143 Tales Of The Batman: Gerry Conway Vol 1

When I think of Gerry Conway, I don't necessarily think of Batman, but as it turns out, he's written his fair share of Batman stories.  Everything in this book I've read before.  Most everything I've read I read when it was brand new.  There are a couple exceptions, but very few.  This book has a nice mix of stories from Batman, Detective Comics, Batman Family, Brave & The Bold, World's Finest and Man-Bat. 

A couple of the stories in here I have very strong, fond memories of, though I had no idea they were Gerry Conway stories.  The first being the story from Batman Family #17.  And it's not even the story itself that I have really fond memories of, but the entire issue.  I remember all the stories kind of blending into one another.  The story reprinted in this volume has one of my favorite BatFam sequences ever. Huntress breaks into the Wayne Foundation building and is quickly "discovered" by Batman and Robin.  It's the first meeting between Batman and Huntress and I love it.  Batman brings Huntress to meet Kathy Kane, who in turn takes Huntress to meet Batgirl.  That story isn't in this volume, though.

Another story I have very fond memories of is from World's Finest #250.  I don't think the story is nearly as good as I remember it, but I'm a sucker for anniversary stories with lots of guest stars.  This tale isn't just the Superman/Batman story you'd normally get in World's Finest.  It also stars Green Arrow and Black Canary and the WWII Earth 2 Wonder Woman, all who also had features in World's Finest.  I do love these kinds of stories, whether they are successful or not. 

This book also has a fair amount of Brave & The Bold stories.  I love those tales.  LOVE THEM!!!  Especially the ones that are the more impossible ones, like Batman teaming up with Scalphunter.

I wouldn't say there's anything in this book that's outstanding, but it's a great read cover to cover nonetheless.

If DC is going to reprint more Gerry Conway stuff, I hope their next project is the Fury of Firestorm series.  That, to me, is classic Gerry Conway.

Tales Of The Batman: Gerry Conway Vol 1

Writer: Gerry Conway

Artist: Steve Ditko, Ernie Chan, Michael Golden, George Tuska, John Calnan, Jim Aparo, Don Newton, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Carmine Infantino, Rich Buckler, Al Milgrom, Frank McLaughlin, Vince Colletta, Dave Hunt, Dan Adkins, Steve Mitchell

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109 Superboy And The Legion Of Super-Heroes Vol. 1

I've been waiting for this volume for a long, long time.  I have the full run of the Legion of Super-Heroes Archives.  I loved that series so much.  I just love the Legion so much.  This book picks right up where the Archive series ended.  I was particularly upset when the Archives stopped because of what was going to be printed in the next volume.  That volume is this volume!  And what I was waiting for was the tabloid that had the wedding of Lightning Lad & Saturn Girl.  About a year ago, I finally tracked it down, so it's in my collection now, but now I have it on really nice paper!  

This is the era when I first started reading the Legion.  My first issue was #238, which was a classic Legion reprint.  The cover is reprinted here, but not the story.  The rest of the book is wonderful and awful all at the same time.  I'm reliving a lot of this for the first time since the 70s.  And it's not as awesome as I remember it being.  Some of it is a little hard to read.  But it's still awesome to me.  This is when Paul Levitz jumped on the book to start his 700 year run on it.  If anything, this just makes me want volume 2 all the more.  We are finally into "my" Legion.  It just gets better from here.  Slowly. 

Superboy And The Legion Of Super-Heroes Vol. 1

Writer: Jack C. Harris, Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Paul Kupperberg, Jim Starlin

Artist: Juan Ortiz, Bob Smith, Mike Grel, Ric Estrada, Jack Abel, Vince Colletta, George Tuska, Joe Rubinstein, James Sherman, Bob McLeod, Mike Nasser, Rick Bryant, Walt Simonson, Jim Starlin, Howard Chaykin, Bob Wiacek

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021 Batman Arkham: Man-Bat

Another Batman Arkham volume.  So soon after the Poison Ivy one, too.  Like the other volumes in this series, it collects stories about one particular Batman villain.  I use villain loosely here, because I don't consider Man-Bat a real villain.  He started off as a good guy and has slowly, over time, lost more and more of his sanity and humanity and has become closer to an adversary (not villain) to Batman.

This is one of the best volumes of the Batman Arkham run, if you ask me.  Maybe it's because there are fewer Man-Bat stories to choose from.  Maybe it's because I fucking love Man-Bat.  Maybe both.  But the stories in this book at pretty great.  Starting with his debut (drawn by Neal Adams!!), continuing on to his extremely short lived regular series (two whole issues), adding in his mini-series (which ran longer than his regular series!) and other appearances.  This was a lot of fun for me to read and I powered through the entire thing in one sitting.  My attention span isn't that big, so that's a real statement for me to make.

My one big gripe with this book is the story from Secret Origins written by Jan Strnad.  In it, Man-Bat's story is retold pretty much as it happened, but Strnad added in a piece to tie Man-Bat's backstory in to Batman's backstory that I feel is completely unnecessary.  Suddenly Bruce Wayne and Kirk Langstrom had met as children and Bruce remembers him to this day.  Stupid and unnecessary.  Distracting.

I'm not too keen on the New 52 version.  More specifically the fact that Francine Langstrom is a villain from the get-go.  Again, stupid.  He had a perfectly good backstory that shouldn't have been fucked up by the New 52, but tptb let it happen anyway.

All in all, this is a keeper.

Batman Arkham: Man-Bat

Writer: Frank Robbins, Gerry Conway, Martin Pasko, Jan Strnad, Chuck Dixon, Dan DiDio, Frank Tieri

Artist: Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Pablo Marcos, Kevin Nowlan, Flint Henry, Quique Alcatena, J.G. Jones, Scot Eaton, Dick Giordano, Al Milgrom, Ricardo Villamonte, Eduardo Barreto, Nathan Fairbairn

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019 Batman Arkham: Poison Ivy

I think I said in one of my previous posts that I love this type of compilation book.  Stories from all over the place with the common theme being a character, not a storyline.  I was very excited for this book because I've always loved Poison Ivy.  And until I read this book, I thought I had a good grasp on the character.  I guess I never realized until reading this collection that no one at DC Comics had a good grasp on the character.  It felt like in every story, she was written differently.  Her backstory kept changing.  Her powers (or lack of) kept changing.  The only common thread in this whole collection was the name Poison Ivy.  Even when they tried to straighten her story out, it didn't stick.

While she's known as a Batman villain, I love that there's a two-part Wonder Woman story included in this collection.

My disdain for the New 52 is well known, but I think that Poison Ivy is one of the better re-vamps to come out of it.  I really like her redesign, I like that she's starting fresh and that they've taken elements of her entire previous run and applied those that work with the character.  Maybe now we'll have a consistent version of the character.

Batman Arkham: Poison Ivy

Writer: Robert Kanigher, Gerry Conway, Neil Gaiman, John Francis Moore, Alan Grant, Andrew Helfer, J.T. Krul, Guillem March, Marc Andreyko, Derek Frindolfs

Artist: Sheldon Moldoff, Ric Estrada, Jack Abel, Irv Novick, Mark Buckingham, P. Craig Russell, Brian Apthorp, Cully Hamner, Guillem March, Javiar Pina, Joe Giella, Vince Colletta, Steve Mitchell, Stan Woch, Robert Campanella

DC Comics