flower from her hat and changed coats, but it's the same person.)

In other media, DC was doing pretty well. Richard Donner's Superman was huge, the Wonder Woman TV show was a genuine pop culture landmark of the era, and the various Batman animated series were all flying high. But the comics were a different story.

WORLD'S FINEST COMICS

(Issues 248 - 253)

Writers: Bob Haney, E. Nelson Bridwell, Gerry Conway, Steve Ditko. Artists: Kurt Schaffenberger, Frank Chiaramonte, Don Newton, Steve Dikto, George Tuska, Vince Colletta, Tex Blaisdell.

In a face-saving move of sorts, DC expanded some of its titles to Dollar Comics as it slashed production elsewhere. World's Finest began featuring the adventures of Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Green Arrow, and The Creeper (written and drawn by Steve Ditko) alongside Superman and Batman. The Creeper ones are cool if you like Ditko (and I run hot or cold on him)

The Wonder Woman stories are actually pretty good. This splash makes it seem as if this is some lurid-race-panic affair, and while it's hardly that at all in the reading, I wouldn't fault you for raising an eyebrow.

The Superman and Batman stories (alas, no Jrs.) are almost all Silver Age throwbacks in conception and execution.

Superman vet Kurt Schaffenberger joined the fold, and while this art looks beautiful to my eyes now, it was very anachronistic for 1978. Comic book art (as Kirby was finding over at Marvel) was moving in an entirely different direction.

Like the Batman can even feel his skull at this point!

Some of the stories are actually pretty surreal. (Though "surreal" and "Silver Age throwback" are interchangeable.)

I am a sucker for any neutron bomb reference. They are fewer and further between than you'd think.

And speaking of weapons of mass destruction: Jon Rambo?

The Marvel family kept trying to find a place in DC's line-up to thrive in the 70s. I'm not sure they ever really succeeded. (Actually, excepting Alan Moore's Marvelman, I'm not sure they ever really clicked anywhere other than the original Whiz Comics from the 40s and 50s.)

They do have a villain named Captain Nazi, though.

JLA
(Issues 151 - 161)

Writer: Gerry Conway. Artists: Dick Dillin, Frank McLaughlin, George Tuska

Most of the year falls into this pattern:

Another team meeting.

The women discuss gender roles.

The Atom agonizes over his impending nuptials.

Red Tornado finds time for a self-pitying remark.

Green Arrow gives "that speech" again.

And then this happens.

Rinse wash repeat.

The year's cross-over event has the feel of any bloated variety show or fundraiser from the late 70s or early 80s.

I've said it before, but why DC felt it needed to have a yearly multiverse-threatening crisis that also reintroduced some new arrangement of forgotten or rebooted superheroes is beyond me. There's tradition, and then there's stuff like this, where everyone just goes through the motion in the name of it and draws no reinvigoration.

It does give the Batman the occasion to reflect on the child he never had:

BATMAN FAMILY

(Issues 15 - 20)

Writers: Bob Rozakis, Gerry Conway, Denny O'Neil, Paul Levitz, David Reed. Artists: Lee Elias, Joe Giella, Don Heck, John Celardo, Jim Aparo, Bob Wiacek, Vince Colletta, Michael Golden, Craig Russell, Juan Ortiz, Joe Staton, Bob Layton.

Looks more like Miller to me than Starlin. Early Miller, that is, not angry-big-hands Miller of the years to come. Not that I'm in any way suggesting Starlin isn't his own man, artwise. (And this pre-dates Miller - you never hear much about Miller's art being Starlin-esque, but maybe I'll throw that out there now and see what happens.)

The last year of Batman Family is chockful of good stuff. And a whole lot of Man-Bat. And if those two things aren't mutually exclusive for you, you're in even better shape. Some familiar faces return:

 

 

and Batgirl and the Huntress (who gets a back-up along the way) prove they're definitely in the Bat-clan:

Starting with cover date January 1979 (on sale fall 1978) Batman Family was folded into:

DETECTIVE COMICS

(Issues 475 - 486)

Writers: Steve Englehart, Len Wein, Denny O'Neil. Artists: Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, Jim Starlin, Dick Giordano, Don Newton, David Hunt

Saleswise, Detective Comics was actually the Bat-title on the chopping block, but DC figured it couldn't exactly cancel the series from whose title it derived its initials. So the better-selling Batman Family was folded into it.

That all happened in cover-date 1979, though, so we'll see those next time. This year starts off with perhaps the most well-regarded Joker story of the '70s outside of "The Joker's Five Way Revenge" (back in Batman 251.)

It's a decent two-parter, definitely. People have been telling me for years that Sam Hamm's script for Batman (1989) drew heavily on this for inspiration, but I didn't really see anything in it that wasn't in a dozen other Batman stories (prior to 1978) I can think of. Still pretty good, though.

Steve Englehart was hired by Jenette Kahn to write Marvel-style stories for JLA and Batman, and he certainly does so here, weaving in multi-issue sub-plots with haunted bosses and a girlfriend who guesses the Batman's secret identity. This latter story ends with a Bat-break-up and informs the last page of the Joker two-parter, which comes up often in any discussion of the period.

Otherwise, there's a throwback to "The House that Haunted Batman" from Detective Comics #408 (way back in 1971) and the return of (an all-new) Clayface.

As mentioned elsewhere, I've been playing Lego Batman concurrent to writing all these blogs, on the Hemingway / Wall of Sound principle that things buried in the mix but inaudible/ not discussed add dimensions to the work above the water line. And I feel the need to give a shout-out to Lego Clayface here, as once you unlock him, he makes everything so much easier!

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD

(Issues 139 - 145)

Writers: Bob Haney, Cary Burkett. Artist: Jim Aparo

This year's stretch of team-ups includes Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Aquaman, the Creeper, Green Arrow, and the Phantom Stranger. A pretty familiar line-up at this point, isn't it? Compare it to the variety in Marvel Two in One or Marvel Team-Up of the same few years.

Going through the motions, more or less.

Some cool art as always.

Get a job, sir.

BATMAN

(Issues 295 - 306)

Writers: Gerry Conway, David Reed. Artists: Michael Golden, Sal Amendola, Rich Buckler, Vince Colletta, John Calnan, Dick Giordano, Walt Simonson, Tex Blaisdell

Meh. Nothing really jumps out as particularly worthy of discussion. Feels like a placeholder year for the line.

The David Reed-penned stories are all perfectly acceptable - so are the Conway ones, for that matter - but I've already forgotten what they were about. I look at the covers and images and remember taking them in, but nothing stuck.

I did bring you back a couple of souvenirs, though:

AND THE BEST BATMAN STORY

OF 1978 IS...

Note: as with a few other entries to this "Best of..." feature, this one might not be the actual best story of the year.

from Batman Family #18.

We begin with the above - frogmen on the Potomac, advancing menacingly on the Pentagon! Which is, apparently, remarkably easy.

Keep in mind: Barbara Gordon is a congresswoman.

Thank God, though, that her date has chosen this Makeout Point to park, as it allows her to espy the would-be terrorists.

I won't draw it out. The set-up is what blows my mind, there, above. 

If it ended there - Batgirl on this inexplicable date who just happens to thwart a would-be assault on an undefended Pentagon - it'd be chuckleworthy but not showcased. What brings it to the next level is the sudden appearance of:

The Pentagon, you see, was built to harness the mystical powers of the earth. (This might explain the intermittent blood sacrifice the State Department feels obliged to ritually enact once every generation - got to keep The Old Ones happy.)

Madame Zodiac feels obliged to let the Pentagon's engineers off the hook, there.

It all goes pretty much as you might expect. I enjoyed this callback to the meteor shower at story's end:

And that's all she wrote. Only one of these left! How did we get here so fast? See you next time for the last year of the Batman's swinging seventies adventures.

Batman 1977 pt. 2

I separated these posts on the assumption that I'd have so much to screencap and discuss that it would make the reading of it all easier if I split the year's Bat-stories in two. But after making my way through 1977's stretch of Batman, Batman Family, and Detective Comics, I see I was mistaken. There's really just not too much to write about.

None of the issues below are terrible or anything, just rather unremarkable. And it strikes me typing that out that I've written some variation of that sentence too many times during these Bat-blogs. So nah, not this time. We'll resume normal commentary next time around. As for the below, outside of a couple of captions here and there, all text is from guest-blogger Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. 

Mostly - the enterprising Hemingway reader will notice a couple from other books.

None of which have nothing to do with Batman or Gotham City, obviously, but it's easily much more worthwhile than anything I could drum up about this rather routine lot.

If Hemingway is not your thing then please enjoy the pics, and we'll see you (hopefully) next time. (Where all commentary will be replaced by quotes from Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned. Joke.) 

(Note: I didn't consciously match quote with image, but some happy accidents nevertheless occurred. Also, with the exception of the Fitzgerald bits, I didn't pay too much attention to being chronological or grouping anything, so one should not assume any quote is a continuation of the previous one.)

“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.”

BATMAN

(Issues 283 - 294)

Writers: David V. Reed, Denny O'Neil. Artists: Ernie Chua, Romeo Tanghall, Frank Springer, Irv Novick, Bob Wiacek, Mike Grell, Vince Colletta, John Calnan, Tex Blaisdell

“Never confuse movement with action.”

“Later (Gertrude Stein) got to look like a Roman emperor. Which was fine if you liked your women to look like Roman emperors.”

“Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.”  

“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”

“And that, Senator McCarthy, is why we fought in the Lincoln Brigade.”

BATMAN FAMILY

(Issues 10 - 14)

Writer: Bob Rozakis. Artists: Bob Brown, Vince Colletta, Curt Swan, J. Delbo, Don Newton, Marshall Rogers, Bob Wiacek, Don Heck.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”  

Wait... isn't her costume a long sleeve? How does this work? And where did she stash her cape? I know, I know...

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.

The spring always came finally, but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”

I absolutely adore this cover. In the story itself, they're not wearing wedding clothes based on their costumes, which is too bad.

“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”  

“My, she said. We're lucky that you found the place. 

We're always lucky, I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on, too.” 

DETECTIVE COMICS

(Issues 467 - 474)

Writers: Bob Rozakis, Steve Englehart. Artists: John Calnan, Vince Colletta, Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom.

“Hunger is good discipline.”

“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”

“Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man.”

 “Maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that sometimes, afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places.”

“Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold color and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk's eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything was all right and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, Ernest, don't you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus? Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.” 

“(Scott Fitzgerald's) talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became more conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think. He was flying again and I was lucky to meet him just after a good time in his writing if not a good one in his life.”

“When I had finished (Gatsby) I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.” 

 

“For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.” 

 

“When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away. They do not always learn about the good, the attractive, the charming, the soon-beloved, the generous, the understanding rich who have no bad qualities and who give each day the quality of a festival and who, when they have passed and taken the nourishment they needed, leave everything deader than the roots of any grass Attila's horses' hooves have ever scoured.”  

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”  

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”