DC SPECIAL SERIES #15 & DETECTIVE COMICS #481

As noted last time, we'll spend much of the next few months with Len Wein on BATMAN, but we will also look in once in a while at DETECTIVE COMICS, written (mostly) by Denny O'Neil. But first, we have an issue of DC SPECIAL SERIES which was cover dated for the same month as the second part of Wein's Clayface III story that we examined last week. Then, further down the page, we'll check out DETECTIVE COMICS #481 -- cover dated the same month as Wein's first issue of BATMAN, which we'll examine next week.

"I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU BATMAN AND WIFE!"
Writer: Denny O'Neil | Penciler: Michael Golden | Inker: Dick Giordano
Letterer: Milt Snappin | Colorist: Cory Adams | Editor: Julius Schwartz

FYI, this cover has nothing to do with the story we're about to discuss. DC SPECIAL SERIES was evidently an anthology of some sort, and the cover refers to a different tale within the issue.

Nearly seven years after he last wrote Ra's al Ghul, and with other writers -- such as Len Wein and Archie Goodwin -- having built on the al Ghul saga in the meantime, Denny O'Neil returns to his signature Batman villain. There's no Neal Adams this time, though the consolation prize isn't bad, as the great Michael Golden provides pencils.

O'Neil jumps straight into the action here, as Batman has a brief encounter with a petty hood on Gotham's streets, then returns to the Batcave, where his is immediately drugged and kidnapped by Talia and League of Assassins. The Caped Crusader awakens sometime later on Ra's al Ghul's yacht, just as the Demon's Head completes a wedding ceremony marrying Batman and Talia. Al Ghul leave the pair to consummate their union, but Batman knocks Talia out (by punching her in the face!) and then escapes the yacht via helicopter.

DETECTIVE COMICS #478 & #479

Hey, everybody -- remember Len Wein? He co-wrote "The House That Haunted Batman" in 1971's DETECTIVE COMICS #408, then returned a few years later for 1975's "Bat-Murderer" storyline in DETECTIVE COMICS 444 - 448. You may also recall that he provided a coda to Steve Englehart's DETECTIVE run in issue 477, which I mentioned last week.

Well, he's back -- and we're going to see a lot more of him for the rest of this retrospective. Up until this point, my focus was on the "greatest hits" of the 1970s Batman -- the evergreen stuff that's been reprinted in various formats over the years by DC. But now we're segueing into a proper "run" on the character by a single writer. See, a few years back, DC released TALES OF THE BATMAN: LEN WEIN, a book collecting all of Wein's work on the Caped Crusader -- and that includes his term as the regular, ongoing writer of BATMAN in the late seventies. It seems that, following the success of Englehart's "Marvelized" DETECTIVE COMICS, DC must have decided to keep the approach going -- and Wein, fresh off a stint writing AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, among other titles, at Marvel, was tapped for the job.

So Wein comes aboard DETECTIVE immediately after Englehart's run for a three-issue stint in mid-1978 (one of which is a mere framing sequence as mentioned last week), then he will take of the reins of BATMAN for a full two years beginning with the January 1979 installment, which we'll get to in a couple weeks. And while Wein was the writer of BATMAN an a Marvel-ish fashion, stalwart Denny O'Neil (for the most part) continued a more traditional "business as usual" approach on DETECTIVE during the same span. So as we read Wein's run over the next few months, we'll also check in periodically with O'Neil as well.

DETECTIVE COMICS #475 & #476

"THE LAUGHING FISH!" | "SIGN OF THE JOKER!"
Writer: Steve Englehart | Penciller: Marshall Rogers | Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Ben Oda & Milt Snappin | Colorist: Marshall Rogers | Editor: Julius Schwartz

The Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run on DETECTIVE COMICS comes to its conclusion with a two-part classic pitting Batman against the Joker. This time, the Clown Prince of Crime has infected the world's fish with a variation on his Joker venom, giving every fish a hideous grin. Joker's plan is to copyright the "laughing fish" and rake in the bucks every time somebody buys one.

It's an utterly nonsensical plan -- something the narration calls out a couple times -- but that's the point. The Joker is, at this point in continuity, one hundred percent insane. I'm not sure when it was decided that the character was clinically insane... I know he wasn't in his earliest appearances, since at one point Bob Kane and Bill Finger sent him to the electric chair (and if a criminal is certified insane, they can't receive the death penalty), but by the seventies, he's absolutely there. It was Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams who had the character escape from an upstate asylum in "The Joke's Five-Way Revenge", but I just don't know if it was ever previously stated that he was crazy.

But in any case, "The Laughing Fish/Sign of the Joker" is absolutely the craziest we've seen him in our jaunt through the seventies -- and while I do like the idea that he would come up with a scheme that makes not an ounce of sense to any normal-thinking human, I can't say that I wholeheartedly approve of Englehart's version of an insane Joker. I'd go so far as to say that, more than "Joker's Five-Way Revenge", this is where the modern-day Joker, a character who makes me extremely uncomfortable, was born. In fact, I can pretty much pinpoint the exact panel when it happens:

DETECTIVE COMICS #473 & #474

"THE MALAY PENGUIN!" | "THE DEADSHOT RICOCHET"
Story: Steve Englehart | Art: Marshall Rogers | Embellisher: Terry Austin
Letterers: Milt Snappin & Ben Oda | Editor: Julius Schwartz

One of the things I like about Steve Englehart's eight-issue DETECTIVE COMICS run is the way he divvies up his enemies for Batman into a few categories. There are new/original villains: Doctor Phosphorous and Rupert Thorne. There are obscure villains: Hugo Strange, who at the time hadn't been seen in over thirty-five years, and Deadshot, who we'll get to below. And then there are the classics: Joker, who we will look at next week, and Penguin, who pops up in the first of this week's installments. If you're gonna do a short run on a superhero, that's nearly the perfect way to handle it (the only thing I might change from this formula would be to use at least one villain from another hero's rogues' gallery to mix it up a tiny bit more).

Englehart also finds time for one good old-fashioned Batman and Robin team-up during his brief time on the title, which is much appreciated. Robin factored into last week's Hugo Strange two-parter, but he was flying solo there, rescuing Batman from Strange's dungeon. Here, he's still in town following that adventure, assisting his partner with the loose end of tracking Strange down. "The Malay Penguin!" opens with two of Rupert Thorne's men disposing of Strange's body in the Gotham River. The hoods are accosted by the Dynamic Duo (after dumping the corpse, so Batman doesn't yet realize Strange is dead), but Batman and Robin are forced to depart when the police arrive. It seems Rupert Thorne has revoked their status as duly deputized agents of the law, and despite Commissioner Gordon's friendly presence at the top of the Gotham P.D., the heroes are now considered vigilantes.

DETECTIVE COMICS #471 & #472

"THE DEAD YET LIVE" | "I AM THE BATMAN!"
Author: Steve Englehart | Artists: Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin
Letterer: John Workman | Colorist: Marshall Rogers | Editor: Julie Schwartz

As we saw last time, most of the pieces were placed for the famous Steve Englehart run on DETECTIVE COMICS with issues 469 and 470. However, the run is actually usually referred to as the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run, and there was still one fairly big piece missing as of last week. You can't have an Englehart/Rogers run without Rogers, after all!

But that problem is remedied immediately from the first atmosphere-oozing page of DETECTIVE 471, and suddenly Englehart's story snaps into focus. Doctor Phosphorous was a misfire, perhaps, even though it laid some important seeds for what was to follow. But now those seeds have sprouted, and thanks to Rogers and inker Terry Austin, they're beautiful to behold!

And now the story: it begins with Rupert Thorne declaring war on Batman. As mentioned last time, the corrupt city council boss had previously left the Caped Crusader alone, but following Doctor Phosphorous's attempt to turn the council against Batman, coupled with recent financial troubles making the city harder to control, Thorne has decided that Gotham's hero is too much of a loose cannon and must be eliminated.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON: DEADLY HANDS

"DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON" | "SWORD OF VENGEANCE"
Writer: Chris Claremont | Artist: Marshall Rogers
Letterers: Irving Watanabe w/Karen Mantlo | Editor: John Warner

In early 1977, Chris Claremont was at possibly the most diverse phase of his career. He had not yet become the man known exclusively for writing mutant titles. Instead, he was the regular writer on UNCANNY X-MEN and IRON FIST; he had just added MS. MARVEL to that same résumé, and within a few months, MARVEL TEAM-UP would include Spider-Man's adventures among his monthly credits as well.

Marvel was pretty diverse at the time too, publishing, among other things, a line of black-and-white magazines alongside their color comics. The magazines were not restricted by the guidelines of the Comics Code Authority, allowing creators greater freedom with the content of their stories. One of these periodicals was DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG-FU, which had, over the years, been a showcase for characters like Shang-Chi, Iron Fist, and the Sons of the Tiger. Finally, for the series' last two issues, Claremont teamed up with artist Marshall Rogers for a series about Colleen Wing and Misty Knight, supporting characters from his IRON FIST series now striking out on their own.

UNION JACK AND THE DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON

(No, sadly this is not the title of an upcoming Marvel team-up style series. But could you imagine...?)

Remember the other day when we covered CAPTAIN AMERICA #254, in which young Joey Chapman took on the guise of Union Jack? Well, that was in 1981. Not much came of Union Jack for several years afterward. He made some appearances in the Marvel U.K. comics, where he joined the super-group called the Knights of Pendragon, and he popped up in John Byrne's NAMOR series in the U.S. for a two-parter involving Spitfire and a reunion of the Invaders. But overall he was dormant for quite some time.

Then in 1998, Ben Raab and future superstar artist John Cassaday produced a limited series titled UNION JACK, which served as a sequel to the original Roger Stern/John Byrne origin. Jack remained relatively low profile in the years that followed, with only occasional appearances in CAPTAIN AMERICA and a brief stint as one of Chuck Austen's NEW INVADERS, until he again popped up to headline a mini-series in 2006.

CAPTAIN BRITAIN PART TWELVE - EXCALIBUR CLASSIC, VOL. 2

Note: EXCALIBUR CLASSIC volume 2 contains the 1989 EXCALIBUR SPECIAL EDITION comic, "Mojo Mayhem".  Even though it's written by Chris Claremont, I did not read that story as part of this marathon, due to its negligible contributions to the series' ongoing continuity.

The six issues in EXCALIBUR CLASSIC volume 2 comprise two main story arcs.  The first is EXCALIBUR's segment of the 1988 X-Men crossover, "Inferno".  With New York overrun by demons, Rachel senses that her baby brother Nathan is in danger and takes off to find him, and Excalibur pursues their teammate.  In New York, the demon infestation affects each member of the team in a different way.  Meggan is corrupted and becomes the Goblin Princess, with Captain Britain acting as her bodyguard/slave.  Kitty manages to free the two of them with the use of the Soulsword, a demonic blade which once belonged to her friend, Illyana.

The "Inferno" crossover gives us some potentially interesting character development, but overall it feels like a time-killer -- a case of the title participating in a crossover because it must, not because it has anything interesting to contribute.  This seems especially odd considering Rachel's connection to Nathan and Kitty's connection to Illyana, as both those characters are integral to the main crossover event in UNCANNY X-MEN, X-FACTOR, and NEW MUTANTS.  Doubly peculiar is that Chris Claremont, one of the masterminds behind "Inferno", wrote the EXCALIBUR segment and could easily have given the group a larger role in the proceedings if he had so chosen.