Customer Reviews

Batman in the Eighties

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are only a few reasons why I didn't give this poor selection of stories only a one star rating.

-The intro and text pieces by John Wells. With a couple of exceptions this guy knows his Batman in the Eighties history. I was actually impressed! Very informational and complete.

-The reprint of Marshall Rogers first week of Batman newspaper strips from 1989. Will we ever see this incarnation of Batman fully reprinted? I hope so. I have fond memories of reading it in Comic Shop News.

-The "For Further Reading" list on the last page. Unexpected and very cool. DC needs to be more thoughtful like this.

As for the choices of stories...

"Shadow Play" from Batman 348 was a decent choice if one had to include a story penciled by the terrible Gene Colan. Klaus Janson inks over him so it isn't this overrated artist's worst. It depicts the return to Wayne Manor and has Man-Bat in it.

The two part Batgirl story with sharp art by Trevor Von Eden was blandly written. They could have opted for "The Last Batgirl" story from Batgirl Special #1 since that helps explain why she was seldom seen up until 1988 in the Batbooks...

"A Batman and The Outsiders Primer" was nice since it's hard to find and it is short. Most of the Outsider's stories were okay but it would have been nice to see more Jim Aparo work in this book. More on that later.

"To Kill a Legend" and "Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker...!" are fun stories but since they're still in print in the Greatest Batman and Joker Stories Ever Told anthologies we could have done without them and reprinted a Batman annual such as Batman Annual #8's Ra's Al Ghul story, Annual #9's the "Four Faces of Batman" or even Annual #10's Hugo Strange story!

"Transition" was nice since it spun out of 1988's "A Death in the Family" and helped set the stage for "Batman: Year Three and "A Lonely Place of Dying" and included Nightwing. Nice Perez art too.

"Pieces of Penguin" was a beautifully illustrated Don Newton Penguin tale but it is only part one. Where's part two? Some readers will be confused why The Penguin got away. The Riddler story referred to in the beginning of "Pieces of Penguin", "When Riddled by the Riddler..." from Batman #362, is a Don Newton tale featuring a Bat-villain and is a one-parter. It would have made a much better selection.

"The Player on the Other Side" is a classic tale with smooth Michael Golden art and makes good use of Alfred and Commissioner Gordon. I can see why they picked it.

"Fear for Sale" is a fun Mike W. Barr/Alan Davis Scarecrow tale but not the best of their run. It would have been better to include Detective Comics #574 since it has a very fine retelling of Batman's origin in post-Crisis terms (the first complete one and that's counting Batman: Year One) and it revamps Leslie Thompkins into a useful supporting Batman character. Maybe this Scarecrow tale was included to cash in on the upcoming Batman Begins? Who knows?

Nice Jim Aparo cover but he only gets a two page story?! A collaboration between him and Jim Starlin/Mike DeCarlo would have been great such as Batman #416's "White, Gold & Truth" recapping the Jason Todd/Nightwing origins in one handy story (with a nice Joker cameo!) or the haunting "Victims" from Batman 414. A reprint of the covers to all the stories inside would have been nice too!

No Norm Breyfogle? He started drawing Batman in 1987 and was a fan favorite from almost the start! About 3 years of stories to choose from DC people! C'mon. Maybe they're saving him for the cover of Batman in the Nineties...

Batman in the 80's contains stories I grew up reading in the comics. So many of the storylines from the late 70's and early 80's went on to inspire episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series," a show so well-done that it still is the dominant influence in my image of the Dark Knight. This Batman seems to walk the tightrope well. He is both a menacing and mysterious figure, yet fueled by compassion rather than revenge. I believe the Animated Series had so many episodes because it was based on the image of the character from the late 70's and early 80's- a complex but ultimately heroic figure.

Let me describe some of the stories so you can decide whether or not you would be interested.

There is one story with Man-Bat hiding in the Batcave and plotting the death of Bruce Wayne, who he believes is responsible for the death of his daughter.

There is a good Joker story where he throws his own sick, twisted, birthday party.

One of my favorites, the Penguin, makes an appearance. He wants to prove that he is the equal of the Joker, Two-Face, or Riddler.

Also, there is a story about a criminal Batman called "The Wrath," which is set in a parallel universe.

And finally there is a story involving the Scarecrow. Scarecrow was actually such a big Batman villain in the 80's that he landed a spot on the "Legion of Doom" in "Superfriends." Perhaps he became more popular because comic writing had taken a more psychological approach that suited the character well.

There are some good stories here. However, to warn you out there who have other graphic novels, there are repeats from "Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told" and "Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told." Still, it is a good collection.

The challenge in compiling a collection such as BATMAN IN THE EIGHTIES lies within the very evolution of all super-hero comics, which was moving full steam ahead by the decade in question. Longer story arcs were becoming not only the trend but the milestones of many major characters. In the case of Batman himself, there was the genre changing THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, YEAR ONE, YEAR TWO, A DEATH IN THE FAMILY...and the list goes on. And on. Those arcs have been reprinted in their own collections, and there would be no sense in selecting only single, random chapters from them for this trade paperback. Done-in-one tales were still fairly standard in 1980s (less so in the 1990s, which make the task of an inevitable BATMAN IN THE NINETIES even more difficult), so here in this tome we are treated to the likes of the BATMAN SPECIAL no. 1's "The Player On The Other Side" by writer Mike W. Barr and artist Michael Golden, the story of the Wrath, Batman's opposite number in every which way. This is a true classic in every sense and, in my opinion, the best offering in this book. There is another gem from Mr. Barr, this time aided and abetted by artist Alan Davis, an issue from their short but very memorable run on DETECTIVE COMICS featuring the Scarecrow. Other writer/artist teams include Gerry Conway/Gene Colan (a Man-Bat tale), Marv Wolfman/George Perez (an issue of NEW TITANS dealing with the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd), Doug Moench/the late Don Newton (one of the finest Penguin stories you will ever read), and Len Wein/Walt Simonson (a fast-paced Joker caper). There are also two short back-up tales originally featured in DETECTIVE featuring Batgirl from Barbara Randall and Trevor Von Eedon, and an amazing visit to an alternate reality by writer Alan Brennert and legendary artist Dick Giordano featuring a guest-appearance by the Phantom Stranger. All in all, BATMAN IN THE EIGHTIES does a fine job mining it's decade for fitting chapters in the history of the Caped Crusader, even in the shadow of seminal works by the likes of Frank Miller.

While the sixties and the seventies proved to be character defining for our favorite caped crusader with Denny O'Neal revamping Batman into a more serious detective after the Adam West program; it was in the eighties that the Dark Knight truly became Dark.

The nine-some stories collected here present the best of the eighties (though I would have liked a few more). One of my favorites is "To Kill A Legend," by Alan Brennert, which has to be read to fully understood. Another tale, features Batman's opposite number, The Wraith, an "anti-Batman" so to speak in another landmark story, which I loved have to have seen dramatize in Bruce Timm's animated series.

Great notes help define the changes and highlights of Batman in the eighties, including the ground-breaking "The Dark Knight Returns", which I confess I have mixed feelings about.

But still, the collection here is great. A mixture of the dark and the light.

Bring on Batman in the Eighties, part II

Sincerely,

JThree
carolyn@dia.net

The 80s were a time of experimentation and new ground in the Batman franchise. It saw classic books like Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year 1. It saw Dick Grayson graduate from being Robin after 40 years, it saw Jason Todd become Robin and then fall to the Joker, Batgirl retired and then was crippled, Batman formed his own superhero team the Outsiders... There's a lot of classic material to be had. But none of it in here.

Most of the great stories from this era have already been reprinted in one format or another so this book focuses on 1 issue stories. But the trend in the 80s was for endless soap operas with plots and subplots continuing for years. So none of these stories are especially good on their own. Worse yet they're not presented in any order, so in one story Batman is mourning the death of Jason Todd, in the next there's Jason hale and hardy.

All that being said there's some fine stuff in there. We get Paul Levitz and Walt Simonson on 'Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker', Batman gets a chance to save the lives of his parents on a parallel world, Mike Barr and Michael Golden introduce crime's answer to the Batman in 'The Player on the Other Side'. They're all fine stories. And text pieces really make it clear how much great stuff was coming out in the 80s.

But this book really does not present the best of that decade and does not really present them well.

Of the issues reprinted here, there are *2* that have not already been reprinted in other Batman compilations. One of those, Batman Special #1, is actually a great issue to reprint, the other is some Batgirl story that makes no sense at all to be in here. No one on Earth would agree that a mediocre Batgirl story should be in a best of the 80s Batman volume, but there you go. There are literally hundreds of 80s stories any Batman fan could reel off that could have been in here instead. There are even a bunch of cover galleries in this book that feature covers of issues that would have fit great. And those would have been the first time those particular issues were reprinted. As opposed to, say, reprinting the SAME ISSUES OVER AND OVER.

This book is giant waste of time. Actually, it's not giant at all, it's very short (I guess for lack of good 80s Batman comics?), and did I mention that there isn't a single Breyfogle-illustrated story?

If you own any of the many, many, MANY other Batman collected volumes, chances are you have almost everything here, so just go to Amazon Marketplace and order Batman Special #1 and save yourself some money.

If you don't really care what Batman story you read, this might be a good book for you, although in that case you would probably prefer a graphic novel that tells a cohesive story, not the hodge-podge of unconnected material that appears here. But if you are a serious collector, you don't want this. Like I said, get Batman Special #1 and you probably already own this book.

1 star. Awful.