Superman Through the Ages! Forum

has been released this week, so you can use this thread to post your thoughts about this book.

DC's write up:



Cover art:

http://www.dccomic.com/media/covers/5709_400x600.jpg

and the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1401210864/theamalgamatronA/

:s:

I'll have to get me a copy!

I haven't read my copy yet but I look forward to it.  Seems like an interesting era for Batmam even if the art looks a little...off.

This is one of the few Showcase volumes that doesn't interest me much.  I checked out the "Dynamic Duo Archives Vol 1" from my local library and was very glad I didn't spend money on it.  (This Showcase includes the contents of that Archive, plus Vol 2 and more).

Anyone who complains Silver Age Superman was "juvenile" or "silly" should be forced to read this period of Batman, which is about as mindless as it gets (I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing "the Outsider" storyline reprinted again).  On the upside, there is the occasional Carmine Infantino art, but it turns out to be a lot more occasional than I remembered. 

Soon after came the TV show and a concerted effort to be silly, instead of the unintentional silliness in these stories.  So I'm not really looking forward to Volume 2, either.

The Silver Age was not a great time for Batman, in my opinion.

Not really, no.  There were some interesting plots here and there and the aforementioned Infantino art but frankly things didn't start cooking until the Denny O'Neil/Frank Robbins/Neal Adams stuff started up.

The only good Silver Age Batman book was The World's Finest! Now that needs a Showcase edition badly!

Actually, Brave and the Bold had its moments, though it really didn't start cooking big time until the Bronze Age.

At any rate, the Batman B&B Showcase is on tap for early '07 and I'll be saving my sheckles for that one.

Ah yes.  I think the only thing that came from the camp era of Batman that still endures to this day is Barbra Gordon.

A completely silly character that over time became one of the more respectable ones.

The run in her tights was a bit corny.

ShinDangaioh, and let's not forget the return of Alfred Pennysworth -- DC in its infinite wisdom KILLED HIM OFF shortly before the Adam West TV show aired.   :o  (The Wayne Foundation was originally named in Alfred's honor.)  But Alfred became so popular on television that DC had to bring him back to life!  How?  Well, it's convoluted, and frankly embarrassing -- first Alfred was reborn as a VILLAIN named "The Outsider", then...  ::)

... he looked like a zombie and had all sorts of psychic powers and got zapped by a ray and it made him all better. And he got his job back. I thought I'd repressed the memory of that, but here it all comes racing back.

Hm, I get this warning that this topic hasn't been posted in in 120 days, but I haven't posted here in a few years.  All things are relative.

But I finally remembered my password--and might not remember it again--and didn't want to waste the opportunity.

Reading this thread about the Batman Showcase--where you'd think there would be some positive comment--especially since the ThruTheAges site is a positive pro-Silver Age place to go--WELL this really got my back up.

The New Look was the greatest age of Batman (in my memory--no accounting for taste). And deserves much better appreciation (check out the thread I did on the DCMB "DC Archives" site--Batman: A "New Look" Ahead).

First off, the "New Look" occurred long enough before the TV show that the two shouldn't be mixed up.  There were definitie directions established before the TV show. And ideas that re-emerged after the TV show went away.

Second, the TV show actually did Batman a lot of favours, but it didn't introduce Batgirl (she'd been around for half a year before that--introduced by Schwartz/Fox/Infantino) and was always a well-respected character (unlike Kathy Kane, Batman doesn't seem to urge this distaff counterpart to get out of the business)--with the exception of that cheesecake story that happens to be cover-featured on the new Showcase.

The TV show hastened the re-introduction of Alfred, but not in rapid time. Schwartz took his time in bringing back Alfred, long after the TV show had made its appearance.  In the end Alfred's return was a good thing (especially once Dick Grayson left the nest--who would Bruce talk to without Pennyworth? not dipsy Aunt Harriet I think). However Alfred's undeadness hijacked the Outsider subplot--which started out as a good idea--nevermind that tapioca pudding character he eventually ended up as.

Various villains were borrowed from the comics (like Eivol Ekdal--one of my favourites). The fortunes of some were revived--like Mr. Freeze(Zero) (who was slow to return to the pages of DC comics) and the Mad Hatter--and probably the Riddler would not be the established puzzler he is if not for the TV show. Heck, the TV show brought back Catwoman, while Schwartz seemed determined to never use her again. Finally Selena Kyle returned--and a good thing that was.

Yes the show dragged Batman down. Although not to the extent some seem to think. And yes it probably drove an opposite reaction--where Schwartz tried to get rid of everything that defined the TV version of Batman including much of Bill Finger and Bob Kane's creation.  But Batmania won Batman many new fans (including myself) and probably saved the character from cancellation for the next twenty years.

Meanwhile, in the comics--Broome, Fox, Moldoff, Giella, Greene, Infantino, Stone, Kanigher, and others created fascinating tales that can be read over and over, and never run out of interest (for those who care).

But that's my opinion. And I'm entitled to it.

It has been a few years, hasn't it?  ;D

I just never bought any Batman in the 60s, maybe 3 or 4 total of Batman and Detective. I was a big fan of the 80 page Giants that reprinted late 40s/early 50s stories, I liked Batman and Robin traveling through history or to other countries.

Batman --and the Batman TV show-- is the reason I'm any kind of comics fan at all.

As I explained on the DCMB thread, it was the TV show that got me buying comics (as opposed to sampling everyone else's comics--there were lots to found in every house back then). And if it hadn't been for Batman appearing in a copy of Action (and advertised as such on the cover) I might never have become a Superman fan.

I owe my life to Lorenzo Semple, Jr. And don't doubt that he collects on that debt every day.

For me, I started sampling my older brother's 1959-64 collection, then buying (well begging my mother) soon after.  By the time I saw the TV series, my brother was telling me how it was meant for laughs and that it was not the same kind of story.

I guess I was lucky then to have an older brother who didn't have any interest in super-hero comics. He was much more interested in marbles and baseball cards.

Although, I always wish that he (when he was seven in 1956) had had the uncanny luck to buy several copies of Showcase no. 4. We would be rich!

Or better yet, if my mother or father in 1938 had thought to buy Action no. 1 (both being in their late teens around then). Now that would have been a miracle of great fortune.

My dad (born in 1925) wouldn't have bought a comic to save his life, my mother (1929) actually did have a lot of Golden Age comics (she liked the Flash). I asked her about them and she said "why would I have kept a COMIC book?".  Accordingly, she threw out all my comics sometime in the 70s...but they were read to death and pretty ragged.

Welcome back!!! We missed you! Write that password down somewhere ;)

My dad is as old as Superman himself!!! As he was born in 1938! :)

The Filmation and Hanna Barabera  shows (Superfriends, The New Adventures of Batman, Batman/Superman Hour) were really my intro to the character in the 1970s.  To this day, I'm not sure if my favourite Bat-voice is Adam West or Olan Soule, but I do know that Ted Knight is the best narrator of anything, ever.  I first saw the 60s live action series even after I saw the live action Challenge of the Super-Heroes show.  However, none of these led me to buy Batman comics.  I got one in a trade in the late 70s (a Brave and Bold: Batman and King Farraday vs Two-Face in New Orleans) but that wasn't enough to make me a fan of the comics.  Neither was leafing through a young friend's plastic coated collection.  What did it was the DC Blue Ribbon Digest featuring some classic gems and the Joker's 5-Way Revenge and the Batman encyclopedia --two great intros to the some of the greatest kids comics ever created.

I hope the Showcase volumes have the same effect on a new generation.

I started buying Batman around the same time I started buying the Superman titles in 1961-62 just prior to the New Look.  I really liked the new look and Carmine Infaniton's work a lot but in retrospect a lot of those stories were by Sheldon Moldoff (imitating a new style and still signing 'Bob Kane') and Sid Greene.

I remember thinking  --wow - Bob suddenly is drawing good. Looking back I  find the stocky, static Moldoff style the real New Look and I had discovered the insane world of Dick Sparang in the annuals and paperback reissues.

My First issue though would probably be an issue of World's Finest or the annual with the Gorilla Crime Boss on the cover.  That cover was pretty intense and the stories well worth the 25 cents.

I started reading comics around 1972 or so (at age 7) and had the extreme good fortune to discover Batman in the days of O'Neill and Adams, Haney and Aparo, Robbins and Novick and so on.  Bronze Age Batman was an astonishing character to me and never failed to entertain; there was mystery, action, the occult, you name it.  I loved Superman as the archetypal superhero, but Batman books had an air of spookiness to them that kept me coming back.  Plus with guys like Adams, Novick and even Dick Dillin on art, and stories set in the "real world," Batman almost seemed like a real person to me, which is something I could never say about Superman, Spider-Man and the rest.

One of the great things about the Bronze Age were those 100-Page Super-Spectaculars, and through them I discovered the earlier ages of Batman, developing an appreciation for Dick Sprang, Jerry Robinson and others, but I noticed something over time; the 60s were a "Dead Zone" for me (sorry, India!).  I never warmed to Shelley ("Bob Kane") Moldoff's art from the "New Look" years (Infantino's stuff was great, but comparatively rare) and many of the stories were plain awful, especially the execrable "Outsider" plotline. I always devoured the Bat-stories of the 40s and 50s in those Spectaculars, and plodded through the 60's entries like an elephant through quicksand. Basically, the Adam West series was for me the only saving grace of that whole period in history.

In other words, I won't be buying the Showcases.