I wanted to point out that this run has a lot of guest-stars who had never teamed with Batman in TBATB or had only appeared once or twice before. The Brave and the Bold displayed a tendency to use a lot of guest stars repeatedly, and would at times go a full year with only one first-time guest.

Starting with #167 ...

#167 - Blackhawk (first TBATB team-up)
#168 - Green Arrow (over and over again with this guy!)
#169 - Zatanna (first TBATB team-up)
#170 - Nemesis (first TBATB team-up))
#171 - Scalphunter (first TBATB team-up))
#172 - Firestorm (first TBATB team-up)
#173 - Guardians of the Universe (first TBATB team-up)
#174 - Green Lantern (also a frequent TBATB guest star)
#175 - Lois Lane (first TBATB team-up)
#176 - Swamp Thing (second TBATB team-up)
#177 - The Elongated Man (first TBATB team-up)
#178 - The Creeper (second TBATB team-up)
#179 - Legion of Super-Heroes (first TBATB team-up)
#180 - The Spectre (third TBATB team-up with Batman)
#181 - The Hawk and the Dove (first TBATB team-up)
#182 - Earth-2 Robin (first TBATB team-up)
#183 - The Riddler (first TBATB team-up)
#184 - The Huntress (first TBATB team-up)

Then they have fewer first-time guest stars, but still do a pretty good job of mixing it up with first-time guests. For the last 16 issues, I’m just going to list the first-timers.

#188, #189 - Rose and the Thorn
#192 - Superboy
#195 - I, Vampire
#196 - The Ragman
#197 - Catwoman
#198 - Karate Kid

#200 features a team-up between Earth-2 and Earth-1 Batman and as they have both appeared in TBATB team-ups, just not together until this issue.

The Brave and the Bold #176

Batman and Swamp Thing

“The Delta Connection!”

Written by Martin Pasko

Art by Jim Aparo

Great cover by Mike Kaluta!

I didn’t think too much of this one.

Selina Kyle shows up to ask Bruce to get hold of Batman to help her. She’s retired from being Catwoman and she’s trying to go straight. But her sister Felicia is in prison in Louisiana and some bad guys are trying to kill her because she knows where some stolen diamonds are hidden. Or something.

Felicia was never mentioned before or since. She’s only onstage for a few panels before she’s killed. So Pasko is throwing in an unknown sister of Selina Kyle and then not doing a damn thing with her.

And even if Selina is going straight, she doesn’t need Batman to help her save her sister! I get that this is Bronze Age Catwoman. But I still don’t buy it. It’s like the writer hasn’t read a Catwoman story since the early 1950s when she got her memory back, quit her life of crime and opened a pet store. Like, for example, he didn’t read the story from a year later where she put on the Catwoman suit to try and stop her brother from continuing a life of crime as the King of Cats.

Anyway, Batman goes to Louisiana and meets Swamp Thing, and Felicia is killed, so Batman fails miserably and we never hear of it again after this issue. Selina becomes Catwoman again and seemingly forgets she ever had a sister.

I’ve only read Swamp Thing when Alan Moore wrote it. And that happened a few years later. I think Martin Pasko became the writer on Saga of the Swamp Thing shortly after this TBATB issue appeared. I’m assuming he got better at writing the Swamp Thing because it’s hard for me to imagine the character (as he’s depicted here) thriving long enough for Moore to take over.

He just kind of lumbers around feeling sorry for himself. Batman crashes a disabled Bat-Copter into him, knocking him unconscious. Neither of them can save Felicia. They do manage to get the guy who killed Felicia. Swamp Thing has some kind of mystical experience with the ghost of Felicia that rekindles his will to survive long enough for Saga of Swamp Thing #1 a year later.

The Aparo art is very nice!

The Brave and the Bold #178

Batman and the Creeper

"Paperchase"

Written by Alan Brennert

Art by Jim Aparo

The Creeper appeared in TBATB three times, in #80, #143 and #178.

This is a pretty weird story. I wasn't sure I liked it at first. But it soon struck me that it's actually a pretty relentless tribute to Steve Ditko in a lot of ways, and I'm rather inclined to give it a lot of points for being weird and fun and completely in tune with the strange nutty vibe of Batman's co-star the Creeper.

Batman is investigating a series of weird deaths. And Jack Ryder is still working in Gotham City media, in charge of security at WHAM-TV. Some of the old Creeper supporting cast is hanging around. And there's a reactionary demagogue, Clayton Wetley, on one of the WHAM programs, ranting about America's moral decay and blaming the recent murders on moral laxity in the media. Jack Ryder doesn't like the show but the station manager defends because it has such high ratings.

The media. A raving demagogue. The effects on society. Talking heads panels with ordinary citizens reacting to the show, like an old issue of Spider-Man. It's all very Ditkoesque. And Jim Aparo does a great job of giving us a bouncy, rubbery Creeper frolicking along the rooftops as Ryder calls on his yellow-skinned alter ego to start looking into the murders.

The Creeper and Batman meet up and join forces to solve these odd murders. The victims are junkies and drunken college students to immigrants with no other connection except being the kind of people that Wetley blames for all of America's problems.

And the murderer turns out to be ... a monster made out of paper! It's like those old pre-hero Marvel stories from Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish where the monster is an alien made out of smoke (Diablo) or mud (Taboo) or wood (Groot). It's more of a Kirby thing, but Ditko drew a few of them.

And, hey, get this! Wetley is an origami collector!

Well, it turns out that Wetley isn't doing it consciously. He has psychic powers that he's been suppressing his whole life, and somehow his anger at those he considers to be bad for America is manifesting in a monster made of origami paper that comes to life through his mind powers and kills people!

Watching Batman and the Creeper getting beat up by the paper monster brings Wetley to his senses and he manages to get control of his powers and the monster bursts into flame!

The end!

I don't know what else to say about it. Just another story about a looney, murdering, Gotham City paper monster!

But she’s still wearing that space vampire costume!

I’ll see if I can get it digitally somewhere.

The Brave and the Bold #179

Batman and The Legion of Super-Heroes

“Time-Bomb with the Thousand-Year Fuse!”

Writer: Martin Pasko

Penciller: Ernie Colon

Inker: Mike DeCarlo

The art’s pretty good. But oh how I wanted to see Aparo drawing Shadow Lass and Shrinking Violet!

It’s better than it should be. The time-travel angle isn’t as contrived as these things usually are. It’s part of the villain’s plan and Batman gets transported to the 30th century because he interfered at the wrong moment.

You see, there’s this egg-shaped item a little bigger than a football that’s being examined by scientists in the 30th century. They’ve determined that it has anti-matter inside it, and they are trying to figure out what the outer shell is made of that it neutralizes the effect of the anti-matter and prevents it from exploding in a universe made of regular matter. They’ve figured out that it will explode in a thousand years.

So a bad guy named Halitosis Valkor (or something like that) shows up and steals the egg. Several members of the Legion are nearby and they come to help, but they can’t stop the theft. It’s Chameleon Boy, Princess Projectra, Cosmic Boy, Colossal Boy, Sun Boy and Element Lad. (Shadow Lass, Shrinking Violet and Duo Damsel are also in the story, but they are hostages of the main villain as he sends them all to different, dangerous places and threatens to abandon them to great peril if the Legion doesn’t back off.

Halitosis Valkor meets with the main villain, who is shrouded by darkness so the reader doesn’t know that it’s Universo until later. Valkor takes the anti-matter egg 1000 years into the past to hide it in a time capsule that is placed at Gotham Memorial Stadium. Universo has calculated that it will explode in 1000 years exactly when there’s an event at the stadium that will be attended by the Legion. (Something like that. I’m typing this on my phone in bed and I don’t want to disturb my dog or cat to check the details.)

Batman attacks just as Halitosis Valkor is traveling back to the 30th century and he gets dragged along accidentally.

He teams up with the Legion to stop Universo’s plan and they wrap it up in the last few remaining pages.

Rond Vidar is in it. And it’s a full-length story. There’s no Nemesis back-up this month.

I was a little disappointed that the story didn’t use very many of my favorite Legionnaires. Just Chameleon Boy, Shadow Lass and Shrinking Violet, and the latter two weren’t in it very much.

And there’s not much characterization for the LSH members, even those with the most coverage. It’s probably hard to do them justice when there’s so many characters in one book and you have to make time for Batman and the villain as well as the LSH. But I still would like to have seen a few character moments, expressed through dialogue, or something like that. I’m very much under the impression that Pasko didn’t have much experience writing the Legion.

But overall, not a bad effort. Just a little disappointing.

I got another batch of TBATB issues in the mail, so I think I am going to review those in chronological order before going back to the issues from the early 1980s that I had been reviewing.

Here’s what I got ...

#113 - A 100-Page Super-Spectacular guest-starring the Metal Men! Also reprints of Green Arrow, Hawkman, the Challengers of the Unknown and the Viking Prince.

#129 - With Green Arrow, the Atom, the Joker and Two-Face (One of my favorite comics when I was a kid!)

#137 - The Demon

#162 - Sgt. Rock