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Showcase Presents: Batman #5
Showcase Presents: Batman, Vol. 5
Reprinting tales from DETECTIVE COMICS #391-407 and BATMAN #216-228, this value-priced collection includes the introduction of Man-Bat and Batman's battle with The League of Assassins.
512 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 22, 2020
At last, the DC Showcase volumes have reached the point where Batman is getting good. I recently looked up the old Alley Awards on-line and the ‘Batman’ titles twice won the same award: strip most in need of improvement, even in 1962 when regular penciller Carmine Infantino scooped the best artist award. ‘Showcase Batman Volumes 1-4’ are interesting historical documents but reading them does not give great pleasure, though looking at the art gives some.
It does here, too. This fifth volume features a few issues pencilled by Neal Adams and a lot of covers by him. As Adams aficionados abound, I will do you the favour of listing which issues he drew so you can decide if the quantity warrants purchasing this book. It does. Adams pencilled: Detective Comics # 395 (16 pages); Batman # 219 (8 pages); Detective Comics # 397 (15 pages); Detective Comics # 400 (16 pages); Detective Comics # 402 (16 pages); Detective Comics # 404 (15 pages); Detective Comics # 407 (15 pages). The Man-Bat features in three of these. All of them are inked by Dick Giordano and look great. Adams also did most of the covers shown in this volume.
In paying proper respect to that maestro, I do not wish to belittle the art contributions of his colleagues. Irv Novick turned in very clean, elegant pencils with interesting layouts and dynamic figures. His work was also graced with Giordano’s inks, the quality of which are especially visible in these black and white reprints. While the pencils of Bob Brown, inked by Joe Giella and Frank Giacoia, are not quite as pleasing to the eye as those of his fellows he still did a competent, professional job.
The stories are mostly by Frank Robbins with a few by Dennis O’Neil and Mike Friedrich. Robbins does fairly decent detective yarns. DC Comics improved in the seventies but did not follow Stan Lee down the soap opera route. Variety being the spice of life, this was a good thing. Frank Robbins writer is the same Frank Robbins artist who did some work for Marvel later on ‘Captain America’. I’m not a big fan of his art but as a writer, he’s pretty good and apparently played a key part making the character more serious and restoring the creature of the night scenario. I was always under the impression that Dennis O’Neil led the way in that.
There are still some hangovers from the more childish age of DC Comics so Batman will wear a rubber mask, pretending to be someone else and get away with it, as do some of his opponents. Rubber masks look like rubber masks in real life. Ridiculously, he carries a bat-dummy of himself under his cape in ‘This Murder Has Been Pre-Recorded’ in Batman # 220 so that the misleading cover can show him being blown up in a phone booth. Again, this is not realistic.
Alas, DC still had a bit of a thing for misleading covers. Robin going off to university is milked for two: Detective Comics # 393 shows a tearful Boy Wonders saying, ‘The case is over, the team-up is finished! This is goodbye for Batman and Robin!’ Batman # 393 shows Batman storming off saying, ‘Take a last look Alfred then seal up the Batcave forever!’ In fact, these events ushered in a solo Batman fighting crime without bat-gadgets and led to the Dark Knight image he still has today. It was a conscious decision by the editors to strip the strip back to its roots. The television series was finished by this time and to keep that image would have been…well, batty.
Some of the stories by Dennis O’Neill are quite sophisticated. ‘Ghost Of The Killer Skies’ (Detective Comics # 404) is a biplane battle classic while ‘The Secret Of The Waiting Graves’ (Detective Comics # 395) and ‘Paint A Picture Of Peril’ (Detective Comics # 397) have dark romantic themes unusual for comics of the period. These three were drawn by Adams. The team of O’Neill and Adams was the talk of the town at the time and also revolutionised ‘Green Lantern’.
Probably the most notable thing about this collection is that it gets better and better as you read your way through it. These stories mark the turnaround from strip most in need of improvement to strip destined to be taken up by Hollywood and turned into a series of blockbuster movies, albeit some years later. Great stuff and soon to be released – July 2015 – is ‘DC Showcase Presents Batman Volume 6’ which will be even better if Ra’s al Ghul has anything to do with it and I think he does.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
It does here, too. This fifth volume features a few issues pencilled by Neal Adams and a lot of covers by him. As Adams aficionados abound, I will do you the favour of listing which issues he drew so you can decide if the quantity warrants purchasing this book. It does. Adams pencilled: Detective Comics # 395 (16 pages); Batman # 219 (8 pages); Detective Comics # 397 (15 pages); Detective Comics # 400 (16 pages); Detective Comics # 402 (16 pages); Detective Comics # 404 (15 pages); Detective Comics # 407 (15 pages). The Man-Bat features in three of these. All of them are inked by Dick Giordano and look great. Adams also did most of the covers shown in this volume.
In paying proper respect to that maestro, I do not wish to belittle the art contributions of his colleagues. Irv Novick turned in very clean, elegant pencils with interesting layouts and dynamic figures. His work was also graced with Giordano’s inks, the quality of which are especially visible in these black and white reprints. While the pencils of Bob Brown, inked by Joe Giella and Frank Giacoia, are not quite as pleasing to the eye as those of his fellows he still did a competent, professional job.
The stories are mostly by Frank Robbins with a few by Dennis O’Neil and Mike Friedrich. Robbins does fairly decent detective yarns. DC Comics improved in the seventies but did not follow Stan Lee down the soap opera route. Variety being the spice of life, this was a good thing. Frank Robbins writer is the same Frank Robbins artist who did some work for Marvel later on ‘Captain America’. I’m not a big fan of his art but as a writer, he’s pretty good and apparently played a key part making the character more serious and restoring the creature of the night scenario. I was always under the impression that Dennis O’Neil led the way in that.
There are still some hangovers from the more childish age of DC Comics so Batman will wear a rubber mask, pretending to be someone else and get away with it, as do some of his opponents. Rubber masks look like rubber masks in real life. Ridiculously, he carries a bat-dummy of himself under his cape in ‘This Murder Has Been Pre-Recorded’ in Batman # 220 so that the misleading cover can show him being blown up in a phone booth. Again, this is not realistic.
Alas, DC still had a bit of a thing for misleading covers. Robin going off to university is milked for two: Detective Comics # 393 shows a tearful Boy Wonders saying, ‘The case is over, the team-up is finished! This is goodbye for Batman and Robin!’ Batman # 393 shows Batman storming off saying, ‘Take a last look Alfred then seal up the Batcave forever!’ In fact, these events ushered in a solo Batman fighting crime without bat-gadgets and led to the Dark Knight image he still has today. It was a conscious decision by the editors to strip the strip back to its roots. The television series was finished by this time and to keep that image would have been…well, batty.
Some of the stories by Dennis O’Neill are quite sophisticated. ‘Ghost Of The Killer Skies’ (Detective Comics # 404) is a biplane battle classic while ‘The Secret Of The Waiting Graves’ (Detective Comics # 395) and ‘Paint A Picture Of Peril’ (Detective Comics # 397) have dark romantic themes unusual for comics of the period. These three were drawn by Adams. The team of O’Neill and Adams was the talk of the town at the time and also revolutionised ‘Green Lantern’.
Probably the most notable thing about this collection is that it gets better and better as you read your way through it. These stories mark the turnaround from strip most in need of improvement to strip destined to be taken up by Hollywood and turned into a series of blockbuster movies, albeit some years later. Great stuff and soon to be released – July 2015 – is ‘DC Showcase Presents Batman Volume 6’ which will be even better if Ra’s al Ghul has anything to do with it and I think he does.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
May 17, 2014
This book is less bad than a disappointment. This is the first volume of silver age Batman exploits not tainted by old school cornballs Gardner Fox and John Broome. It should be a progression, but in reality it's a regression, as the staleness of these so-so modern crime tales gets dull.
The art wasn't bad, wasn't great either. Neal Adams is a great artist, with his huge sense of scale, but he's largely disregarded for Irv Novick and Bob Brown. Brown has a solid career, doing things like "Marvel Two-In-One", but with Batman it seems kind of flat, aiming for a blend in realism. That's the same thing I get with Novick. It seems to avoid an association with showy comics, but also avoids adding anything else.
The writing was the biggest let down. Denny O'Neil is one of my favorite writers of all time, but he only writes a few fill-in issues for Frank Robbins, who really has an issue with creating interest with his comics. Batman fights criminals, which seems standard, but the criminals are weighed down with their constant ability to fail, little middling issues of their humanity and how crime really doesn't pay. It gets more intolerable with its constant repetition.
Let's look at the "biggest developments" in the book for examples:
-Robin goes to college: Makes sense based on the age of the character, but the comic really seems to make it seem unimportant. It doesn't get mentioned again, and Batman fighting crime is the same as Robin fighting it, just with less bodies in the panel.
-Batman moves his headquarters from the old Bat Cave to a small basement in the Wayne Foundation building: Again, it kind of makes sense, and the office building makes his day to day adventures less arbitrarily garish. Plus his new "camouflaged" batmobile sportscar looks cool. But these details lose their attention after a debut issue, it still feels stale.
-The introduction of the Man-Bat: It seems like a big character. He's actually a monster, it reflects Batman's pathos, etc. LIES. Man-Bat is a nebbish little bat studier who starts looking like a bat and does crime things. But Batman keeps a constant air of aloofness and superiority around him. Man-Bat is just a generic criminal with a slightly more erratic trajectory and a longer origin story. It makes Batman seem emotionally aloof to everything in the world, at least by this example.
SO, basically, it's not bad, it's just kind of boring and dull. 3/5
The art wasn't bad, wasn't great either. Neal Adams is a great artist, with his huge sense of scale, but he's largely disregarded for Irv Novick and Bob Brown. Brown has a solid career, doing things like "Marvel Two-In-One", but with Batman it seems kind of flat, aiming for a blend in realism. That's the same thing I get with Novick. It seems to avoid an association with showy comics, but also avoids adding anything else.
The writing was the biggest let down. Denny O'Neil is one of my favorite writers of all time, but he only writes a few fill-in issues for Frank Robbins, who really has an issue with creating interest with his comics. Batman fights criminals, which seems standard, but the criminals are weighed down with their constant ability to fail, little middling issues of their humanity and how crime really doesn't pay. It gets more intolerable with its constant repetition.
Let's look at the "biggest developments" in the book for examples:
-Robin goes to college: Makes sense based on the age of the character, but the comic really seems to make it seem unimportant. It doesn't get mentioned again, and Batman fighting crime is the same as Robin fighting it, just with less bodies in the panel.
-Batman moves his headquarters from the old Bat Cave to a small basement in the Wayne Foundation building: Again, it kind of makes sense, and the office building makes his day to day adventures less arbitrarily garish. Plus his new "camouflaged" batmobile sportscar looks cool. But these details lose their attention after a debut issue, it still feels stale.
-The introduction of the Man-Bat: It seems like a big character. He's actually a monster, it reflects Batman's pathos, etc. LIES. Man-Bat is a nebbish little bat studier who starts looking like a bat and does crime things. But Batman keeps a constant air of aloofness and superiority around him. Man-Bat is just a generic criminal with a slightly more erratic trajectory and a longer origin story. It makes Batman seem emotionally aloof to everything in the world, at least by this example.
SO, basically, it's not bad, it's just kind of boring and dull. 3/5
December 29, 2011
For fans of Batman, the Silver Age of the 1960s doesn't offer much. The comic took its tone largely from the Adam West TV show, or the generic Silver Age sort of comics that were across the DC line of a smiling do-gooder who did good because it was good. This changed, of course, when writers like Denny O'Neil and artists like Neal Addams got their hands on the character, and this volume represents the beginning of that era, though the two listed creators mostly work with other writers and artists at this time.
The change in tone as Batman slid into the 1970s is a noticeable one. The first couple adventures still fit the older mold, but then Robin leaves for college, Bruce and Alfred move out of Wayne Manor for a downtown penthouse, and colorful foes like the Joker and Penguin are just plain not present in this volume. Batman spends more time battling all-too-human foes, with the occasional supernatural or sci-fi element thrown in. He's becoming scarier to criminals and his smiles, though not gone entirely, are becoming rarer. Fans of the classic Bat-foes will need to make due with the Man-Bat, and the earliest appearances of the League of Assassins (though not their master Ra's al-Ghul as of yet), since that's about all you get (because the Ten-Eyed Man doesn't count).
One story did stand out a bit: Batman and Robin take on a case of a Beatles-like rock band that, rumor has it, had a member named "Saul" as an imposter since the original is believed by fans to have "died". It had a really interesting twist to it.
The change in tone as Batman slid into the 1970s is a noticeable one. The first couple adventures still fit the older mold, but then Robin leaves for college, Bruce and Alfred move out of Wayne Manor for a downtown penthouse, and colorful foes like the Joker and Penguin are just plain not present in this volume. Batman spends more time battling all-too-human foes, with the occasional supernatural or sci-fi element thrown in. He's becoming scarier to criminals and his smiles, though not gone entirely, are becoming rarer. Fans of the classic Bat-foes will need to make due with the Man-Bat, and the earliest appearances of the League of Assassins (though not their master Ra's al-Ghul as of yet), since that's about all you get (because the Ten-Eyed Man doesn't count).
One story did stand out a bit: Batman and Robin take on a case of a Beatles-like rock band that, rumor has it, had a member named "Saul" as an imposter since the original is believed by fans to have "died". It had a really interesting twist to it.
September 29, 2014
Well, this is my first Goodreads review, please be kind.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Batman was updated considerably. Golden Age artist and writer Frank Robbins had him move out of the Batcave into a penthouse apartment above Wayne Enterprises Headquarters. Bruce Wayne's philanthropical impulses turned towards assisting victims of crimes. Robin had gone to college.
Gone were the outlandish villains and the focus turned to who-dun-its.
The trend was continued into the 1970s when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams took over the reigns and O'Neil added a supernatural twist to most of the adventures.
This book, though black and white, presents an important chapter in Batman's history. Fans of the Dark Knight Detective will probably enjoy this volume.
As a youngster, this was the Batman that I mostly read about.
Such elements as Dr. Kurt Langstrom, the monstrous Man-Bat and the League of Assasins make their first appearances in this volume.
It's a nice, compact affordable look at the chapter of Batman's history.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Batman was updated considerably. Golden Age artist and writer Frank Robbins had him move out of the Batcave into a penthouse apartment above Wayne Enterprises Headquarters. Bruce Wayne's philanthropical impulses turned towards assisting victims of crimes. Robin had gone to college.
Gone were the outlandish villains and the focus turned to who-dun-its.
The trend was continued into the 1970s when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams took over the reigns and O'Neil added a supernatural twist to most of the adventures.
This book, though black and white, presents an important chapter in Batman's history. Fans of the Dark Knight Detective will probably enjoy this volume.
As a youngster, this was the Batman that I mostly read about.
Such elements as Dr. Kurt Langstrom, the monstrous Man-Bat and the League of Assasins make their first appearances in this volume.
It's a nice, compact affordable look at the chapter of Batman's history.
May 30, 2021
These comics IMHO haven't aged well at all theyre readable but not very good in the story department pretty predictable and formulaic you can guarantee batman getting knocked out from behind in nearly every issue hell you could make a drinking game of it yes these comics are products of their time but like stale old bread it doesn't age well I particularly did not care for the man bat who was beyond lame in this hes basically like a batman fanboy his story was weak and so was his character and design I much prefer the man bat from btas who doesnt speak when he turns into a bat and his appearance is much more intimidating than here its almost comical how lame he is here but all in all I wouldn't recommend reading this some things are better off left in the past
July 15, 2016
Great stuff from the silver age. I've never been a big fan of Frank Robbins as an artist, but the man could really lay out a nice mystery. Don't get me wrong, there are a few head shaking moments, but overall it's good stuff. It's nice to be reminded that Batman wasn't always the unstoppable manhunter as he is currently portrayed. Irv Novick with Dick Giordano inks make for a really nice visual. The real jewels here, at least for me are the Neal Adams & Denny O'Neil stories. This is the stuff that made me a Batman fan for life. This volume is a bargain for great storytelling.
August 27, 2013
Some classic Batman stories in here...nice to see the beginnings of the Man-Bat and League of Assassin's...but I didn't really like the moving from Wayne Manor to a penthouse apartment on top of Wayne Enterprises..or that a smaller spare Batcave was just UNDER the building...or the fact that Ten Eyed Man was made out to be this huge threat...Overall a lot of good and classic stories but a lot of head scratching at times as well.
April 29, 2012
Even though this volume said it was moving away from the camp of the 1960s Batman tv show, there is still quite a lot of goofiness here. Also, no first tier villains like the Joker, Riddler, Catwoman, or Penguin. Instead we get Man-Bat!
December 30, 2012
A collection of comics from an earlier age. I remember a lot of these from when I read comics years ago and while mostly they stand the test of time, some of the slang and the tone of the narrative really dates it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews