No idea why he used the pseudonym, as he was already being credited on other DC work. He got his start with House of Secrets (the mystery books were a proving ground for a lot of people), handled Aquaman, in Adventure Comics, which led to a revival of the Aquaman title), wrote Swamp Thing (post Wein), and co-created the war comic character, Gravedigger.

Michelinie also created/wrote Star-Hunters at DC. Maybe he suddenly wanted to not have his name also associated with a superhero title?

Batman Family #17 (May 1978)



The Batman Family title is reborn as a DC Dollar Comic and, within its pages, nearly everything has changed. Man-Bat continues unhindered, but editor Al Milgrom shoots a 12 gauge hole through everything else Bob Rozakis was doing in this title. In 2003, Rozakis was asked about his plans to include Duela Dent in these pages (we saw her briefly in the previous issue), to which Rozakis replies:



Sure enough, Rozakis has truly lost the series and not just a lead feature. He will get to write Robin again, but Milgrom and Conway have already significantly altered the nature of that series, presenting a Robin who is unconflicted in his love (and jealousy) for Lori Elton:



No mention of his having feelings for Babs Gordon anywhere in this story (and I guess he and Lori aren't moving out to DC to work with Babs anymore, either). And, whereas Rozakis previously had Dick spooked that Lori may have learned his alter-ego, Conway has completely scrapped this plotline as well:



In fact, Conway and Milgrom have scrapped Rozakis' vision of Robin entirely. This guy is impulsive,



a perpetual sidekick (he doesn't even get to be the one to save Lori in this issue)



and can't fathom a world in which he goes it alone:




Rozakis' Robin is dead.


And his Batgirl isn't doing much better. While he at least gets to continue writing her feature as of this issue, she now shares it with Batwoman and The Huntress:




and Babs' attraction to Dick Grayson is now completely abandoned as well. Instead, Rozakis reintroduces potential romantic interest Senator Robert Cleary, created by Elliot S. Maggin before Rozakis took over the book, and last seen in Batman Family #6.



Well, he was "Robert" last time we saw him, anyway...


Truly, the presence of Batwoman aside, literally everything Rozakis was doing with this title is now scrapped in the span of a single issue.



And I don't mind this at all.




Batman and Robin: "Scars"

Script: Gerry Conway
Pencils: Jim Aparo
Inks: Jim Aparo
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: ?

Grade: B


Between Mike Kaluta's cover, Aparo's single-panel preface to this issue:



and the first page of this story:



There is no missing the fact that BATMAN is now the center of BATMAN FAMILY. And, while the plot and antagonist of this story are both pretty simplistic:



(though it's a pretty cool twist that the extent of the villain's deformities end up being one small scar under his eye)

Jim Aparo's visuals have A LOT to say:



Holy crap! His shadow makes a near-Bat symbol!


And Conway at least gets to have fun introducing Batman to The Huntress



and exploring what that does to Batman:



It's pretty fun.


It's a bit odd to watch Huntress get passed off from Batman, to Batwoman, to Batgirl (in the next feature), but I guess Milgrom really wanted to give the readers a chance to care about this new character taking up residence in the book.


Important Details:

- Batman and Robin meet The Huntress



Batgirl; Batwoman; The Huntress: "Horoscopes of Crime!"

Script: Bob Rozakis
Pencils: Don Heck
Inks: Bob Wiacek (pp. 1-10); Vince Colletta (pp. 11-21)
Colors: Jerry Serpe
Letters: Clem Robins

Grade: B

Another last minute script, Rozakis? Why else do we get two different inkers on this one?

Beyond getting a decently cool team-up among Batgirl, Batwoman, and The Huntress, we get to see them face-off against a trio of female villains, including Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and newcomer Madame Zodiac (seriously, Rozakis? Madame Xanadu had literally just made her first appearance three months earlier. This feels like a total theft).



"Fun but forgettable" describes all of this well, until The Huntress gets to meet her Earth One mom in a powerful scene that almost had to come from Milgrom or Conway:



Truthfully, there just isn't all that much Rozakis to this story. He's clearly on someone's leash now, and boy is it appreciated.



Minor Details:

- What the hell is with this EXTREMELY racist depiction of an Asian diplomat meeting Congresswoman Gordon??



He literally has claws in the next panel. Is it still 1940?





Man-Bat; The Demon: "There's a Demon Born Every Minute"

Script: Bob Rozakis
Pencils: Michael Golden
Inks: Michael Golden
Colors: Jerry Serpe
Letters: Jean Simek

Grade: B

The Huntress even manages to bleed over into this feature, as her returning to Earth Two inadvertently frees Morgan Le Fay, the villain of this issue who is responsible for bringing Etrigan into the mix.

Beyond that, this is the only feature in the book that feels uninterrupted by Milgrom and Conway's changes, thus helping support my suspicion that Rozakis was letting his artists do most of the plotting for this feature. Sure seems like Michael Golden just decided he wanted to draw Man-Bat and The Demon, side by side:



wondering if the baby Man-Bat is about to have delivered is going to end up being a satanic demon. Fun, right?

Golden's art continues to be a mix of wildly expressive and clumsy. It works extremely well in most cases



but some of the faces just look...off.

Still, Golden gives it all where it counts, ending with this gorgeous panel before Rozakis gets to utter a dire warning at the bottom:



FUN (if somewhat stupid) story.





Batman Family is dead. Long live Batman Family!

As I understand it, within the next three issues Batman Family will become one of DC's top-selling titles. So much so that the original proposal is to cancel Detective Comics, not Batman Family. BF is ultimately moved over to 'Tec in order to save that ailing legacy title.

I don't know how sales were while Rozakis was writing, but I'm willing to bet it was hardly capable of rescuing another title from cancellation.

I think someone else mentioned this, but I don't think it was a case or Rozakis getting thrown off the lead feature so much as a case of redefining what the lead feature was. Now, they weren't gonna promote a relative newcomer like Rozakis to writing the Batman feature, especially when Denny O'Neil was up for doing it. But on the other hand, the book must have been selling at least decently, in order to have it upgraded to a Dollar Comic, so why ditch the guy who had written all those respectably-selling issues?

Then again, for all I know, it could have been Milgrom said "You're fired" and Rozakis said "I'm in the Production Department now. Keep me on my features or every issue of BatFam will have all the dialogue replaced by dirty knock-knock jokes and speculations about your parentage!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"



Coloring errors aren't always the fault of the colorist. I don't know how many times I saw a letters page have something like "Well, our guy colored it correctly, but their was a mistake at the separator's or at the printer."

An extreme example can be seen here.




Given that the president was Jimmy Carter, no.

Then again... just one issue prior to this, it was shown that Superman can be called in on short notice by People He Deems Important. Wouldn't the president be important enough to have a "Call Superman In Case Of Supervillain" button handy? And since Robin, He-of-Superman's-favorites-list, was on scene, couldn't he call Superman and say "Uh, hey, big guy, someone is gonna murder the prez and congress, can you quit messing with Steve Lombard for the 1.4 seconds it would take for you to catch this guy?" So maybe they were a little hasty in surrendering.




I know I sound like I'm mounting a serious defense for Rozakis here, but...

You stated yourself that you thought the artist was largely plotting the Man-Bat stories. If that is the case (and I don't know that it is), then it's likely that the artist drew the pages first, leaving them for Rozakis to dialogue afterward. In which case, ol' BobRo had to squeeze in the necessary information where he could find space, regardless of how clunky it looked.





It would have been hilarious if the artist or letterer had worked in a small "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" sign somewhere in the background.

Thankfully, the Huntress was returned to the hands of creators Paul Levitz and Joe Staton, with the next issue. Conway enjoyed using her in the JLA/JSA crossovers; but, Levitz & Staton handled her far better.

Heck at DC was rarely good (and not always his fault) and his Catwoman, in the example looks rather off. Heck drawing women was usually better than his action stuff; so, at least he is handling female characters; but, these types of stories weren't his forte. Let him handle a western or romance comic and the results were far better.

Huntress was one of the more dynamic and intriguing characters of this era, thanks to a legacy that encompassed hero and villain, which gave her access to both worlds, a great costume design that mixed elements of both parents well, and just great characterization from Levitz and masterful, dynamic art from Staton (who also added a lot of sex appeal to his female characters, without making it look like a Penthouse layout).