Detective Comics (1937) #465

Dc465

I’ve never heard of writer David Vern before, but I hope it’s a while before I read another of his comics. The Batman feature’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s pretty annoying thanks to the Ernie Chan and Frank Giacola art.

Also, the story’s written like a Hostess Fruit Pie advertisement, like they’re targeting the eight-year-olds, which is about as old as you can get without the art grating.

The story’s about Commissioner Gordon and Batman’s plan for when hoods kidnap Gordon and demand to know Batman’s identity. There’s a flashback explaining Batman gave Gordon the name to say, which would then trigger a response from the Caped Crusader. It’s a delayed response, but it’s pre-smart phones; what can you do?

In the present, a mysterious man visits the offices of this red herring, which then triggers a video call to Wayne Tower, where Bruce and Alfred watch agog. Bruce immediately realizes it also means Gordon’s been kidnapped and gets into his long johns. Only he’s got to do some investigating to figure out who’s got Gordon, which means going to “The Boards.” At first, I thought Vern was going to do a Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars thing, but it’s just a throwaway device to get Batman on the right track.

And for the only Black guy in the comic to try to mug a white lady. Cool.

After starting with an emphasis on the detective work, the story quickly just becomes a series of poorly illustrated fight scenes, with accompanying bad exposition and dialogue. When Chan’s clearly penciled some atrocious physiology, it’s obvious what’s wrong with the art. The rest of the time, there’s just something off-putting about it, which might be “thanks” to Giacola’s inks.

The backup’s another in the Calculator series, written by Bob Rozakis (no Laurie helping him here), with pencils from Chan and inks from Terry Austin. There’s a good panel in the story. A good panel. A reaction shot of Sue Dibney (Calculator is messing with Elongated Man this time). With better art—and maybe more pages—the story ought to work; Calculator makes Elongated Man’s elongating powers contagious, just as Ralph goes to a Comic-Con with a bunch of cosplayers. So it’s these various not-heroes dressed as DC heroes elongating and mad about it.

It’s a bad story, but what else would it be in this comic? And that one panel’s good. I didn’t think there’d be one in the comic when I saw Chan was on the backup too. But I was wrong.

There’s one.

Batgirl: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 (1969-70)

Batgirl Omnibus 1

Maybe I shouldn’t have complained so much about Gardner Fox.

After approximately a year off (or just appearing as a guest star in Batman or Detective and not getting an Omnibus reprint), Batgirl’s started getting backups in Detective. Gil Kane came back to do the pencils, but with Murphy Anderson on the inks and—outside the occasional eyes—the art rarely looks like Gil Kane. Anderson seems to have entirely erased and redone the faces, which leads to some strange face placements on heads. So outside the curiosity factor of seeing pencils and inks not going together, Batgirl’s going to need some good writing to get through.

Starting with Mike Friedrich, it’s pretty clear she’s not going to get any good writing. Friedrich takes Fox’s bad flexes—Barbara Gordon’s female vanity and her professional indiscretions as a librarian—and streamlines them into a tale of Barbara stalking a handsome customer. The first part of the story is just her deciding when he doesn’t come into the library at the regular time she needs to go to his home, where she finds another woman, so then we get Batgirl stalking the dude while being jealous of this other woman. It’s fairly obvious how the resolution is going to work but along the way there’s some constrained action—Batgirl fighting random thugs, who always manage to get the upper hand, which really reminds of the old Batman serials where the heroes would get beat up the entire fight scene and then succeed through a cliffhanger reveal. Unfortunately, Batgirl getting beat up because she doesn’t pay attention or just isn’t, you know, as good a fighter as a random college student maintains through the different writers.

One of the few things writers Friedrich, Denny O’Neill, and Frank Robbins are all going to agree on is Batgirl not actually being a competent crime fighter.

Robbins takes over after Friedrich’s first two-parter and has Barbara stumbling into some kind of plot because she wants a cheap apartment. It opens like it’s a Red-Headed League homage–oh, there’s another thing they all agree on: fetishizing Barbara being a red-head. Anyway, it’s not a RHL homage, instead having Barbara at a costume ball as Batgirl fighting with crooks dressed as other superheroes. Arguably the Anderson inks on the Kane pencils never work better than with the pseudo-superheroes. They’re at least effective. The resolve has what should be a gloriously silly resolution but it just doesn’t play; some of it is how Kane breaks out the action, so it’s not all on Robbins or Anderson. A lot of it is on Robbins and Anderson, obviously, but not all of it.

The next story introduces Jason Bard, an amateur detective who can’t be a professional because he’s got a bad knee, which may or may not have happened in Vietnam. He definitely was in Vietnam, but where he hurt the knee is immaterial or so I’m going to keep telling myself because I clearly skimmed that exposition dump. Though Bronze Age so there will be plot-changing details revealed in six words in a tiny thought balloon in the top right of an action-packed panel.

Barbara and a work pal are gossiping about customers—it’s just what librarians do, the pal tells Jason, silly ladies—and they set their sights on him. He’s in the library doing his amateur criminologist research and now he’s going to go out and investigate and prove his methods correct, starting with a mugging turned murder in Central Park. Gotham Park. Whatever. They both have Taverns on the Green. Jason makes quick work of setting a lunch date with Barbara and soon they’re investigating together, except she’s doing it behind his back as Batgirl while telling him how cool it must be to be an amateur criminologist on full disability. Jason Bard’s a weird character.

But his first appearance is nowhere near as cringe as his second, when someone at DC told Robbins to up the Vietnam references so nearly every panel in the second half of Bard’s intro mentions Vietnam or war, including something about Bard’s amateur criminology being “his new war.” It’s a lot. And a fairly blah resolution anyway.

Still better than the next one, which has Batgirl trying to take down a lonely hearts killer. Here’s where we find out Robbins thinks Barbara is homely (whereas Friedrich made sure to establish she was ogle-worthy).

I can’t imagine how these would read as backups, what with the very iffy art and the bland action. This two-parter is just more Batgirl fighting random thugs in alleys. It’s bland stuff. And then Jason’s hanging around because Barbara’s doing the Sea of Love thing, obviously, not Batgirl so Jason’s got to stalk his love interest because romance. Maybe if Robbins had committed and done Jason as a creepy vet stalker but he’s just there to remind Barbara she’s his lady whether there’s a ring on it or not.

I don’t even remember if he unintentionally fumbles through a fight scene to deus ex something. In his first story he falls down some stairs and it saves the day.

Vince Colleta takes over the inks for the O’Neill-written two-parter, which promises to be the first time Robin ever teams up with Batgirl. Clearly O’Neill hadn’t read the second or third story in the Batgirl Bronze Age Omnibus where Batgirl and Robin very definitely team-up… maybe they mean without Batman at all. Or maybe they mean with some flirting. There’s this really weird bit where Batgirl flirts with Robin in the last panel and there’s no time for a reaction from him. And as a late nineties Oracle/Nightwing shipper, it’s fine? But maybe it’s just the art. The Batgirl and Robin adventuring scenes are about as good as you’re going to get, even if it’s just a page.

O’Neill’s writing is… not great. His mystery—an homage to Edgar Allan Poe and some other mystery writers—would probably not make Poe blush. At some point you’re wondering if O’Neill realizes there can’t be any question of the villain’s identity because there are only five characters in the story, two of them are superheroes and two of them are dead. Or something along those lines. I was too busy appreciating decent movement for once in the comic. Oh, but funny thing about the Batgirl and Robin team-up—no Robin in the first part. Total bait and switch. You get a two panel Dick Grayson cameo without Batgirl knowing Dick Grayson is Robin. Then O’Neill switches over to Robin’s perspective for most of the second part.

Robin, it turns out, is just as bad a criminal investigator as Batgirl, so at least there’s consistent incompetence to Gotham’s best funded paramilitary enthusiast organization.

Wait, are the Bat-family just larpers at their core?

Then Robbins does a story about an Andy Warhol analogue getting murdered. Well, combination Andy Warhol (Billy Warlock—wait, isn’t that the guy from “Baywatch”) and underground pornographer. Maybe. I’m not sure what Robbins means when he talks about “x-epics” and it’s not worth trying to figure out. Frank Giacoia’s inks aren’t great. They don’t clash as much as Anderson’s—and initially the art seems like it’s going to be all right, the inks giving Kane a cartoon-y quality—but no. Jason Bard’s also back for this one and there’s—maybe—the first appearance of Commissioner Gordon in the backups. He was too busy in the features to bother making an appearance apparently.

The cliffhanger (since I’m cutting off at a year mark) has Colleta inks again—who knew you could be so happy to see “inks by Vince Colleta”—and involves Batgirl using her knowledge from library to hunt down random citizens again. But this time she’s after protestors and they know their rights so we get a scene where someone’s like, “Get your vigilante ass off my porch,” and we’re supposed to be siding with Batgirl harassing the person. Who she only knew to target from the library. Will Batgirl be able to save the day against the hippies who say they aren’t violent but really are? Hashtag peace is for pansies apparently.

Batgirl 1969 and Batgirl 1970 aren’t a complete waste of time—I’m also curious how Kane’s original pencils look—but given the best thing about a hundred or so pages of comics is a dozen panels with Batgirl and Robin doing acrobat stuff thanks to Vince Colleta inks? I mean, it’s pretty close to a complete waste of time then, isn’t it.

Howard the Duck (1976) #28

Howard the Duck 28

Carmine Infantino on Howard the Duck. It works out rather well. He’s got Frank Giacoia on inks. They have fun. It helps the story is fun too–these people who run into Howard go to the same psychiatrist, which wraps the flashbacks. Howard’s story has him breaking in to an army base. The army is experimenting on the populace.

With the Infantino pencils and Mary Skrenes’s over-the-top dialogue for all the squares, this issue of Howard doesn’t feel like Gerber’s usual work on the comic (he edits the issue) but it’s not bad.

It’s sort of one note and predictable and a little too cute, both in terms of plot coincidences and Howard and Bev (it’s out of continuity apparently). It’s Howard the Duck with artificial sweetener. All the anti-establishment stuff is there in exposition, but not in the storytelling.

But it could be much, much worse.

Howard the Duck 28 (November 1978)

Howard the Duck #28 Carmine Infantino on Howard the Duck. It works out rather well. He’s got Frank Giacoia on inks. They have fun. It helps the story is fun too–these people who run into Howard go to the same psychiatrist, which wraps the flashbacks. Howard’s story has him breaking in to an army base. The army is experimenting on the populace.

But it could be much, much worse.

CREDITS

Cooking With Gas; writers, Marv Wolfman and Mary Skrenes; penciller, Carmine Infantino; inker, Frank Giacoia; colorist, Glynis Wein; letterer, Bruce Patterson; editor, Steve Gerber; publisher, Marvel Comics.

Godzilla 2 (September 1977)

Trimpe’s got a shot right between Godzilla’s legs (on the second or third page too!). It feels kind of dirty.

Moench goes on to expand on the Marvel 616 version of Godzilla–turns out the ocean floor held a lot of other monsters (including giant flying birds). The nuclear blast opening the crevice for Godzilla opened the crevice for them too.

Including a giant bird.

In the ocean.

Did anyone read Moench’s script before it went to Trimpe?

Or was Marvel still doing it the other way, vice versa?

Trimpe’s got some amazingly bad work in this issue, including a giant foot (not Godzilla’s) about to stomp a miniature wine glass.

Besides as an example of terrible art, there’s not much to recommend Godzilla. He goes after the Seattle Space Needle but doesn’t destroy it. The rest of Moench’s action set pieces are similarly impotent.

It’s awful; best as humor.

CREDITS

Thunder in the Darkness!; writer, Doug Moench; penciller, Herb Trimpe; inkers, Frank Giacoia and George Tuska; colorist, Janice Cohen; letterer, John Costanza; editor, Archie Goodwin; publisher, Marvel Comics.

Showcase 14 (May-June 1958)

Once again, neither Flash story is particularly impressive, though Infantino (inked both stories by Frank Giacoia) creates some neat-looking space ships in the first one. The second has some great art for maybe three pages, then the quality falls off a lot.

The stories themselves read fast and don’t have much personality or thought. For example, in John Broome’s story, Dr. Alchemy turns lead into gold… then proceeds to rob a bank for money. Doesn’t make any sense.

That story also has Infantino resolving the big action in a small panel, which is boring. At least in the first story–written by Robert Kanigher–Infantino gives the finale the appropriate scale.

There’s also more of Iris thinking about Barry Allen being super-lame. It’s almost like Lois Lane is dating Clark Kent and constantly berating him. Of course, Barry’s barely a character, so who cares?

Still, it’s been worse….

Showcase 13 (March-April 1958)

What a bad issue for Flash.

Joe Giella’s inks on Infantino don’t have any perspective. Faces are flat, even with features implying depth. Then, on the second story, Frank Giacoia’s inks give everything a sketchy look. Neither story looks like each other, much less the standard Infantino.

Robert Kanigher writes the first story, with Barry headed around the world to solve crises while still needing to make a date with Iris. Iris is mean to Barry, he’s a doofus and all of his rescues involve beautiful women who complement Flash. The action seems more like Superman: The Movie.

The second story has Flash fighting Mr. Element. Writer John Broome is big on fantastic events, but Infantino gives them tiny panels. Iris is still mean to Barry here, even if he’s a little less of a doofus.

The issue doesn’t impress, not for art, certainly not for writing. It’s rather tiresome.

Showcase 8 (May-June 1957)

Unfortunately, this issue does not feature the Flash fighting a giant finger. Instead, he fights some evil triplets and then Captain Cold (in different stories). The first story–written by Robert Kanigher–is better. Barry has to figure different things out in order to defeat the bad guys and Kanigher does show some of Barry’s character. There’s also a lot of Iris (as comic relief) in the story.

For the Captain Cold story, John Broome spends more time on Len Snart’s origin than he spends on any personality for Barry. Worse is Broome’s “science,” which gives Captain Cold a hallucination-making device. It’s really dumb.

The art, from Infantino (inked by Frank Giacoia), has its highs and mediocre points. It never goes bad. Infantino occasionally comes up with some beautifully composed panels; they aren’t constant but they’re enough to make for engaging art.

The issue’s okay; Broome drags it down.

Detective Comics (1937) #529

Dc529

I try to be open-minded about Cavalieri and Cullins’s Green Arrow back-ups, but this one peeved me. Moench doesn’t get enough time with his Batman story–which is his fault for not pacing it out right–but come on. Who carries about Green Arrow’s lame villain? Though inker Frank Giacoia does ruin Cullins’s pencils in sometimes amusing ways.

Moench and Colan (joined by Dick Giordano on inks), on the other hand, do a fabulous Batman story about Bruce losing. He loses in a fight (the bad guy has better costume material), he loses Vicki Vale and he’s about to lose Jason Todd. His life, as much as a billionaire’s life can, is falling apart.

And Moench and Colan nail it. There’s a slick noir tone–Colan excels–with Moench expounding on the idea of nighttime habits as they relates to Batman.

It’s great. Shame it runs too short.

Detective Comics 529 (August 1983)

And Moench and Colan nail it. There’s a slick noir tone–Colan excels–with Moench expounding on the idea of nighttime habits as they relates to Batman.

It’s great. Shame it runs too short.