2018.043 Wonder Woman: Forgotten Legends

Wonder Woman: Forgotten Legends
Written by: Kurt Busiek, Lee Marrs, George Perez
Illustrated by: Trina Robbins, Irv Novick, Rick Magyar, Ramona Fradon
DC Comics

2018.027 Batgirl: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol 1

Batgirl: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol 1
Written by: Frank Robbins, Elliot S Maggin, Bob Rozakis, Gardner Fox, Mike Friedrich, Denny O'Neil
Illustrated by: Don Heck, Mike Grell, Carmine Infantino, Frank Springer, Gil Kane, Bob Brown, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Pablo Marcos, Curt Swan, Jose Delbo, Irv Novick, Dick Giordano, Vince Colletta, Sid Greene, Murphy Anderson, Frank Giacoia
DC Comics

2018.020 Two-Face: A Celebration Of 75 Years

What should have probably been a volume of Batman Arkham turned into a deluxe hardcover collection of Two-Face stories.  And what a collection it is.  Harvey Dent has had a long career battling Batman.  We get a little bit of every variation of Two-Face in this book.  The monster he was in the 40s, the cliche he was in the 60s, the darker psychological mess in modern times.  What I absolutely love about reading through this book is how consistent the character has been overall.  His back story barely changed at all.  However, after the last story in this book is a reinvention of Harvey's entire backstory over in Scott Snyder's new Bat book.  I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but this.... This book I love.

Two-Face: A Celebration Of 75 Years

Written by: Bill Finger, Don Cameron, David Vern Reed, Dennis O'Neil, Bob Haney, Max Allan Collins, Mark Verheiden, Andrew Helfer, Bruce Timm, Greg Rucka, David Hine, Peter J Tomasi

Illustrated by: Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, George Roussas, Dick Sprang, Charles Paris, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Jim Aparo, Irv Novick, Dave Cockram, Mark DeCarlo, Don Heck, Pat Broderick, Chris Sprouse, Steve Mitchell, Bruce Timm, Damion Scott, John Floyd, Michael Lark, Andy Clarke, Guillem March

171 Batman Arkham: Joker's Daughter

Not a fan of the new version of the character, but this book is soooo full of classic Joker's Daughter appearances, it's well worth the price.  Honest.  Those awful old stories are awesome!!

Batman Arkham: Joker's Daughter

Writer: Bob Rozakis, Geoff Johns, Ben Raab, J Torres, Ann Nocenti, Marguerite Bennett

Artist: Irv Novick, Frank McLaughlin, Jose Delbo, Vince Colletta, Don Heck, John Celardo, Juan Ortiz, Bruce Patterson, Dave Hunt, Kurt Schaffenberger, Drew Johnson, Rich Faber, Paco Medina, Wayne Faucher, Georges Jeanty, Dexter Vines, Meghan Hetrick

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

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

083 Batman/Wildcat

I love this kind of compilation book.  Unlike a book that collects a specific story arc or run by a particular creator, it's a book that takes a couple of mini-series and pads it out with some spectacular bonus material.

This book collects the Batman/Wildcat mini-series, the Catwoman/Wildcat mini-series and all the Batman/Wildcat stories from The Brave & The Bold.  And it's glorious.

The two mini-series are nothing to write home about, but they're solid and an enjoyable read.  The first mini-series is yet another take on the Fight Club cliche.  The second is another Vegas/Mob story.  Neither are original concepts by any stretch, but like I said before, decent enough reads.

The real treasure here is the inclusion of the Brave & Bold stories.  I'm currently reading the giant Brave & Bold Omnibus at work and have come across some of these stories recently already.  For some reason, DC decided to team Batman and Wildcat up despite the fact that Wildcat was an Earth-2 character.  No mention was ever made of it, so clearly this is an Earth-1 version of the same character.  I don't think he ever appeared anywhere but these select issues, which is too bad.  Not that it matters anymore.  After Crisis, there was only one Earth, so only one Ted Grant.

I'd love to see more books along the lines of this one.  Such fun to read.

Batman/Wildcat

Writer: Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Bob Haney

Artist: Sergio Cariello, Art Thibert, Danny Miki, Jaime Mendoza, Tom Palmer, Irv Novick, Mike Esposito, Bob Brown, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo

DC Comics

022 Batgirl: A Celebration of 50 Years

DC has published a whole line of these Celebration books.  From what I understand, this is the last one, at least for a while.  And what a note for them to finish this up on.  Batgirl: A Celebration of 50 Years should be the gold standard on how to assemble one of these books.  In it's limited space (less than 400 pages), it manages to cover the true spirit of Batgirl.  While it's the Barbara Gordon Batgirl who graces the cover and is the best known Batgirl, there have been others and they are all represented here.  The book starts off with a Betty Kane Bat-Girl story before devoting the most space to Barbara Gordon.  It also covers Helena Bertinelli's very short run as Batgirl as well as Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown before returning to Barbara Gordon.

The one thing I found odd about this collection is the placement of a story from Batgirl: Year One.  It's the second story in the Barbara Gordon section.  While the stories presented are in chronological order of when they happened, I would have preferred this story to show up at the end of Barbara's section, not the beginning of it.  But that's a minor nitpick.

I love that they've included the story of Barbara running for Congress (and winning!) as well as a story from Batman Family.  I'm still holding out hope that DC will reprint Batman Family in some shape someday.

At work during my lunch breaks, I'm reading a volume of Batgirl featuring Cassandra Cain, so expect a post about that shortly.  I enjoyed the Cassandra stories in this volume.  Until I started reading the trades collecting her run, I really had no experience with the character.  Stephanie Brown never truly felt like Batgirl to me.  While I enjoyed the stories, I think I would have liked her in her Spoiler identity better.  She just felt hollow to me as Batgirl.

The one story I didn't really care much for in this volume was The Last Batgirl Story.  It was a special published back in the day.  DC was retiring Batgirl (see The Killing Joke) and issued this special as a grand send off.  Only it was awful and felt like a bad inventory story rather than a last hurrah.

This book is everything!

Batgirl: A Celebration of 50 Years

Writer: Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, Scott Beatty, Chuck Dixon, Frank Robbins, Bob Rozakis, Barbara Randall, John Ostrander, Kim Yale, Greg Rucka, Kelley Puckett, Dylan Horrocks, Bryan Q. Miller, Gail Simone, Cameron Stewart, Brendan Fletcher

Artist: Sheldon Moldoff, Charles Paris, Carmine Infantino, Sid Greene, Marcos Martin, Alvaro Lopez, Gil Kane, Don Heck, Irv Novick, Vince Colletta, Trevor von Eeden, Rodin Rodriguez, Barry Kitson, Bruce Patterson, Brian Stelfreeze, Karl Story, Greg Land, Drew Geraci, Mike Deodato, Sean Parsons, Damion Scott, Robert Campanella, Rick Leonardi, Jesse Delperdang, Tim Levins, Lee Garbett, Don Davis, Aaron Sowd, Trevor Scott, Pere Perez, Ed Benes, Babs Tarr

DC Comics

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