180 The DC Universe By John Byrne

This is a fun, if uneven, collection of John Byrne stories that were not part of the regular series he did for DC.  It's a nice overview of some of the stuff he did and highly enjoyable.  If you're a Byrne fan, that is.

The DC Universe By John Byrne

Writer: John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Mike W Barr, Paul Kupperberg, Roger Stern, Paul Dini, Josh Siegal, Cary Bates, Keith Champagne

Artist: John Byrne, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Kurt Schaffenberger, Keith Wilson, Andy Kubert, Rick Burchett, Lary Stucker, Keith Champagne

DC Comics

158 The Silver Age Teen Titans Omnibus

This book is pure, unadulterated joy.  Plain and simple.  The original Teen Titans stories.  Nick Cardy artwork.  Everything good in the world all wrapped up in a beautiful package.

The book collects about 900 pages of Teen Titans comics.  The Brave & The Bold appearances, the Showcase books, the first 24 issues, a Brave & Bold Batman team up and the whole run of the first Hawk & Dove book.

It so much fun revisiting these cheesy as hell stories.  The first half (or more) are just so god awful, they're good.  The book was clearly a victim of it's era, but it was also written to appeal to 8 year olds, who I'm sure looked down on these scripts as being too juvenile.  LOL.  About half way through the book, the stories start taking a more serious vibe, written less for 8 year old and more for a general comics audience.  These are the stories I loved the best.  The Bronze Age Omnibus will have more of this type of story in it, which I'm so looking forward to revisiting.  

Teen Titans has been my favorite series ever since the first issue I bought.  It was #44, the revival issue.  I was living in Bethel, CT at the time and that is my strongest memory of the entire time I lived there.  Discovering this book.  I was probably 8 or 9 at the time (wait, I just googled it.  I was 10.)  It left a lasting impression in my head, 41 years later.

The Silver Age Teen Titans Omnibus

Writer: Bob Haney, Steve Skeates, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Mike Friedrich, Gil Kane, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman

Artist: Nick Cardy, Gil Kane, Irv Novick, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Bruno Premiani, Bill Molno, Lee Elias, Bill Draut, Sal Trapani, Jack Abel, John Celardo, Wally Wood

DC Comics

121 Wonder Girl: Adventures Of A Teen Titan

Fun.  If I could use one word to describe this book, it would be fun.  It's a collection of a lot of Wonder Girl "firsts."  We get the first appearance of Wonder Girl, who was actually Wonder Woman as a girl.  We get the first appearance of the Teen Titan Wonder Girl in Brave & The Bold.  We get the first origin story of that Wonder Girl as well as the first peek at her new costume.  We get the first real Wonder Girl / Wonder Woman team up from an old issue of Adventure Comics.  We get the first appearance of the Cassie Sandsmark and the first appearance of the Cassie Wonder Girl.  We get the first Donna Troy solo comic from DC's Girlfrenzy fifth week even.  And we get the first solo comic of the Cassie Wonder Girl.  It's really a fun, fun, fun collection of stories.  My one complaint about this entire book is that Cassie is featured so prominently on the cover rather than Donna Troy.  I'd much rather it be Donna or at least give Donna equal billing.

It really was a fun read.  If you like WG, you'll love this collection.

Wonder Girl: Adventures Of A Teen Titan

Writer: Robert Kanigher, Bob Haney, Marv Wolfman, Jack C Harris, J.T. Krul, John Byrne

Artist: John Byrne, Phil Jimenez, Ross Andru, Bruno Premiani, Gil Kane, Jack Abel, Adriana Melo, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, John Stokes, Mariah Benes

DC Comics

108 Batman: The Brave And The Bold - The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1

Every day at work, I read comics.  I always have a trade or a hardcover in my desk.  The book I just finished was a labor of love.  It's this glorious book.  Bronze Age Brave & Bold stories.  This book absolutely brings me back to my childhood.  Many of these books were published before I started reading comics, but comics were so cheap back then that I'd picked up a lot of back issues at garage sales and flea markets.  As I got older, they got a little more expensive or were reprinted here and there. I've read all these stories before, but they're just as joyful and silly and fun a second, third, fourth or fifth time around.  Even moreso today.  They're all done in one stories, stripped of the darkness a modern day Batman book has.  The guest stars run a wide gamut from Wonder Woman and Flash to Sgt. Rock and the Demon and many more.

This book clocks in at just under 900 pages, so it took me quite a while to read it at work.  My lunch break is 30 minutes, so I was good to take in an issue or two at a time.  In a way I didn't want it to end.  It was so much fun to read.  They label this as volume 1, so I hope DC plans a follow up volume.  This ends at issue 109.  Brave and the Bold ran through issue 200.

And with this, I'm officially caught up on my mini-blog posts on my backlogged reading!!  

Batman: The Brave And The Bold - The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1

Writer: Bob Haney, Mike Sekowsky, Dennis O'Neil, Marv Wolfman

Artist: Ross Andru, Mike Sekowsky, Bob Brown, Neil Adams, Irv Novick, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo, Mike Esposito, Jack Abel, Dick Giordano, Joe Kubert, Frank McLaughlin

DC Comics

053 Vigilante By Marv Wolfman Vol 1

DC began collecting a different New Teen Titans spinoff series, Deathstroke, The Terminator, a few months ago.  And that surprised me by how well it's held up over the years.  I found myself genuinely enjoying that book.  So when this was announced, I was hoping for the same reaction.  This book came before Deathstroke if memory serves.  I remember enjoying it when it was brand new.  But reading it today, I didn't have the same reaction.  Marv Wolfman can write when he puts his mind to it.  Here, it felt like he had a few ideas but didn't quite know how to execute them.  Part of the problem was this book was published at the height of DC letting a handful of writers also edit the book.  Never a good idea, if you ask me.  

There was something I found especially laughable.  Technology.  This book used a formula with it's cast that's commonplace today.  We have the hero out there in the action.  Back at base we have the support team and their computers.  But with Vigilante, base was a giant camper parked out in the woods.  And I really don't know how they found anything with their computers back in the mid-80s.  First of all, everything was dial up.  Extremely slow dial up.  And second of all, the computer was in a camper in the middle of the woods.  How did they get a dial tone?  LOL!

By the end of this collection, it seemed that a direction for the book was starting to form.  I hope this book does well enough to warrant a second book.  I want to see if that direction actually firms up.

Vigilante By Marv Wolfman Vol. 1

Writer: Marv Wolfman

Artist: Keith Pollard, George Perez, Chuck Patton, Ross Andru, Don Newton, Pablo Marcos, Dick Giordano, Romeo Tanghal, Mike DeCarlo, Rick Magyar, Dan Adkins

DC Comics