Single Issue Review: Brave and the Bold #69

Lord knows the Silver Age was not the best era for Batman, but even in the depths of that era he rarely appeared in a stinker quite as bad as this one. Note when reading this review that although the cover above is not exactly dynamic and thrilling, it's also completely bogus. The scene depicted on the cover never appears inside the comic book.

The story opens with residents of Gotham City getting quite an odd sight:



Now, it looks to me like if he twisted a little bit, he could get out of that, but apparently not. Commissioner Gordon is summoned and after a joke about how the Policemen's Ball is coming up, but it's not a masquerade, he asks how Batman got trapped. Batman explains that he had spring fever, and went for a drive in the country. After falling asleep in a field he awoke to find himself trapped.

They take him to the police lab, but the metal proves impervious to any efforts to remove the mechanical bat from Batman. So he asks them to contact Green Lantern, and meet him at dawn in the park. And he shuffles away. No, I am not kidding:



Bear in mind that they just transported him to the lab with a police escort, but now he's walking through Gotham alone? At night? Can we say convenient to the needs of the plot?

Fortunately nothing happens and the next morning GL cuts Batman free. Wow, that was pretty quick resolution of the story on page 5. But a few minutes later as GL flies away he spots Batman in the Whirly-Bat, who doesn't know anything about being trapped. So it was clearly a plot to get power from the power ring, which suggests that they are facing the Time Commander, a villain they had previously encountered in Brave & Bold #59 who used the same MO.

Indeed it is he, as we learn in the next sequence, where the Time Commander indulges himself in a little mumbo-jumbo monologue:



As names of dreaded things go, Cosmo is, shall we say, right up there with Shagg and Fin Fang Foom. Not exactly calculated to keep kids awake at night.

The Time Commander succeeds in bringing him back but there's just no gratitude these days:



It turns out that Cosmo has absorbed star power over the years, and he attacks the Time Commander with that, and old TC has to vamoose into a "temporary time plane", leaving Green Lantern and Batman to handle the problem of Cosmo.

They encounter Cosmo as he's tearing down an abandoned building with "emanations from his body". GL discovers that his power ring is useless against Cosmo as he's absorbed energy from the ring already. They observe that Cosmo pores through the rubble of the building as if he's looking for something. Batman calls the Police Department and learns that the former owner of the building was Carruthers (who was the scientist who created Cosmo).

Batman and GL find Carruther's diary in the rubble which gives Batman his next clue:



Now, note that Batman is in the Whirly Bat there. He dashes off to find Carruthers, who left note in his diary that he particularly liked this one nursing home. And Batman comes back again with Carruthers:



Okay, it would have been pretty gay to have Carruthers sitting on Batman's lap in the Whirly-Bat, but don't you think we are owed some explanation as to this heretofore unseen helicopter?

But it turns out that Carruthers isn't Carruthers, he's Batman and Batman is some guy from the nursing home, and the real Carruthers has regained his memory and arrives in an ambulance from the nursing home with a fluid that will (and does) destroy Cosmo. And we get the wrap-up at the end:



Comments: Painful. Just painful. This was while the Batman TV show was in full swing--note the "Go-Go Chex" on the cover--and while most of the Batman-related comics during that era were mediocre, Brave and Bold managed to take the level of suckage to new lows.

There are many hideous issues of Brave and Bold around this time and it's not hard to figure out the culprit. There are two issues of B&B from 1965-1968 that aren't jaw-dropping bad, and those are the two Black Canary/Starman issues, the only issues that Bob Haney didn't write. You can make an argument for the Metamorpho tryouts being less horrific than most thanks to Ramona Fradon's style, but remember that Haney around 1968 had Neal Adams doing his stories and they still stank on ice (but looked marvelous).

Single Issue Review: Daredevil #12

I was flipping through this one today and thought with current events in the world it would make for a topical review. This is Johnny Romita's first effort for Marvel. Daredevil had struggled to find a regular artist during its history. The first issue was drawn by Bill Everett, #s 2-4 by Joe Orlando, and #s 5-11 by Wally Wood. Wood bailed to start up Tower Comics, as I discussed. So this marked what might have been a long run at Daredevil for Romita, had fate not had other plans for him.

As the story begins, Matt is leaving Karen and Foggy behind. Believing that Karen doesn't love him, Matt has decided to go on a long cruise to leave the field open for Foggy. But as he boards the ship he hears a passenger ask a curious question:



And Stan doesn't put those foreshadowing bits in there for nothing:



But the pirates hadn't planned on DD being aboard:



Unfortunately for DD, the Plunderer has a trump card in the form of hostages. Surprisingly however:



Does that reply by the Plunderer sound more than a little gay? Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that this comic has some very weird displays of affection going on. From another part of the story check out this:



The Plunderer is your classic loony:



We learn that his ship can convert to a submarine and that his hideout is called Skull Island which is located in a hidden land (of course, Ka-Zar's hidden land). But when they arrive at Skull Island, it has been raided by the Swamp Men. Before the Plunderer can seek his revenge against them, however, he is raided by Ka-Zar and Zabu. We get the obligatory good guy fight scene:



But later, when Daredevil is wounded, Ka-Zar remembers the courageous way he fought and brings the fallen hero back to his cave. The issue ends on a cliffhanger note, with DD near death's door as Ka-Zar tries to get some medicinal berries from a man-eating plant:



Comments: I really like this issue. The bit with the Plunderer not actually robbing the cruise ship seems unlikely, but it's a classic 1960s spy thriller plot device. Romita's artwork (with layouts by Kirby) hits home in every panel.

Update: A more critical reaction at the Comic Treadmill several years ago:

This story, involving pirates, the Savage Land and international intrigue, was beautifully suited for Kirby and Romita’s art. And it looks pretty. But what the heck was Daredevil doing in the middle of this? Like Spider-Man, Daredevil works well in an urban setting and stands out like Capt. Underpants at a JLA meeting when moved into fantasy realms.

A fair criticism. One thing is obvious about Stan Lee; he did things by the seat of his pants and often struggled for awhile to find appropriate villains and settings for his characters before hitting his stride.

Trivia Quiz #23 Answers

1. According to Julius Schwartz, Hal Jordan was intended to look like what famous actor?



In a letter column from Green Lantern #3, Julius Schwarz revealed that Hal Jordan was supposed to look like Paul Newman.

2. True or False: Hal Jordan did not know of the existence of the Guardians for several years after his debut.

False, but it's close. The Guardians were introduced in GL #1, but they did not encounter Hal or GL in the story, but rather they beamed an "energy twin" of him to Oa as discussed here:



As a result, Green Lantern apparently didn't know about the Guardians until Green Lantern #7:

Which was about 20 months (or less than two years) after Green Lantern's debut.

3. Who was Green Lantern's love interest in the far distant future?

Iona Vane was Green Lantern's girlfriend in 5700 AD.

4. What villain was initially a competitor with Green Lantern for the affections of Carol Ferris?

Hector Hammond, as Carol ruefully remembers here:

A "flighty" mind indeed.

5. What Green Lantern villain's motivation for committing crimes was to bring power and fame to his native land?

Sonar, one of the weirdest DC crooks of all time, as I discussed here.

I'm going to give everybody credit for #2, because I screwed up and didn't check the question myself, assuming that I knew the answer, and 20 months versus "several years" is too close. Jim gets 1, 2 and 5 right. David Morefield rings the bell with all five right, and Michael Rebain gets 2,3 and 5.

Single Issue Review: THUNDER Agents #1

In the mid-1960s, comics experienced something of a boom due to demographics. This attracted new players to the comics biz. Tower Books, a small publisher, jumped into the fray with a small line of comics, mostly designed around the THUNDER Agents, although they also had a fairly long-running Archie-type series called Tippy Teen. The books were edited (and partially drawn) by Wally Wood.

One oddity about the series is the price: 25 cents. Although both DC and Marvel published annuals with that cost, they were not trying to market an ongoing, regular series of books that expensively.

The first story features the Thunder Agents, a group of UN commandos. They arrive at a mountain laboratory just as the minions of the Warlord have raided the lab and killed Professor Jennings, the scientist in charge. Fortunately, they did not get away with three of his inventions, which the Thunder Group appropriates:



The belt is assigned to a Leonard Brown who becomes Dynamo, virtually invincible and incredibly strong:



In the story, the Warlord's henchgal, the Iron Maiden, pulls off a series of robberies of rare and valuable radioactive materials under cover of a suspicious fog.



Love the belt; it really makes the costume. The Iron Maiden's gang battles Dynamo, and while he at first has the upper hand, he weakens as the belt saps his reserves and they are able to capture him.



This story is continued later in the issue, as we switch to NoMan. Dr Dunn, an aged scientist, transfers his mind into an android. We learn that he can switch to different android bodies at will. He is given the cloak of Professor Jennings, which gives him the power of invisibility:



NoMan is detailed to defeat another Warlord underling called Demo, who has a beautiful assistant named Satana:



The decision to include sultry female villains was inspired. Although this had been commonly used in the Golden Age (see the Catwoman for the classic example), it had largely ceased due probably to a prohibition in the Comics Code against criminal activity being portrayed as glamorous. Note that this comic was dated November 1965, only a few months before the launch of the Batman TV series in which the male villains would all have good-looking female companions.

We learn that NoMan's android body has great strength and fighting ability, so his powers are not solely defensive. The ability to switch bodies is crucial, as we see here:



Although it does require NoMan to be fairly close to his new body to make the transfer, so it's one of those powers that comes with a negative; he has to bring spare bodies with him wherever he goes. In addition, the invisibility cloak stays with the old body, so he has to retrieve it whenever he makes a switch.

The next story features the most interesting of the Thunder Agents: Menthor. Janus (no other name given) is Thunder's highest-scoring recruit ever, with genius level intelligence and an athletic build. But unknown to Thunder, he's actually a double agent working for the Warlord. He volunteers to wear Professor Jenning's weird helmet, which gives him great mental powers:



But it also has a curious side-effect; it changes the character of Janus from evil to good. And Janus is not aware of what he does while Menthor meaning that when he thinks to help out the Warlord by putting on the helmet, he actually ends up defeating his boss' plans.

The next feature is the Thunder Squad, a non-superpowered group, kind of like the old Impossible Mission gang, with varied abilities:



Only a slight variation on the familiar "smart guy, strong guy, woman, kid" formula.

The final story picks up on the imprisonment of Dynamo by the Iron Maiden. She has been unable to get him to disclose the secret of his belt. She fiddles with the controls, not realizing that she is transmitting a signal to Thunder HQ. NoMan, Menthor and the Thunder Squad are dispatched to investigate.

The Thunder Squad does a good job of destroying most of the Iron Maiden's defenses, so she brings out her hostage. But NoMan has recovered Dynamo's belt and manages to get it to him before being shot (he transfers bodies). Now freed, Dynamo destroys the fortress:



Comments: Overall an excellent introductory issue, with art by Wood, Crandall, Gil Kane and Sekowsky. The characters are interesting, especially Menthor.

Friday Trivia Quiz #23: Green Lantern

1. According to Julius Schwartz, Hal Jordan was intended to look like what famous actor?

2. True or False: Hal Jordan did not know of the existence of the Guardians for several years after his debut.

3. Who was Green Lantern's love interest in the far distant future?

4. What villain was initially a competitor with Green Lantern for the affections of Carol Ferris?

5. What Green Lantern villain's motivation for committing crimes was to bring power and fame to his native land?

Who Are the Most Important Pencil Artists of the Silver Age?

Note: I believe in this case the artists should be judged on the corpus of their work and not on future influence. In other words, there should be a significant skew towards artists who worked throughout the Silver Age and a bias against (sorry) the terrific artists like Neal Adams and Jim Steranko, who arrived at the end of that era. If we weight artists by the amount of work done at an at least acceptable level, I think all of the following would qualify:

1. Jack Kirby
2. Curt Swan
3. Gil Kane
4. Steve Ditko
5. Carmine Infantino
6. Murphy Anderson
7. Nick Cardy
8. Ross Andru
9. Joe Kubert
10. Jim Mooney
11. Mike Sekowsky
12. Sheldon Moldoff
13. Kurt Schaffenberger
14. Wayne Boring
15. Wally Wood

Anybody else that I'm missing? I'm mostly talking about superhero artists at this point although I slipped in Kubert because he did do Hawkman at first in the Silver Age and I think he's got the huge portfolio I'm looking for even if most of it was in war comics. Toth? Williamson? Terrific artists but I'm looking at bulk here.

There are some guys who I could see getting in on reasonable bulk of career if I knew more about their pre-superhero work; Gene Colan and John Romita were both romance artists before they broke into the superhero biz; I just don't know that much about their careers. Each put together an impressive body of work from the time they got their big breaks (initially on Daredevil in both cases, as it happened).

Please, no Oksner or Montana or Whitney recommendations; those guys absolutely need to be treated separately.

Update: Artists added to the list per the comments:

16. Don Heck
17. Johnny Romita
18. Russ Heath
19. Gene Colan
20. Bruno Premiani

I'm still willing to be convinced on Ramona Fradon; as I mentioned in the comments, I just don't know what she did beyond the Aquaman series.

Update II:

21. Ramona Fradon (Metamorpho, as pointed out by commenter Dan)
22. Al Plastino
23. Dick Dillin
24. John Forte

Green Lantern's Dates With Carol Ferris

One of the oddities about the Green Lantern series in the Silver Age was the romantic triangle between Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris, and Green Lantern. Carol did not appear in the Green Lantern origin story in Showcase #22, but she popped up in the second story in that issue, and it was immediately clear that she and Hal were more than employer and employee:



But Hal's plans for romance take a downturn later in the story, as Carol's father announces that he and his wife are going on a tour around the world, and that she will be in charge of the plant during his absence. This results in a definite cooling of their relationship (as she must be responsible and not fall in love), and when she discovers that there's a new superhero in town he's permanently demoted to the "B" list:



And at the ball:



But inevitably danger arises, and GL has to run out on Carol in mid-kiss, putting him (temporarily) in her doghouse.

In the next issue, GL purposely dates quite a few women, making sure that the gossip columnists report it prominently. But rather than getting him in dutch with Carol (and helping Hal's chances), his trick only makes him more appealing, and when Hal mentions that he's struck up a friendship with GL, she puts him on the spot suggesting that they go out for dinner as a threesome. Hal realizes:



Well, Hal, it's your own stupid fault for dancing every dance with her and giving her that big kiss at the end as Green Lantern. But do you think he learned from his mistake? Nope, at the end of the story:



And so for the next few years, periodically we'd see scenes like this:



Perhaps the most embarrassing moment comes in Showcase #24, when Carol reveals that she had a dream where she married Hal, but was bitterly disappointed that GL didn't show up to stop the ceremony and sweep her away. But as she and Hal started on their honeymoon an emergency occurred requiring GL's presence and as Hal changed into the Emerald Gladiator Carol realized that she had married both Hal and GL at the same time. And this dream made her waking self wonder if perhaps they were the same man:



Now that's pretty cold. "I had this nightmare where I married you and Green Lantern didn't rescue me, but it turned out okay because you were Green Lantern yourself, so tell me, are you GL?"

Quality Comics Blogging Elsewhere

The Beat Down has an excellent post on Valiant Comics and Jim Shooter, who famously got his start in the Silver Age as a young teen writing Legion of Superheroes stories.

I don't direct your attention often enough to the Simon and Kirby Museum, but if you're a fan of that famed duo, you really should get used to surfing over there. Check out this post on the Fighting American, S&K's 1954 knockoff of their famed Captain America.

Mark Engblom's Comic Coverage does get linked a lot from here, mainly because I find his blog so much fun. He's got an amusing look at a 1967 encounter between Thor and a bunch of his fellow long-hairs.

The Fortress Keeper has a look at one of the odder characters of the Silver Age. Wander was an alien from space who came to Earth during the days of the Old West. As I said in the comments on that post, I think the FK is a little unfair to Denny O'Neill, but it's an interesting topic and worth discussing.

John Glenn Taylor has 66 panels of forgotten funny animals. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about DC's funny animal line, but I have to admit, he came up with dozens that I had never heard about.

Hooray for Wally Wood has a look at Wood's art for the mid-1960s anti-war war comic, Blazing Combat.

Update: Also check out Ol' Groove's new 80's comics blog (What? There were comics in the 1980s?) called Blinded Me with Comics.

First Muck Man Revival?

The 1940s Airboy comics included a backup feature called the Heap. The Heap was a World War I flying ace (for the Germans) who had been shot down over a swamp and came back to life as some odd sort of swamp monster/hero. It was an oddity about the Heap that he seemed to do the right (heroic) thing without apparently understanding the real concepts of right and wrong. He lasted for years in the Airboy series and even bumped the title character off the front page a few times near the end of the run.

In the 1970s, both Marvel and DC would have success with comics featuring knockoffs of the Heap. Marvel came up with Man-Thing, while DC was more direct with Swamp Thing.

Now, you can make a strong argument that the Silver Age featured a very similar (but not muckish) character: the Incredible Hulk. Okay, he didn't arise out of a bog, but aside from that he very much fits the type. And if you don't buy him as the Heap II, how about this guy who debuted a couple years before the Man or Swamp Things:



This story, of course, establishes Roy Thomas as the guy who brought the Muck back into Muck Monsters. It's got a swamp (in Florida, no less), it's got radioactive waste turned into a Superfund site thanks to the Hulk:



Well, that interacts with something below the surface and boy howdy:



What a terrific, dynamic picture and what a clunky name. Granted, Marvel was the company that unleashed Shagg and Rro and Spragg and Rorgg on the world in the early 1960s, and in fact featured another monster called Glob in Journey into Mystery #77 (September 1961).

Here's the origin of this Glob as drawn by Trimpe (who was really coming into his prime):



Some very nice sequences. And notice how Thomas steps back as narrator. Overall the story kind of fizzles out; the muck monster kidnaps Betty, and he and the Hulk have a little battle over that, but it turns out that the Glob didn't want to hurt her, and the water kind of dissolves him.

Some Things Never Made Sense: Qward

How would such a universe would work, and why anybody would care if somebody else was not a criminal? How exactly do you get reported for not being a criminal; if you fail to shoplift in stores or rob the cashier on your way out?

Wouldn't such a society quickly stagnate and decay? I mean, if everybody's trying to steal from everybody else, doesn't that mean that nobody's actually doing any productive work? And if everybody's a thief and indeed expected to be, doesn't that imply that the people getting robbed don't mind it?

Did the Birth Control Pill End the Silver Age?

To me, the key aspect of the Silver Age of Comics is that it was the only era in which comic books were seen as and intended to be juvenile entertainment. Certainly during the Golden Age, there were many comics that were aimed at older readers, and after the Silver Age it became quite common to explore more adult themes and concepts.

But during the Silver Age, comics were intentionally kept at a level where the stories would be acceptable to a mother of an eight-year-old boy. The violence was toned down, romance never got more hot and heavy than a chaste kiss, and real-world issues like race relations were seldom discussed.

Obviously the Comics Code Authority had a lot to do with that. But in the late 1960s the CCA began to be seen as a hindrance to comics moving to a more mature fare. Stan Lee famously dedicated Spiderman #96-98 (May-July 1971) to a series of stories involving drug abuse, and the CCA refused to issue their seal of approval. The comics went out any way, and were sold in stores. The CCA, exposed as a paper tiger, relented and a few months later gave their approval to a much more nuanced anti-drug story which featured the stunning cover of Speedy (Roy Harper) injecting himself with heroin.

Why the sudden push for more relevance, more violence and more (semi) nudity? When I have thought about this question in the past I just assumed that it was the famed Baby Boomers; that there were a lot of children born from about 1946 to 1956, that after that it declined fairly rapidly and regularly, and thus the comic companies were forced to chase the larger market.

Congratulations if you didn't buy it, because it's wrong. My first clue that it was wrong was when got live birth statistics for every year starting in 1952. I reasoned that probably the prime comic-buying years for a kid back then were from age 7 to age 12, a six-year span, so I looked at the number of kids who would have been that age in the following years:

1964 24,586,000
1965 24,928,000
1966 25,258,000
1967 25,437,850
1968 25,602,176
1969 25,551,538
1970 25,341,558
1971 25,114,048
1972 24,579,406

As you can see, there is a bulge in the market around 1968, and a steady decline after that to 1972, but it's nothing dramatic, and 1972's market is still very close to 1964's, even if it's off about 4% from the peak. There's nothing in those figures to show why the comics companies were pressing to offer fare that would appeal to teenagers.

But this is one of those rare cases where the rolling average is hiding what was really going on. Here are the live births in the US by year from 1952-1964:

1952 3,913,000
1953 3,965,000
1954 4,078,000
1955 4,104,000
1956 4,218,000
1957 4,308,000
1958 4,255,000
1959 4,295,000
1960 4,257,850
1961 4,268,326
1962 4,167,362
1963 4,098,020
1964 4,027,490

The story looks the same there; a peak in 1957, but still holding pretty steady as late as 1961, then some minor dropoffs in 1962, 1963 and 1964. Ah but look what came next:

1965 3,760,358
1966 3,606,274
1967 3,520,959
1968 3,501,564

Steep and sudden drops indeed; about 6.6% down in 1965, another 4% off in 1966 and and a 2.5% decline in 1967.

And the Birth Control Pill is the most likely cause. Although it was approved by the FDA as a contraceptive in 1960, it first became widely available in 1964-1965, following a series of court challenges to state bans on contraception. After the Supreme Court's ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut married women everywhere in the US were guaranteed access to contraception; the ruling was later extended to all women, married or unmarried.

Now let's go back to our look at the market. It's true that it held up fairly well until 1972, but then things really turned downwards:

1972 24,579,406
1973 23,927,830
1974 23,180,463
1975 22,514,665
1976 22,016,851
1977 21,720,747

So the companies were virtually guaranteed to be losing sales throughout the 1970s unless they could expand their market by appealing to a slightly older demographic. Hence the vastly different comic book world of the 1970s.

Incidentally, there is also a visible "Roe" effect as well when we look at the live births:

1968 3,501,564
1969 3,600,206
1970 3,731,386
1971 3,555,970
1972 3,258,411
1973 3,136,965

As you can see, births held fairly steady between 1968 and 1971, but then as abortion became more widely available there were swift and steep drops.

Note that I make no judgment here about the morality of birth control or abortion; I am just demonstrating that their effect on society was profound in ways that many of us may not have noticed at the time. And until someone convinces me otherwise, I'm going to say that the Birth Control Pill ended the Silver Age.

Fifty Years Ago Today: Gibraltar Man

Unlike most DC characters of the Silver Age, Sgt. Rock did not spring to life full-blown and ready for an action figure set. For most of the 1950s, DC's war mags had bucked the trend towards continuing series in favor of one-shot stories. But things were changing; DC had placed a tiny squadron known as Gunner and Sarge as a regular feature in Our Fighting Forces in May 1959 (the squadron did expand a few years later with the addition of "Pooch", a German shepherd).

Wikipedia notes the existence of a Sgt. Rock prototype in GI Combat #68 (January 1959). Our Army At War #81 and #82 both had characters that would clearly become Sgt. Rock; in the former he was referred to as Sgt. Rocky, and although they got his name right in the latter tale he was a subsidiary character to Walker (BAR) and Dugan (bazooka), who were the real stars of the story.

But with Our Army At War #83, the series was ready to kick into gear. Overstreet calls it the "first real Sgt. Rock". In The Rock and the Wall, we learn that the legend of Sgt. Rock and Easy Company is spreading throughout the armed forces:



But one guy isn't so impressed; Easy Company's new recruit, Joe Wall. Wall is no slouch as a fighting man himself as we see here:



Several days later, a flying fortress is shot down near Easy Company. Rock and Wall fight off some enemies attacking the plane, then (improbably) hop aboard to replace the injured gunners when the engine is quickly repaired. Joe's a skilled gunner and shoots down several enemy planes along the way, but when he's hit, the Rock coolly steps in an shoots down one enemy plane, then steadies the gun so Joe can kayo the last fighter. And in the end, Wall realizes:



Comments: Superb story by Kanigher, and dazzling artwork by Joe Kubert. There's another solid reason to consider this the first real Sgt. Rock story; the Sgt. Rocky tale in OAAW #81 was drawn by Andru & Esposito, while the OAAW #82 story was by Mort Drucker.

Rock was the most successful war comics character of all time; he outlasted all his competitors, even Marvel's Sgt. Fury. When DC decided to include a war comics annual in it's lineup, what did they title it? Sgt. Rock's Prize Battle Tales.

Although I won't discuss the other stories in OAAW, I did want to note this tremendous ad for an upcoming issue of Star Spangled War Stories and DC's war titles in general:



That is poetry.

A Look At the Batman Reprints

Let's suppose you had started collecting comics in the late Silver Age, and managed to get all the Detective Comics from 327-up. And you had also managed to snag all the Batman Annuals that DC printed up until the end of 1970 (and the reprint of the Detective #27 story in Detective #387). What would your collection of Batman stories in his first 300 appearances in Detective look like?



As you can see, you'd be making pretty good progress on the Batman Detective stories from 200-299 (37 issues) but outside of that you'd have a long way to go. I'd have to look at how much this changed in the next few years after 1970; I remember for example that the Two-Face stories in Detectives #66, 68 and 80 were reprinted as were the stories featuring the Monk from Tec #31 and 32. But I am pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of Batman Detective stories under 150 were never reprinted until the Archive Editions came along.

BTW, as a teenager I actually did track this stuff; I had a little box of index cards that I used to keep track of what stories had been reprinted from which issue. I remember that there were a couple of issues of Batman from the 1950s where all the stories in the issue ended up being reprinted (for example, Batman #125).

Update: Commenter Chris reminded me of DarkMark's tripod page where a whole slew of DC reprints have been catalogued.