I'd like to buy more Bronze Age Batman comics, especially the Neal Adams stuff, but they're so damn expensive. I mean, Bronze Age Spidey is expensive enough, but the asking price for Batman books just seems way higher.

I didn't think that they were readily available? At least, not in versions that are faithful to the originals. I thought that modern reprints of that material had all been recoloured and, worse, redrawn in some cases by Adams himself? I have zero interest in that -- it's the comic book equivalent of having Paul McCartney re-record his vocals and subtly change the lyrics on the Beatles' records. I want to read those Batman comics as they were originally published.

It shouldn't be too difficult to track down the 'Best of the Brave and the Bold' Baxter reprints from 1988 containing about a half dozen Brave and the Bold stories written by Haney, Baxter's 1988's Saga of Ra's al Ghul four issues reprinting all of the early Ra's al Ghul tales (including those not done by Adams), and the 1984 Baxter Man-Bat issue reprinting Tec 400, 402, and 407 all pencilled by Neal Adams.  


Of course, that isn't everything he did, but it should provide you with about a dozen Neal Adams Batman replicas faithful to the originals.  

That's great and very useful information. Thanks!

My favorite Batman Annual #7 ... the reason for it ... first story of Bat-Mite!

I remember reading Untold Legend of the Batman and recognizing all sorts of flashbacks to historic events - death of the Waynes, the origin of the Joker/Two-Face/Batgirl/etc - but being perplexed by the origin provided for Alfred.  I knew from my copy of Batman: From the 30's to the 70's that he stumbled up his Master's secret identity by accident, but here they provided a completely different sequence of events leading to that revelation (A badly injured Batman is helped back to the Bat-Cave by Robin, who calls to Alfred for help, and Alfred follows the yelling to a secret door behind the Grandfather clock leading to the Cave).   I figured that Len Wein just came up with something new when he wrote Untold but no, he got it from The Secret of Batman's Butler which was one of those obscure stories you'd expect to have been ignored by the time 1980 rolled around.

I'm still working on reading every issue of Detective Comics from #390 to the present, but I got kind of busy with the holidays and other things. (And also distracted by Silver Age Doom Patrol! Do you think that Rita Farr filmography wrote itself?)

It's actually pretty easy to read one issue of Detective Comics almost every night before going to bed. It's writing about it every so often that I don't always get to. And I'm up to Detective Comics #434 and #435, the first two appearances of the Spook, and I decided to stop until I had a chance to write about the Spook ... and I guess I got kind of busy and didn't write about the Spook for a while, and so much time passed after I read the issues that I forgot what I was going to say.

It looks like I haven't posted on my long journey through "Detective Comics, 1970 to NOW" since November, and the last issue I wrote about was #424, the last issue with the Batgirl back-up, when she was elected to Congress. (Barbara Gordon, D-Burnside)

Sorry it took so long to get back to it!

Anyway, I love the Spook! I have a hard time putting my finger on why. He kind of reminds me of the Phantom Blot, an old Mickey Mouse character (who I know nothing about because I've only seen his image and have never read a story with him in it).



The Spook has a very simple design that could easily belong to a Batman character during the first year or two of his run in in Detective Comics. The Spook could easily take his place next to Dr. Death, the Monk, Professor Hugo Strange, Clayface, the Napoleon dirigible guy and the guy with no face.

As a matter of fact, the Spook could be a pulp villain, fighting the Shadow, the Spider (Master of Men), the Phantom Detective, Operator #5, the Black Bat and so on.

The Spook has mysterious powers that seem to be supernatural. How else could he do what he does? He appears to a gangster named Big T, languishing in Gotham's state-of-the-art penitentiary, and offers him a chance to escape, and the next thing Big T knows, he's safe on the street with a new pair of prescription glasses that have a special button that will alert the Spook when Big T gets into trouble.

The Spook has offered his protection to a number of Gotham crooks. When Batman rounds up a couple of thieves, they give up, smiling, confident the Spook will save them. And he does. Batman cuffs them to the steering wheel of the Bat-Mobile and as he's driving them to the cops, he's distracted by a gigantic gaseous version of the Spook. Batman gets out to investigate and it dissipates. But the Bat-Mobile has been stolen! It turns up in the GCPD impound lot and the crooks are gone, replaced by a small Spook doll, his tiny hands cuffed to the steering wheel.

It's an amusing image, masterfully rendered (like the whole story) by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano. And these two issues were written by Frank Robbins, supplying that Batman magic he conjures up so well, taking this pulp reject the Spook and crafting a fun little story that always leaves you guessing.

So we have two issues's worth of bizarre incidents like this, lots of smoke and lots of befuddlement. How did he DO that?!?!

And it turns out that the Spook is sort of like DC's Mysterio. Everything is eventually explained (not always very convincingly if you think about it too hard, just like a Mysterio story) and it's all just special effects and misdirection.

Batman, of course, never falters in his belief that there is nothing supernatural about any of this.

The Spook returned here and there, and some of these 1970s stories are kind of cool. Grant Morrison brought him back decades later and treated the Spook like a lame, throwaway character. Because Grant Morrison is lazy.