098 The DC Universe By Mike Mignola

I love Mike Mignola's art.  I always have.  Reading this book reminds me there's a whole Hellboy universe I haven't read and need to.

Books like this are a joy to read.  Focus on an artist or a writer, showing their work all collected together.  It's also great reading something like this because there's a bunch of stuff I'd forgotten about, didn't realize he drew it or completely missed the first time around.  

The book starts off with a Phantom Stranger mini-series.  I'd forgotten he was the artist on this book.  It's been years since I read it, so it was brand new to me again.  He's perfectly matched to draw the Stranger.  I'd love to see him do a book today with the character.  

This also collects The World Of Krypton mini-series.  I never read it the first time around.  It was part of John Byrne's reboot of the Superman universe and I found it pretty fascinating.  I know, I know.  Byrne is a hack, but he's still an interesting one.  There are some other Superman stories here.  I didn't realize he'd done as much Superman as he had.  

I have to say my favorite stuff in here is his Batman stuff.  He was born to draw Batman.  His art is super moody, super stylized.  He fits Batman like a glove.  I'd love to see a Batman series drawn by him.  It would be magnificent.

I want more books like this!

The DC Universe By Mike Mignola

Writer: Paul Kupperberg, John Byrne, Roger Stern, Jerry Ordway, George Perez, Neil Gaiman, Dan Raspler, Mike Mignola, Steve Purcell

Artist: Mike Mignola, P. Craig Russell, Rick Bryant, Carlos Garzon, Karl Kesel, Jerry Ordway, George Perez, Curt Swan, Brett Breeding, John Statema, Troy Nixey, Kevin Nowlan

DC Comics

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

DC Comics