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The Brave and the Bold (1955) #74-91
Batman in The Brave & the Bold: The Bronze Age Vol. 1
The late '60s marked the height of Batmania, when fans of the Batman television series and the comic books couldn't get enough of the Caped Crusader. His appearances on covers meant higher sales, so it was decreed Batman would take up permanent residence in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. His courage was never questioned, and he fearlessly teamed up with the most daring partners from across the DC Universe at a time when such crossovers were rare. These groundbreaking stories featured some of Batman's greatest team-ups with such legendary characters as Wonder Woman, the Flash, Deadman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, the Teen Titans and others, all by some of the foremost comics talent of the Bronze Age—Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, Bob Haney, Dick Giordano and Dennis O'Neil, to name a few. THE BRAVE AND THE THE BRONZE AGE OMNIBUS VOL. 1 collects the first stories of Batman's epic run on the series—THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #74-91—and includes a foreword by comics editor Robert Greenberger.
456 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 2, 2018
86 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Bob Haney
450 books13 followersRobert G. Haney was an American comic book writer, best known for his work for DC Comics. He co-created the Teen Titans as well as characters such as Metamorpho, Eclipso, Cain, and the Super-Sons.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 2, 2020
These old stories were quite fun for the most part. Bob Haney had some wacky ideas (and terrible ideas for villains). The early issues were certainly influenced by the Batman '66 TV show. Batman is much more in the open and Commissioner Gordon is pulled directly from the show. The team-ups are pretty great. They range from DC's biggest heroes to more obscure characters. Haney's treatment of women, though? Yikes. Wonder Woman and Batgirl are played as dumb bimbos fighting over Batman's love. Black Canary ignores the truth in front of her face for "love" betraying Batman for her husband's doppelganger. I hope Haney didn't treat women like this in real life.
The real star of the show in these books is Neil Adams. He draws the middle 8 issues of this collection. He just brings a professionalism and realism to his art that's not in the other issues.
The real star of the show in these books is Neil Adams. He draws the middle 8 issues of this collection. He just brings a professionalism and realism to his art that's not in the other issues.
April 8, 2018
Oh Bob Haney, never change.
Once a Marvel-only person, when I finally started reading DC comics (after my father suggested I try some of the "Hard Traveling Heroes" Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics, which he had read at the time they came out!), I was of course drawn to the back issues of this series, because it was Batman teaming up with people!
These collections don't start from the very beginning, which is a shame because some of the really early ones are hysterical (Bat-Hulk anyone?), but it's as good a place as any to start. You can tell the initial influence is the TV show, with Ross Andru penciling Bats to look a lot like the version viewers would have known. But as we move forward, Neal Adams does his amazing layouts (especially on splash-pages, and his Spirit-like take on the Batman/Sgt Rock team up opening) and we start to move into the Batman I like best, where he works with the police but still has a dark edge.
Haney's plots are batshit insane, which is part of the fun. Batman needs the Spectre to help him, because an ancient Chinese spirit has come back to take the life of Bruce's friend's son. A robot convention goes sour, involving the Metal Men. Bruce gets a concussion, so Batman has to drive in a European auto race. A young kid gets adopted by Bruce and tries to cash in on knowing he's Batman but dies nobly, proving Bats should never, ever be allowed near children.
They're great fun until you get to the team-ups with women, which are woefully bad. Wonder Woman and Black Canary both come off as love-sick, for example. It's just not a good time for female characters in comics, and while I'm glad they're reprinted, hoo boy am I glad most comics aren't that bad these days. Surprisingly, Bat's rogues gallery is missing. No Riddler, Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, et all. That changes later, but it's interesting that for being a title spun out of the TV show's popularity, none of those easily recognizable foes are here. Instead, we get a lot of random thugs and wanna-be killers.
The best art is Adams, of course, but Andru/Esposito do a solid job in their later stories (the first few feel a bit too catoonish and stiff to me). Adams and the Deadman team-ups are probably the best in the collection. These stories feature a LOT of words, but the art does a pretty good job of hanging in there and being better than some of its contemporary work at DC, which as I recall is pretty stiff. You can tell DC is trying to be more Marvel-like here, both in art and in terms of giving the characters more depth. How successful they are at it is a bit up to debate.
Still, these are a ton of fun if you like Bats less tied down by angst and brooding. In other words, the Batman I like best. Recommended.
Once a Marvel-only person, when I finally started reading DC comics (after my father suggested I try some of the "Hard Traveling Heroes" Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics, which he had read at the time they came out!), I was of course drawn to the back issues of this series, because it was Batman teaming up with people!
These collections don't start from the very beginning, which is a shame because some of the really early ones are hysterical (Bat-Hulk anyone?), but it's as good a place as any to start. You can tell the initial influence is the TV show, with Ross Andru penciling Bats to look a lot like the version viewers would have known. But as we move forward, Neal Adams does his amazing layouts (especially on splash-pages, and his Spirit-like take on the Batman/Sgt Rock team up opening) and we start to move into the Batman I like best, where he works with the police but still has a dark edge.
Haney's plots are batshit insane, which is part of the fun. Batman needs the Spectre to help him, because an ancient Chinese spirit has come back to take the life of Bruce's friend's son. A robot convention goes sour, involving the Metal Men. Bruce gets a concussion, so Batman has to drive in a European auto race. A young kid gets adopted by Bruce and tries to cash in on knowing he's Batman but dies nobly, proving Bats should never, ever be allowed near children.
They're great fun until you get to the team-ups with women, which are woefully bad. Wonder Woman and Black Canary both come off as love-sick, for example. It's just not a good time for female characters in comics, and while I'm glad they're reprinted, hoo boy am I glad most comics aren't that bad these days. Surprisingly, Bat's rogues gallery is missing. No Riddler, Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, et all. That changes later, but it's interesting that for being a title spun out of the TV show's popularity, none of those easily recognizable foes are here. Instead, we get a lot of random thugs and wanna-be killers.
The best art is Adams, of course, but Andru/Esposito do a solid job in their later stories (the first few feel a bit too catoonish and stiff to me). Adams and the Deadman team-ups are probably the best in the collection. These stories feature a LOT of words, but the art does a pretty good job of hanging in there and being better than some of its contemporary work at DC, which as I recall is pretty stiff. You can tell DC is trying to be more Marvel-like here, both in art and in terms of giving the characters more depth. How successful they are at it is a bit up to debate.
Still, these are a ton of fun if you like Bats less tied down by angst and brooding. In other words, the Batman I like best. Recommended.
August 17, 2018
Sometimes DC overused Batman, he seemed to appear everywhere in the late 1960's. However when they started teaming him with other heroes in the B&B title they hit the mark and found a perfect niche for him. These stories are really nice as you get to see Batman interact with other heroes outside of the JLA group setting. Some of the heroes are major DC stars in their own right, some are lesser stars or new heroes and a few are even villains! Overall some of the very best stories from the late 1960s DC bullpen. Oh and the covers are some of my favorite from that era. Recommended
September 17, 2019
The art of comics' Bronze Age is what I think of when I think about superheroes, so I love the look of these stories, especially the ones by Neal Adams and Nick Cardy.
Unfortunately, the early Brave and the Bold stories were still being written by Bob Haney, a holdover from the wackier Silver Age who wrote characters as irrational, ridiculous fools. This is especially true of Commissioner Gordon whose priorities change from page to page, but Batman's no better.
Female characters also suffer hard under Haney's writing. For instance, when Wonder Woman and Batgirl show up for an issue, they're both in love with Batman and fighting for his attention. This isn't part of any secret scheme of theirs or anything; it's just Women Acting Silly. In a later story, the newly depowered, white-jumpsuited Wonder Woman appears and is subject to copious amounts of chauvinism because Batman and his fragile "male ego" refuse to take her seriously. The final story in the collection has Black Canary declare that she's a woman first and a superhero second, meaning that she's deliberately going to ignore all the warning signs that the man she's interested in may actually be a criminal.
As horrible as the characters often are though, there are some great setups for adventure and drama. In that Black Canary story, she's interested in the guy because she's fresh from another reality and the guy is this reality's version of her dead husband. There's a lot of potential there if Haney had taken it seriously. Other stories have Batman teaming up with Deadman to find the ghost hero's killer or aiding the Metal Men to stop a robot revolt (though Batman has to get over his own prejudices first). Probably my favorite is when he helps Golden Age hero Wildcat to realize that he's not an over-the-hill has-been.
There are some historically significant stories in this volume, too. Green Arrow's Bronze Age costume makes its first appearance, for example. And a Flash story introduces the villain Bork, who would go on to be one of my favorite members of Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett's Power Company in the early 2000s.
Unfortunately, the early Brave and the Bold stories were still being written by Bob Haney, a holdover from the wackier Silver Age who wrote characters as irrational, ridiculous fools. This is especially true of Commissioner Gordon whose priorities change from page to page, but Batman's no better.
Female characters also suffer hard under Haney's writing. For instance, when Wonder Woman and Batgirl show up for an issue, they're both in love with Batman and fighting for his attention. This isn't part of any secret scheme of theirs or anything; it's just Women Acting Silly. In a later story, the newly depowered, white-jumpsuited Wonder Woman appears and is subject to copious amounts of chauvinism because Batman and his fragile "male ego" refuse to take her seriously. The final story in the collection has Black Canary declare that she's a woman first and a superhero second, meaning that she's deliberately going to ignore all the warning signs that the man she's interested in may actually be a criminal.
As horrible as the characters often are though, there are some great setups for adventure and drama. In that Black Canary story, she's interested in the guy because she's fresh from another reality and the guy is this reality's version of her dead husband. There's a lot of potential there if Haney had taken it seriously. Other stories have Batman teaming up with Deadman to find the ghost hero's killer or aiding the Metal Men to stop a robot revolt (though Batman has to get over his own prejudices first). Probably my favorite is when he helps Golden Age hero Wildcat to realize that he's not an over-the-hill has-been.
There are some historically significant stories in this volume, too. Green Arrow's Bronze Age costume makes its first appearance, for example. And a Flash story introduces the villain Bork, who would go on to be one of my favorite members of Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett's Power Company in the early 2000s.
August 9, 2018
I was really looking forward to this one, but I just couldn't get in to it. The stories just did not grab me. The villains are pretty weak to. It seems to be a lot of one off evil business men types. I understand them not wanting to use, say, Reverse Flash when Batman teams up with the Flash, but imagine if they used Ocean Master for that story? It would have been such a great way to showcase the DC universe!
I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but I'm also not a big Neal Adams fan. I just don't like the hyper realism he goes for with his art. It really draws attention to its self with Bob Haney's "I'm writing this" apporch to story telling as well. He just has such a silly apporch to his stories and it doesn't pair well with Neal's art.
I did really like some of the coloring effects of the book though. The way they make everything a blue hue when it is night time is really cool, and really shows how you can work within the limits put apon you.
There will most certainly be future collections of this title, but I don't know if I'll be picking them up.
I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but I'm also not a big Neal Adams fan. I just don't like the hyper realism he goes for with his art. It really draws attention to its self with Bob Haney's "I'm writing this" apporch to story telling as well. He just has such a silly apporch to his stories and it doesn't pair well with Neal's art.
I did really like some of the coloring effects of the book though. The way they make everything a blue hue when it is night time is really cool, and really shows how you can work within the limits put apon you.
There will most certainly be future collections of this title, but I don't know if I'll be picking them up.
March 17, 2018
Serious flashback country as this is one of the books I loved as a kid.
October 23, 2018
What a blast reading some classic team-ups from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. I've read some of the stories in this volume many times, but there were several that were first-time reads. All were good.
August 23, 2020
A surprisingly hefty collection (at over 400 pages). This book comprises three years of "Brave and the Bold" comics, from 1967 to 1970. I was genuinely surprised by the significant evolution of the genre in that short span. The first ones felt like early comics--simple, straightforward, and read for nostalgia. In my head, Batman's voice was Adam West's. But as the collection went on, the stories actually become more complex and even, at times, slightly darker (tame, of course, in comparison to modern comics, but many of these stories were clearly the stepping stones towards the stories we have today). After a while, it wasn't Adam Wests's Batman I was reading; it was Kevin Conroy's. And while I wasn't on the edge of my seat, I still found myself actually wondering what was going to happen next, rather than just reading for the sake of nostalgia. Plus, there were some pretty cool cameos from characters of whom I haven't read much: Plastic Man, Deadman, Adam Strange, Wildcat, etc. The one element that definitely dated these comics, though, were its portrayal of women. VERY old-fashioned. Still, it's an interesting time capsule--both for how the writers were actively learning and also for how they still had a lot of learning to do.
August 18, 2018
I grew up reading my older brothers comics, so these are familiar to me even though they were released before I hit the age to buy my own comics in the late 70s. Although these stories date from the "Bronze Age", they still are aimed at the younger crowd. Which is fine for me - I enjoy the stories for what they are, and allow the nostalgia to wash over me as I read. There are many things to complain about - the stories can be rather pat, with things like a character showing up at the right time (Sgt. Rock) purely by coincidence. Other characters, like the Creeper, or power-less Wonder Woman, didn't age well. Suspend your disbelief and dive in - plenty of gems in this collection.
June 27, 2019
Neal Adams makes all the difference in these stories. Despite the fact that most are authored by Bob Haney, the Adams illustrated stories seem more interesting. My favorites are the Deadman, Sgt. Rock and Aquaman guest spots.
June 6, 2020
What you have here is a glimpse of Batman from the end of the camp era to the beginning of a more modern Batman. That is, what it is- if you don't like it then you are stuck. I almost quit reading because of the camp [having lived through it the first time I didn't enjoy it as much the second time around] but I persevered and was rewarded with Neal Adams artwork at his prime [the stories got better too]! Then Neal went away and I suffered through some Ross Andru, Mike Esposito and Nick Cardy [all better artists than me but woefully less than Adams or Aparo] - good artists but not right for Batman in my opinion.
March 2, 2024
I’m always glad when forgotten 1960s comics get a chance to shine and be read by those of us who missed them the first time around. This collection of Batman in The Brave and The Bold contains more than a few stories illustrated by comics master Neal Adams and writer Bob Haney usually rises to the occasion and gives Adams a story worth drawing.
Lots of goofy and cringey campy Batman takes here as well, but overall this is a satisfying and entertaining collection of Batman team-up stories with a nice variety of DC heroes.
Highly recommended.
Lots of goofy and cringey campy Batman takes here as well, but overall this is a satisfying and entertaining collection of Batman team-up stories with a nice variety of DC heroes.
Highly recommended.
March 3, 2019
Though The Brave & The Bold issues collected here from the late 1960s represent a bit of a transition for Batman from the campy character portrayed by Adam West in the TV show to something more representative of the Dark Knight in the Christopher Nolan films, these stories have not aged well. "In The Coils of Copperhead" featuring Wonder Woman and Batgirl proved to be a particular disappointment.
April 16, 2020
This was a very good volume of Batman team-ups: solid stories, beautiful artwork. A nice blend of Batman and Bruce Wayne, Commissioner Gordon shows up a lot. There was a lot of well-done gangster and crime material, but there were supernatural stories too, and a really good auto-racing issue. In short, a nice array of characters, and a wonderful mix of story types. I think the issue with Batman, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl battling Copperhead was my favorite, but there wasn't a single issue in this collection that I didn't enjoy.
February 14, 2019
I started reading digital copies of DC comics (starting in 1938 Action--Superman's debut) and have worked my way up to 1965. I use these collections to be able to add those comics to my books read for the year.
March 24, 2020
Neal Adams is right up there with Jack Kerby for me in terms of all time comic talents and over half of these weird and delightful Bob Haney team up stories from the tale end of the 1960s are flat out delightful.
October 10, 2022
Age group: 3rd to 6th
Genre: non fictional
This book just like new kid is entertaining to older kids because it’s more of a cartoon style book. I love that the story is told this way because it makes it more of an attractive book to kids.
Genre: non fictional
This book just like new kid is entertaining to older kids because it’s more of a cartoon style book. I love that the story is told this way because it makes it more of an attractive book to kids.
April 16, 2023
Memory Lane
When I was a kid I delivered the Oakland Press, in Pontiac, MI. Thursdays were collection days and I'd save my money for comic books.
The Brave and the Bold were a favorite. It was good to see them again.
When I was a kid I delivered the Oakland Press, in Pontiac, MI. Thursdays were collection days and I'd save my money for comic books.
The Brave and the Bold were a favorite. It was good to see them again.
June 11, 2025
A collection of Batman Stories from the Bronze Age. I had the impression that this could be nothing more than a random selection of stories and not, as I hoped, a "best of". The stories were mostly bland, the style old-fashioned (this, at least, I expected) and the female characters ridiculous.
Not something I enjoyed.
Not something I enjoyed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 29, 2022
Mostly worth it for the Neal Adams stuff I had already read, although I do enjoy the loopy weirdness of this early bronze age stuff, where they hadn't yet fully shaken off the silver age.
C+
C+
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews