Retro Comics are Awesome

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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Batman #62 concluded

The Batman of England!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

The Knight and the Squire - an English imitation of the Dynamic Duo!

We have another story that apparently inspired Grant Morrison when he was writing Batman. This story introduces the Knight and Squire, in reality the Earl of Wordenshire and his son Cyril, who have been inspired to fight crime by Batman and Robin. Instead of a cave, they live in a castle with a crypt and a secret entrance. Instead of costumes, they wear suits of armor, and instead of a car, they ride motorcycles. They'd love to meet the heroes who inspired them, and of course, they get their chance when Batman and Robin pursue the Matt Thorne gang to England, where Thorne is after Nazi gold hidden during the war. Thorne and his men are "big time crooks" who are too much for the Knight and Squire, so they team up with Batman and Robin to track down and stop Thorne.

Sprang must have really been inspired by all the non-Gotham scenery he got to draw, because the panels are packed with detail, and the story goes from a small English village, to Stonehenge, to a fox hunt, to a British museum with a map of Great Britain (where Robin hides in a wax display featuring his namesake, Robin Hood). The gold turns out to be hidden in the crypt of the Earl's castle. Thorne is caught, and attempts to get what revenge he can by exposing the identity of the Knight and Squire, since he's figured out who they are, but Bruce and Dick impersonate them and foil Thorne (where did they get perfect masks of the Earl and his son??). The Earl decides that it was a close call, and they'd better give up crime-fighting.

I didn't anticipate much from this story, but it was a lot more fun than I expected. The art is great, and though I normally don't enjoy seeing Batman out of his element, he fits better around museums and castles than he does out west or in the frozen north. I don't know that the Knight and Squire are characters we'll see again since they retire at the end of the story, but I think they may well come out of retirement at some point.

The Mystery of Millionaire Island!
Writer: ? Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz and Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

The nearly forgotten Alfred rates a one panel appearance as he delivers an invitation to Bruce to a secret destination. Bruce is intrigued and finds that he's in the company of a number of other millionaires as they sail out to an island to view "the house of tomorrow". They enter the house, and are addressed via intercom system, where they are told that the boat has left, no one knows where they are, and no one will leave the island alive without revealing the secret to their fortunes. We get a murder mystery where the assembled group are killed off one by one, though of course Bruce contrives to get Batman involved and is able to call Robin in (in the old Batplane, oddly, which makes me wonder if this story was written and drawn before the new plane was designed). The twist ending is not that the would-be killer is Porter West, who supposedly was the first to die, but that no one has actually been killed. The other two victims, Ecker and Wayne himself (who appeared to die at one point, which gave Bruce a free hand to operate as Batman) were locked in a secret cellar. Porter wanted to scare the men out of their secrets and fortunes, and dead men can't talk.

Detective Comics #166
December 1950

The Man with a Million Faces!
Script: ? Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

Bruce and Dick visit the Carson Circus when it comes to town (and we're reminded that Dick used to be a trapeze performer as part of the Flying Graysons). One of the performers is impersonator John Gillen, the "man with a million faces" of the title. Dick introduces Gillen to Bruce, because his parents knew Gillen back in the day. Gillen always wears a black hood while in public as part of his act (reminds me of Clayton Moore's actual face never being visible when he was playing the Lone Ranger) and he's glad to make Bruce's acquaintance. But as you can imagine, where there's an angle that crooks in Gotham can exploit, they will, Gillen has a past as an ex-con, and he's been blackmailed into impersonating famous people several times. Unknown to him, he was used as a distraction while crimes were committed nearby. Robin insists that he's a decent man who can't be guilty, but Gillen runs rather than risk going back to prison.

Bruce and Dick go undercover in the circus to catch the blackmailers. Bruce impersonates the impersonator, and Dick goes back to his old act as a trapeze artist. This being from the 50s, there's no angst involved in this trip down memory lane, as there surely would be today. They get a note meant for Gillen and foil a robbery at the museum, but the crooks escape. After a close call where his secret ID is almost exposed, Barman and Robin catch the crooks, and it's Robin who tricks one of them into betraying where earlier stolen loot was hidden. Gillen's name is cleared, and despite his fears that he won't be accepted back, the circus is glad to have him.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Detective Comics #167
January 1951

Bodyguards to Cleopatra!
Script: Bill Finger Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

Golden Age Batman really has been everywhere and met everyone. It's time for another "time travel via hypnosis" storyline courtesy of Professor Carter Nichols as Bruce and Dick try to solve the mystery of the bat-signal appearing on a 2000 year old Egyptian frieze. I always enjoy these time travel adventure stories, and this one is no different as Bruce and Dick arrive in ancient Egypt and are immediately press-ganged into helping to build a pyramid, only to escape and assume their Batman and Robin identities due to the off chance that someone might capture their likeness and future generations associate them with the frieze containing the bat-signal. That's more than a little paranoid, Bruce.

They escape into the Nile and are involved with saving Cleopatra's life from assassins who attack her barge. Cleopatra's chief of her royal police, Takeloth, is the spitting image of Commissioner Gordon, so once again we're seeing someone in the past who looks like a present-day acquaintance of Batman. Because they've saved her life, Cleopatra allows them to work with Takeloth to find the assassin, and they investigate and eliminate suspects while foiling further attempts on Cleopatra's life. Along the way they introduce Takeloth to the concept of fingerprints and other "modern" police methods, so they're not worried about altering history here. In the end they find the killer, but not before he's locked them in a pyramid chamber. The bat-signal is one they themselves created and focused out a narrow shaft in the side of the pyramid to attract the attention of Takeloth as they're being drawn back to the 20th century.

Interesting that Cleopatra is brown-skinned on the cover, but white inside the book (as are the other Egyptians, for that matter).There's a lot of debate in anthropological circles about just what skin color ancient Egyptians had, and it's not something that really needs to be addressed here in a review of a silly time travel Batman story. I only bring it up because the discrepancy between the cover and interior pages jumped out at me. These stories are always just pure escapist adventures and not really in the character's normal wheelhouse, but don't we see modern Batman outside his element all the time? They even discussed that in the current Justice League series, that Batman is a "city detective" tackling massive cosmic events. At any rate, I enjoyed the story.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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World's Finest Comics #50
February-March 1951

Bullet-Hole Club
Writer: David Vern Pencils: Dick Sprang Inks: Charles Paris

Gotham's "Bullet Hole Club" is restricted to law enforcement officers who were shot and wounded in the line of duty. It's "a sort of purple heart club", as one reporter puts it. The more times someone has been shot, the higher they rate. Batman is the President, having nine bullet wounds (though that count is wrong... see below), with the next nearest being four men tied for second at three wounds each. A new member is inducted into this one of a kind club, Customs Agent Howard Kiley. While business is ongoing, another man turns up wanting in, private detective Joe Flint, but Batman informs him that the minor bullet wound he received does not qualify.

Flint is determined to join, almost obsessed with the idea, taking risk after risk of being shot, to the point that Batman becomes suspicious, particularly when shots that Flint was firing at some crooks turn out upon investigation to be blanks. He's right to suspect Flint as the story reveals that Flint is actually a counterfeiter, using the detective gig as cover. He shot G-Man Collins for getting too close, but in his hurry to do so used a gun registered with the police. His only chance is to get the bullet back before it can be used as evidence against him. He gets his own men to shoot him in the calf where little real damage will be done, but Batman figures out by the hole in his pants that he was sitting when shot rather than running as he claimed, and he and Robin are able to trap Flint.

This is a nicely paced story with regular reveals as it progresses, so that Batman's figured it all out long before the end, it's just a question of catching Flint in the act so they have proof. The date that Collins was shot is given as Oct. 4, 1949 even though the story is cover dated Feb-March 1951, giving us a hint as to when it might have been written and the lead time before publication. And the giant, fully functional pistols are another good example of the giant props this series regularly employs as scenery to write action around.

It's time to update the "when was Batman shot" list, because this story revolves around that idea.

- Detective Comics #29 - shot by Dr. Death's henchman
- Batman #2 - shot in the shoulder
- Batman #5 - shot multiple times (and Robin is beaten nearly to death)
- Batman #13 - shot while on a train
- Detective Comics #75 - shot in the arm
- Detective Comics #88 - shot in the arm, leaving him unable to stop Big Hearted John from falling to his death
- Batman #37 - Batman is shot in the knee and spends some time in the hospital
- World's Finest #27 - Batman is shot in the shoulder again
- Detective Comics #131 - Batman is shot again, requiring surgery to save his life.
- World's Finest #34 - shot in the shoulder again!
- World's Finest #36 - Shot in the shoulder - how is his arm still functional at this point?
- World's Finest #39 - a bullet grazes Batman's cheek
- Detective Comics #152 - shot and wounded, but not seriously
- Detective Comics #156 - grazed by a bullet
- Batman #58 - Batman is grazed by a bullet
- Batman #51 - reveals that Batman was shot in the shin in an unseen adventure
- Detective Comics #164 - Batman is shot in the chest near his shoulder
- This very story in World's Finest #50 adds two more: two slugs taken from Batman's abdomen after he was shot by "Mad Dog" Biller

The story puts the number of bullets that Batman has taken at 9. Even allowing for the standard that Batman notes at one point ("that bullet merely grazed you! Sorry - but to join this club, a bullet would have to lodge IN you - and the bullet itself would have been your admission ticket"), and allowing that my list may have missed a time or two, Batman has clearly taken more than nine bullets. It might be possible to say that only nine bullets actually lodged and had to be removed by surgery if we wanted to no-prize the list, with the others grazing or passing through him, but clearly the writer, David Vern, could not have been aware of every incident depicted on the page and just picked a high number. Not high enough, as it turns out.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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A few thoughts on the Superman: Exile and Other Stories omnibus.

- As I noted in the hauls thread, the second and third issues reprinted in this book (Superman 23 and Adventures of Superman 446) are the first two issues of Superman I bought back when I started reading comics. I remember at the time not really liking Mike Mignola's art, but thinking that Jerry Ordway's was really good. As my brother said at the time when comparing the two, referring to Ordway's art, "THAT's Superman."

- having only ever seen these issues on newsprint, they really pop nicely on the coated stock used in these omnis.

- This book has more "design and polish" to it than the Golden/Silver/Bronze age books. Those books all have a matte black cover under the dust jacket and no extras, while this book has a printed cover with a silhouette of Superman, a thematic element that carries on throughout the book on the "inside covers" of the reprinted issues where ads were on the original floppies. There's also some pencil art by Jerry Ordway in the back and a painted cover for the trade paperback collection of the Exile storyline.

- Nice intro by Jerry Ordway detailing how he went from contributing story ideas to getting credit for plotting to being offered the job as writer, in addition to drawing the book. He remains one of my favorite Superman artists, and it's nice to read some behind the scenes information.

- This is the era when so many good artists and writers worked on Superman: Roger Stern, Kerry Gammill, Jerry Ordway, Brett Breeding, and I think Dan Jurgens gets his start here on an annual. He may have had one earlier issue back when Byrne was in charge of the books, but I'm not sure. George Perez is briefly involved around the time of Action Comics annual #2, late in the book. There's even a few pages by Curt Swan and some work by Mike Mignola.

- The storytelling reminds me of DS9, where there are the main characters and then lots of secondary characters, all of whom have ongoing storylines and rotate in and out of focus. I would not say this book features an "ensemble cast" as it were, because Superman is clearly the hero and main character, but lots of characters get lots of page time. Adventures 445 gives Jimmy Olsen a lot of time as he investigates the death of a homeless man, to the point he's the main focus of the issue. Cat Grant gets some good scenes. Jose Delgado, formerly the vigilante Gangbuster, gets a subplot where he's offered a chance to walk again after paralysis, and it's shown that Luthor is ultimately behind the offer.

- This is corporate mogul Lex Luthor in his early days. He's heavyset, he's unpleasant, and clearly used to having his own way with everyone. I don't think he's had a line in the first three issues, he's just seen watching proceedings.

- And of course, at this point Pa and Ma Kent are still alive, so Clark can go back home to visit. This is immediately after he executed the three pocket universe versions of Zod and his cohorts, so he's deep into wrestling with his conscience over what he's done, which is what will ultimately lead to the self-imposed exile storyline which this book is built around.

Good stuff, and I remember it well. It's a great collection of late 80s Superman storytelling. I have to say, DC really should collect the Byrne material that came before this (it's in trade paperback, but I'd rather have the omnibus format, which I've become quite partial to) and continue on after. I think it's a high point for the character of Superman, and I'd certainly enjoy reading more of it again.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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It's been a month since I wrote one of these reviews. I've finished the book, I just need to go back and finish up my summaries. Volume 8 has been "cancelled, but will be resolicited", so I hope this is not the last volume of the series. DC collected editions is a very chaotic department, with books solicited and then cancelled frequently, so you never know what you will and won't get until you hold it in your hands.

Batman #63
February-March 1951

The Joker's Crime Costumes!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

Another story begins with a discussion of Batman's various costumes, but this time the Joker decides that he needs to adopt Batman's methods and create different costumes for different occasions. He invades a Shakespeare performance dressed as Falstaffe and inflates his costume like a balloon to escape capture, and uses other characters for other robberies. Batman figures out pretty quickly that he's choosing comedy characters from literature. At one point he traps Batman in Robin in giant plastic bubbles for the story's requisite death trap and escape. This is a standard formulaic Joker story, with Batman's intimidation of one of Joker's gang, thus reminding us of the old Batman, being the only real highlight. Oddly, there's a giant penny at one point in the story, and it's not the one in the Batcave. Finally, just because I'm trying to note his appearances since he's rarely around these days, Alfred gets a one panel cameo in this story, reminding Bruce of a party invitation.

The Case of the Flying Saucers!
Writer: ? Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz and Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

It's time for 50s sci-fi again as Professor Elsom Cobb heads for Gotham to give a lecture and ends up hitting a pedestrian who walks out right in front of him. The man dies, but before he does, Cobb detects a double heartbeat (he ran down Doctor Who!!). Sure enough, the man has two hearts and otherworldly items in his pockets. Cobb takes his evidence to Gordon, who involves Batman and Robin in what turns out to be a covert scouting mission to set up a planned invasion from Saturn. Batman goes undercover and discovers the conspirators and a flying saucer, hidden in an underground cavern. He negotiates with the leader of the invading force....

... only it's all faked. It's all just standard human crooks who concocted the scheme to extort 100 tons of gold from the US government. Batman only figures this out when the "Saturnians" have instant communication with their home base, when it should take radio or tv waves several hours to travel between Earth and Saturn. The man with two hearts was real enough, but it was just a genetic abnormality, and he was as human as anyone else.

The first half of this story had a nice creepy vibe to it, but it turns into something much more standard in the second half. It might have been interesting if these crooks really had been aliens, but I suppose we'll get to that down the road as the 50s progress.

The Origin of Killer Moth!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz and Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

Killer Moth makes his debut this issue, starting out as prisoner 234026 in Gotham Penitentiary. He's very interested in Batman and reads all he can about him. When he is released from prison, he has a plan to become known as "Cameron Van Cleer" (implying that it's not his real name) and set himself up as a literal anti-Batman with a mansion, hidden cave, Mothmobile, moth-costume and infra red moth signal. He sells himself to crooks as the solution to their Batman problem, someone they can call to counter Batman at a crime scene. Moth does indeed use the Mothmobile to incapacitate Batman and Robin with sleeping gas and nearly learns the location of the Batcave by holding Robin hostage. But Robin escapes, leading to a confrontation between Batman and Killer Moth on a suspension bridge, where Killer Moth seemingly falls to his death in the water below.

I'm sorry, but while the concept of the "anti-Batman" is reasonable, the car and costume are just silly. Bright colors and striped leggings are not terribly fearsome, and the parallels with Batman are laid on way too thick. I'm calling this one a misfire. There was probably a way to make Killer Moth work better than he does, including a better car and costume design, but he just doesn't quite work here. Still, it is good to see the debut of another of Batman's enemies, and we'll see him twice more before the volume ends and he's written out of the series, so he falls nicely into the 2/3/4 appearances pattern we've seen with most of Batman's costumed villains since this series began.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Detective Comics #168
February 1951

The Man Behind the Red Hood!
Script: Bill Finger Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Win Mortimer Inker: George Roussos

This is one of the more well-known stories from this era, given the twist ending, but in case you haven't read it I won't spoil the twist up front. It's very much of its time from the very first panel, as Batman is invited by the dean of State University to be a guest instructor for a criminology course. Batman agrees, and as he walks across campus in full daylight, the men think what a great football player he'd make, and the girls think he's quite the hunk. This is not the Batman we know today, no doubt about it. Batman interviews the various students in his class to learn why they want to take the course, and we get an instruction montage. A month later, Batman hands them a test case: a crime he never solved, involving the Red Hood.

Ten years earlier, Batman was on the track of the Red Hood, a crook who wore a tuxedo and a featureless red helmet and cape, leaving no identifying features. Cornered in the Monarch Card Playing Co. that for some reason has a catch basin for waste chemicals from the plant? (And of course, that probably gave the game away as to who was under the hood) the Red Hood escapes by diving in the river and swimming away. Batman never found out whether the Red Hood died or not. The answer is readily apparent as he appears on campus as a direct challenge to Batman. An attempt to determine who he is under the hood from a hair sample fails when Robin seemingly makes a mistake in a chemical formula. After the Red Hood escapes several times, Batman sets a trap. The man under the hood turns out to be "Farmerboy" Benson, an ex-con acting as gardener, shocking the students who rightly determine that Benson is too young to be the Red Hood. They are correct, it was the original only when he first appeared, with all subsequent appearances being Benson. Benson had surprised the Red Hood and taken him prisoner, then used the opportunity to commit a few thefts, knowing the Hood would get the blame.

The real Red Hood, as we all know, is the Joker, and like Catwoman, he finally gets an origin story after over a decade of readers knowing very little about him. We never get the Joker's name, but he reveals that he once had normal skin and hair. He was a lab worker until he decided to steal $1,000,000 and retire, so he became the Red Hood to accomplish this goal. His Hood's oxygen tube let him survive underwater in the river, but "to his horror" the chemical vapor gave him the familiar white skin and green hair, making him look like a clown. So he adopted the alias of the Joker and continued his life of crime.

It's a classic story, reprinted before, and I'm sure I've read it before at some point. Elements of it remain part of the Joker's origin to this day, and of course in recent years Jason Todd has been a more anti-hero version of the Red Hood, so the story affects DC to this day. The clues give it all away to the modern reader, even if we weren't familiar with the story, but I wonder if contemporary readers would have guessed it? The only bizarre thing to me, which I really should be used to by now but can never quite accept, is Batman as trusted public authority figure, here teaching a university course on criminology. That sort of thing just always feels strange.
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Detective Comics #169
March 1951

Batman - Boss of the Big House!
Script: ? Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Win Mortimer Inker: Charles Paris

The high concept of this story is "Batman as prison warden". A race against time to deliver evidence of a condemned man's innocence leads Batman to figure out that the current warden is losing his eyesight. Batman agrees to act as temporary warden until a replacement can be found, leading to a trip down memory lane as they encounter Deadshot and the Black Diamond while making the rounds. But the story takes a sharp turn here, and it is prisoner John "Squint" Tolmar who becomes the focus of the story, since he seems oddly less than enthused by the prospect of parole. Tolmar in fact attempts a prison break on the night before he would get out on parole anyway. This leads to Batman going undercover as a new inmate to try and determine what motivated Tolmar. It turns out to be a written location for some major loot, hidden in a cell once occupied by a one-time cellmate of Tolmar, who didn't want out of prison until he had found the information for himself so he could collect the money once he was out of prison.
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World's Finest Comics #51
April-May 1951

The Academy for Gangsters!
Writer: David Vern Pencils: Dick Sprang Inks: Charles Paris

Batman has asked to speak with Boston Burns, an older white-haired prisoner who is about to get out of prison for the second time. He just smirks at Batman when asked if he's learned yet that crime does not pay. Batman takes Burns on a tour of police headquarters to show him all the modern police methods in order to try and convince him that crooks have no chance, and keep him on the straight and narrow in future. But it's had the opposite effect on Burns, who decides that crooks need to be better trained than police, and he's the man to do it. So he sets up a criminal training academy on a deserted island, accessed only by submarine, and there crooks are put through training courses on robbing banks, safe-cracking, gunfights with the police, etc.

Having learned of this training academy, Batman disguises himself as a crook and infiltrates it with Gordon's help. His disguise is eventually uncovered, and the story becomes one where Batman has to use his wits to survive and elude the many criminals out to kill him until he can signal the mainland and get help to come arrest them all. Batman alone on an island against a dozens of ruthless crooks makes a pretty good story, and I enjoyed the few panels when he's still disguised and going through the training course and is less than impressed with the methodology of the criminal trainers. And it's a sign of how tame Batman has become that he twice refers to Gordon as "sir", as if he's become just another member of the Gotham police force and Gordon is his boss.
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I won't go too in-depth on the Knightfall omnibus, but will probably post a few thoughts about the issues collected in it as I go through. It has more issues than expected, particularly the early issues leading into the actual Knightfall storyline, issues I had not read before.

Vengeance of Bane #1 - the book opens with this issue by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan. The child who would become Bane is born to a woman in some hellhole Central American prison and spends his entire life there, becoming a hard, cold, monster of a man. He obtains three supporters/friends over the years: "Zombie", Trog and Bird, and it's from Bird that he learns of Gotham and Batman, deciding to go there and kill the Batman after having nightmares about some bat-creature as a child. It's a bit weak as motivation, though the actual life story of Bane is well written, making him both sympathetic and horrific at the same time. His loyalty to his three friends (or as close as he gets to having friends) gives him just enough virtues to round out the character so he's not just another "psycho in a mask".

Batman 484, 485 - by Doug Moench and Tom Grindberg - I had not read these two issues before, dealing with Black Mask trying to get revenge on Bruce Wayne, blaming him for his facial disfigurement. The art is very poor, and the story quite dark and gruesome in many ways. It's good to revisit the Batman and Robin team of Bruce and Tim Drake, and after reading so many Golden Age stories where Bruce's skill at disguise is often employed, it's good to see him still using the same tactics fifty years later in the early 90s. It's nice to see some continuity in how the character is portrayed. Otherwise I can't say I enjoyed these two issues very much. If nothing else, at least I now know what the letter columns later on (not included in the omnibus, I just remember the complaint from the original issues) complaining about the art were talking about, and I have to agree with them.
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Batman 486 - a villain named Metalhead, wearing a costume covered with spikes, slashes his way through the underworld looking for Black Mask, because he wants to join his gang. Since Batman is also looking for Black Mask, the two come into conflict. Batman spends the whole issue with a nosebleed due to a broken nose, and neither Alfred nor Tim can talk any sense into him. These pre-Knightfall issues are here to help establish Bruce's physical and mental exhaustion.

Batman 487 - Another one shot villain, Headhunter, assassin for hire, attempts to kill the newly-married Commissioner Gordon, and though his new wife Sarah Essen hates Batman for being a vigilante, she turns to him to help save Gordon's life. Other than Vegeance of Bane, this was the first issue collected in the omnibus that I'd actually read before. Jim Aparo is the artist for this issue and the last, and good art makes a big difference in how readable the stories are.

Detective Comics 654-656 - back to issues I had not read before, this three part story introduces "The General", a young teen named Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong, who burns down the military school he was attending and goes to Gotham to try and take over the gangs in the city, seeing himself as a great military leader and thinking of the whole thing as a military campaign, which climaxes with an attack on a precinct branch of the Gotham Police. The main link to Knightfall is, again, Bruce's ongoing exhaustion and inability to rest. He actually goes to see a doctor for once. And Bane makes an appearance for a few pages, deciding that seeing how Batman fares against small fry is wasting his time. He decides to see what he can really do against more challenging opponents. One of the covers is by Sam Keith. You never know who will turn up contributing art to some of these issues.

Batman 488 - Back to an issue I own, this mixes Jean-Paul Valley's new job at one of Bruce Wayne's businesses with his training by Tim Drake, as Bruce hopes to prevent Jean-Paul from becoming the assassin his father was and break Valley's mental conditioning. Valley is of course Azrael, if you remember that character from 90s DC. Seems odd that the Azrael mini-series was not included in this book since Valley will play such a big part in the storyline going forward, but this issue sums up who he is quite succinctly, so it's not really necessary. Bruce, having had no luck with his regular doctor, makes contact with Shondra Kinsolving, a therapeutic doctor who is treating Tim Drake's father, and of course Shondra will also be very important to the story going forward.

The issues I hadn't read before are a nice bonus, but the main appeal here is having the chance to read this without mixing and matching floppies, since the story runs back and forth between Batman and Detective, and of course the upgrade in paper quality that really benefits the display of the (good) art. Further into the book there are also some related Shadow of the Bat issues and some Showcase 93 issues, so again I don't have to dig these out to read them in their proper order as part of the story.
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