Batman by Neal Adams Book One

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The Joker, of course, gets a bit of a rehabilitation in The Joker’s Five Way Revenge, which immediately helped rehabilitate the character after decades as a relatively harmless prankster. So some of the writing in this collection is a bit ropey but I adore Neal Adams art, it was the start of dynamic realistic gritty art in comic books, probably a precursor to the later Sin City and their ilk. This is one of the first comics I ever remember seeing on the spinner racks – and one of the first indications that maybe Batman doesn’t get out of all the traps like he does on TV. would have introduced DC's first African American superhero but was rejected by publisher Carmine Infantino. Sure, he had the advantage of the larger, treasury size and the landscape wraparound, but he takes full advantage of both: Batman’s never looked more anguished, with every muscle taut, about to explode.

I wasn't happy working on the strip nor was I happy giving up a third of the money to [the TV series' producer,] Bing Crosby Productions. As the story goes, they are the team that brought back to his darker roots after the Batman TV show came and went. Never mind that there are two sets of Batpants and Ra’s al Ghul’s sword isn’t really shoved into Batman’s chest.There are 8 million people in Gotham City — and unless Batman finds the right one … At Dawn Dies Mary MacGuffin!

As his birthday approached, I wondered what kind of tribute to put together since I’ve covered a lot of ground over the last several years. Adams held the work of Australian geologist Samuel Warren Carey in high esteem, but considered the term "Expanding Earth" a misnomer.And of course, Ra’s al Ghul’s ghastly, ghostly image presides over it all, the very picture of evil and cruelty. Robin’s body in the foreground is so big it adds a level of dimensional perspective that makes it appear life-size. Even overlooking that, a lot of recent Batman mythology focuses on the idea that Thomas might have fathered other children – that some part of Bruce’s father might exist elsewhere. It’s a sharp contrast from the earliest iteration of the character, who remarked of a similar situation, “A fitting end for one of his kind. There’s an element of horror about most of these stories, as if they could have been lifted from an Edgar Allen Poe story.