BATMAN #243 & #244

"THE LAZARUS PIT!" | "THE DEMON LIVES AGAIN!"
Script: Denny O'Neil | Art: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano | Editor: Julius Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

The Ra's al Ghul saga reaches its climax here, as Batman and his ragtag teams track the Demon to Switzerland. There, Lo Ling spies Talia and Ubu in a throng of people. The pair escapes, but Batman and friends, joined by championship skier Molly Post, pursue and enter al Ghul's stronghold -- only to find him dead. The groups departs with Talia, but al Ghul is secretly lowered by an automatic mechanism into a pool which restores his life. He emerges from his chalet and escapes with Talia.

Batman's teammmates are all injured or otherwise disabled, leaving the Darknight Detective alone as he tracks al Ghul and his daughter to the desert. There, al Ghul challenges Batman to a saber duel, but a scorpion's sting takes the Caped Crusader out of the fight. The Demon leaves Batman for dead, unaware that Talia has slipped her love an antidote. Batman appears in al Ghul's tent later, knocks him out, and hauls him away to justice.

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings regarding this story. Is it an epic? Yes, I'd say so. Globetrotting to exotic locales, a saber duel in the desert, a dramatic kiss to finish the story... it's all great stuff. But, much as I like it, I sometimes feel that it could've been so much more. I suspect that's due in large part to having seen the BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES adaptation, "The Demon's Quest", prior to reading these issues. Because of that, my opinion of the original story has long been colored by the immeasurable esteem in which I hold those episodes. (I generally consider them my favorites out of all the B:TAS installments.)

SPRING BREAK

I'm taking Fridays off for the month of May. Note that unlike last year, when I was forced to abort my look at the James Bond comic strip partway through its run due to not having time to finish reading, this break is pre-planned. That Bond fiasco last year taught me that I need to realize my limitations with regards to timing and deadlines. I'm never as far ahead as I'd like to be these days, and I don't want to have to cancel another project before it's finished. So to that end, I decided to take some time to let myself get far enough ahead for the next Friday series, which will begin in June.

Monday posts will continue as usual, of course -- there's plenty of Batman lined up, so no need to worry about anything going astray there. And I will, as I did last year when I cancelled Bond, post other stuff on Fridays in May as the opportunity arises, in the vein of the Unboxing you saw here a week ago.

BATMAN #240 & #242

"VENGEANCE FOR A DEAD MAN!" | "BRUCE WAYNE--REST IN PEACE!"
Story: Denny O'Neil | Art: Irv Novick & Dick Giordano | Editing: Julius Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

The Ra's al Ghul saga ramps up considerably in these latest installments from Denny O'Neil and Irv Novick. In our first tale, Batman is called by Commissioner Gordon to investigate the grisly murder of a scientist named Mason Sterling, who was found with his brain removed. The Caped Crusder's investigation brings him into contact with Talia, working on behalf of her father -- but when Talia "accidentally" erases the memory of Batman's only informant, he follows her to Ra's al Ghul's yacht to find Sterling's brain kept alive on life support as al Ghul interrogates it. Al Ghul and Talia escape, and the disembodied brain tricks Batman into killing it with a push of a button since it can't bear to continue living as it is.

This story, which on its surface feels like another one-off Batman vs. Ra's adventure, turns out to have more going for it by the final couple pages. It's here that Batman first witnesses the depths of al Ghul's depravity and madness. Our next story, printed three months later, picks up on that thread and begins the final act of O'Neil's Ra's al Ghul saga.

For the timeline inclined out there, it's a little over a year now since O'Neil introduced the League of Assassins in DETECTIVE COMICS 405 and 406, the November and December issues from 1970. Six months later, O'Neil debuted the mysterious Talia in May 1971's DETECTIVE 411, and Ra's al Ghul himself appeared the month after that in BATMAN 232 from June of that same year. Batman and Talia teamed up in September's BATMAN 235. Then Ra's and his daughter took another six months off until March of 1972 and "Vengeance for a Dead Man!"

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2019

What's this? The Unboxing on Friday?! It's true, and the reason why will be explained in this very space... next Friday! But for now, after skipping the past two months, The Unboxing returns at last with three offerings from Marvel, and I think the wait was worth it!

First we have two trade paperbacks, starting with CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM. Over the past few years, Marvel has been steadily plugging away at completing Mark Gruenwald's ten-year run on CAPTAIN AMERICA in a number of trade paperbacks. Currently, thanks to this new volume and the previously released Epic Collections SOCIETY OF SERPENTS, JUSTICE IS SERVED, THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, and STREETS OF POISON, plus the out-of-print Epic-in-all-but-name THE CAPTAIN, we've got issues 307 - 397 collected. That's ninety-one issues plus associated annuals and such, covering nearly the first seven years of Gruenwald's run. Gruenwald's final CAP issue was 443, so we've still got quite a ways to go, but at the very least it's safe to say that the "prime" material is pretty much all available at this point. (Though I love all of it and will happily snap up the rest of the run as it's released!)

Next is X-MEN: ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH, and I cannot overstate how absolutely thrilled I am to own this book. Those who follow my X-Men Collected Editions chart know that this was the final piece needed to close the X-Men's 1990s gap. As of now, thanks to ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH, EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE. of UNCANNY X-MEN and X-MEN from the full decade of the nineties has been collected. I seriously want to do a little jig over this. It's been my goal for about the past five years to have that entire run of issues on my bookshelf, and now I can finally say that the mission is accomplished.

(Of course this isn't to say I won't re-buy some of this material as it finds its way into better collections -- upgrading from paperbacks to hardcovers, for example -- but the point is that for now, the goal is complete.)

And speaking of rebuying, our last book is one that I couldn't resist even though I've purchased all of it in various formats over the years -- comics when I was a teen, trade paperbacks and hardcovers as an adult... but now we have it here, all collected in one comprehensive and definitive oversized hardcover, just in time for a certain major motion picture it inspired: the THANOS WARS: INFINITY ORIGIN OMNIBUS. The name is an inelegant mouthful, but the contents are what's important here. This book collects all of Jim Starlin's early Thanos material, from his first appearance in IRON MAN #55, through his war against Captain Mar-Vell and the Avengers, and up to his dealings with Adam Warlock -- plus everything in between, whether Thanos-related or not. I've probably mentioned it here before, but for the record, Starlin's cosmic stuff at 1970s Marvel is among my all-time favorite comic book runs, and it's wonderful to see it get the high-end treatment it deserves at long last.

BATMAN #237

"NIGHT OF THE REAPER!
Art by: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano | Story by: Denny O'Neil
(From an idea by Berni Wrightson with an assist from Harlan Ellison)
Edited by: Julie Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

I always like when old comics tell you on the cover that you're about to read a "novel" or a "novel-length" adventure/thriller/etc. It really just means the story fills the entire issue (i.e. no backup stories, which were typically included in both BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS around this period). It's one of those sort of quaint cover blurbs which I find a little corny nowadays, but love anyway.

And a novel-length tale this is. (Though technically it does not fill the issue's page count since this was a double-sized installment -- but it does run the length of a single full-issue story.) Set on Halloween in Vermont, it opens with Dick Grayson and some college friends on their way to a party. But when the boys stop a mugging, Dick changes to Robin to pursue the assailants. He finds the corpse of a man in a Batman costume, then is attacked by someone dressed as the Grim Reaper. The real Batman arrives to find his ward dazed, and brings him back to a nearby mansion where the party is in swing. Batman is in town to track some Nazi war criminals, and the manor's owner is a Holocaust survivor named Doctor Gruener, who recognized the villains in the first place.

From here, the story shifts to primarily solo Batman action, as the Caped Crusader goes about his business while Robin recovers. Eventually Batman finds the Nazis, who are after their former leader and his cache of gold, but the lead Nazi is killed. Batman realizes his underlings couldn't have committed the crime, and soon unmasks the true killer.

X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN VOLUME 2

Cartoonist: Ed Piskor | Editor: Chris Robinson
X-Men Group Editor: Jordan D. White | Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
And a bunch of other stupid credits I don't want to type out, because Marvel likes to credit every executive who took so much as a single sideways glance at every comic they publish.

I had fairly high hopes for the first X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN volume, in spite of some reservations regarding Ed Piskor's artwork. And while I didn't love some of the liberties it took with the X-Men's established history, it wasn't an awful read and, and it left me interested, if nothing else, to see what Piskor would do in the subsequent book, which would cover my personal favorite X-Men era -- and my all-time favorite comic book run -- the Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum/John Byrne/Paul Smith era on UNCANNY X-MEN.

Unfortunately, what goodwill Piskor had gained from his first installment is squandered by this one.

The two issues contained in this book cover the entire Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne/Smith run mentioned above, opening with the events of GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 and concluding shortly after the "From the Ashes" storyline. Issue 3 opens with the X-Mansion deserted. We're told it's been this way for months, and the implication is that the X-Men have been trapped on the sentient island of Krakoa for that entire time -- which seems a bit odd; the story in GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 has always read to me as a very compressed timeline, with the X-Men missing for a few days or a week, tops.

At any rate, Piskor uses this absence to allow the Hellfire Club to bug the mansion, erasing from his retelling the story in which the club sends their operative, Warhawk, to do the job in X-MEN #110. Again, as I mentioned once or twice last week, I like some aspects of Piskor's work in this series. Here, he sets up the Hellfire Club as the main antagonists of this entire era, presenting them early on as a shadowy cabal spying on the X-Men. This is the sort of thing I feel a retelling of this sort should do -- set up an overarching plot where originally none existed, or where one was later retroactively established, as would be the case with the Hellfire Club's involvement in both the Warhawk episode and the attack of the Sentinels in issue 98.

BATMAN #234 & #235

"HALF AN EVIL"
Story by: Denny O'Neil | Art by: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano | Edited by: Julie Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

At some point in the late sixties, a decision was made to "retire" Batman's classic rogues' gallery for a time. This effort began prior to the first story we read, "One Bullet Too Many", and has been in place since then. In that time, both in the stories we've read and the issues we skipped, Batman has fought common criminals and new super-villains -- but there's been no sign of the classics such as Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, and so forth.

My understanding is that the villains were written out due to concerns of overexposure thanks to the Adam West TV series, plus the fact that the comics were going "back to basics" with more (relatively) grounded stories. But whatever the reason, the fact remains that until this issue, it had been some time since Batman had taken on any of his more recognizable enemies -- and even here, the first classic villain brought back is one who did not feature in the TV show.

But Two-Face is definitely a classic foe, having been created by Batman's co-creators themselves, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, in the forties. According to Wikipedia, he was mostly dropped following that decade, appearing only a small handful of times in the fifties and sixties -- I would assume due to his gruesome appearance conflicting with the values of the Comics Code Authority. But now, thanks to the creative duo of O'Neil and Adams, he's back.

X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN VOLUME 1

Cartoonist: Ed Piskor | Editor: Chris Robinson
X-Men Group Editor: Jordan D. White | Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
And a bunch of other stupid credits I don't want to type out, because Marvel likes to credit every executive who took so much as a single sideways glance at every comic they publish.

I picked up X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN solely for its premise. It's been quite a while since I bought a comic with artwork that doesn't appeal to me solely for the story, but this series' conceit was too fascinating to pass up: a condensed retelling of the X-Men's long and convoluted history, written as if everything had been planned out in advance. So I bought the first two volumes in various Comixology sales last year.

Now, I wasn't expecting auteur Ed Piskor to truly cram every bit of X-lore into his retelling; to do so would be an undertaking of insane proportions. So I figured there would be some streamlining here and there. What I didn't expect, however, was for the story to be some sort of parallel universe X-history, explicitly removing and/or changing bits of backstory in the service of Piskor's narrative. But sadly, that's what we have here.

The first issue (comprising the first half of volume 1), covers Charles Xavier's childhood and early years, and follows him as he meets a number of mutants and recruits his original team of X-Men. We see Xavier's interactions with his stepbrother, Cain Marko, and Marko's presumed death in the temple of Cyttorak during the Korean War. We see Xavier's travels in Cairo, during which he comes across young Ororo Monroe, as well as his time in Isreal with Gabrielle Haller and a young man called Magnus (whose own history as Holocaust survivor is told alongside Xavier's).

Unfortunately, this is where Piskor's changes begin to pop up. We're told that Xavier lost the use of his legs when the Cyttorak temple collapsed, rather than in battle with the alien warlord, Lucifer. In theory, removing Lucifer from Professor X's backstory is fine; however the result finds Xavier in a wheelchair during his time in Isreal, which was not the case originally. It's a little thing, but little continuity glitches are often the most likely to irritate me because there's no real reason to get them wrong.

DETECTIVE COMICS #411 & BATMAN #232

"INTO THE DEN OF THE DEATH DEALERS!"
Story by: Denny O'Neil | Art by: Bob Brown & Dick Giordano

"DAUGHTER OF THE DEMON"
Story by: Denny O'Neil | Art by: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano | Edited by: Julius Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

I know I had read the name "Ra's al Ghul" before my first exposure to him as a character -- because I wondered for a few years how his name was pronounced. Then, one fateful day in 1994, BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES introduced me to the criminal mastermind called The Demon's Head, and told me the correct pronunciation -- which is, of course "Raysh al Gool". I don't know what the BATMAN BEGINS people were thinking when they had everyone calling him "Roz".

Of course, I still don't know the honest-to-goodness right way to say it; maybe the ANIMATED SERIES folks were wrong and Christopher Nolan got it right. But to me, for the rest of my life, I'll keep on saying "Raysh".

Anyway. Thanks to his sparse appearances on THE ANIMATED SERIES, specifically his debut in "The Demon's Quest" and his cameo in "Off Balance", which preceded it, Ra's al Ghul quickly became one of my favorite Batman villains. It's no surprise; I've always loved "mastermind" types more than any other sort of villain (see my love of Mister Sinister and the original Hobgoblin over at Marvel) -- plus, racist though it is, I've long been interested in the "Yellow Peril" trope. And, while Arabic by birth, al Ghul essentially is exactly that sort of character

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we meet the Demon's Head, we need an introduction to his beautiful daughter, Talia!