DC Retroactive Batman: The 1980s #1

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: DC Retroactive Batman: The 1980s
Issue: 1
Date: October, 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Mike W. Barr
Artist: Jerry Bingham, Alan Davis, Paul Neary
Colorist: Carlos Badilla, Adrienne Roy
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual, Richard Starkings
Editor:Jim Chadwick, Chynna Glugston Flores, Denny O'Neil

This book contains a new story, and a reprint, both written by Mike W. Barr. The reprint is the classic first issue of  Batman Year Two from Detective Comics #575 in 1987. This story introduces the Reaper, a vigilante who once stalked Gotham's criminal element, and who has now come out of retirement and into conflict with the Batman, who is still at the beginning of his own path of vigilante justice, less lethal than that of the Reaper.

This is a good classic Batman story with some excellent character work on Leslie Thompkins, Alfred, and Commissioner Gordon, along with the introduction of Rachel Caspian, a love interest of Bruce Wayne with a connection to the Reaper. Rachel Caspian is an intriguing character and the art team of Davis and Neary do a great job with her look. Likewise, the Reaper is a really fun design with his twin sickles, hidden guns, and armor.

The Batman's reaction to the thorough trouncing he receives at the hands (blades) of the Reaper seems a bit odd, but it makes sense in the "Year Two" context of the story.

The new story is a sequel, with a new Reaper stalking Gotham's crime families, and Batman on the case with Robin at his side.  The story was fun, with some good plot twists, but it went for more of an 80s-amusing vibe (with some of the dialogue throwing back to Adam West 1960s Batman), and as such, it lacked the gravitas of the original story. The new Reaper just never rises to the threat level of the original, and the result is what feels like just a regular day at work for the Batman and the Boy Wonder. Not that this is a terrible thing; I enjoyed the story. It just felt a bit out of place as a direct follow-up to something as iconic as Year Two.

Rating: 5.5/10

Detective Comics #575

Kiddo picked this one out for me to read today. This is probably the most valuable (not that that is saying much) and most historically important book in the stack of random unread comics. I think it's the oldest as well.

Title: Detective Comics
Issue: 575
Date: June, 1987
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Mike W. Barr
Penciler: Alan Davis
Inker: Paul Neary
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Editor: Denny O'Neil

This is the first installment of the Batman Year 2 storyline, which followed up on the historical reimagining of the Batman's origin in Batman Year 1.

With James Gordon now Commissioner of Police in Gotham, the Batman has the official sanction of the police department, and the newly-installed Bat Signal shines from the roof of police headquarters.

But the Batman was not the first vigilante to stalk Gotham's streets, and it appears that after a twenty-year hiatus, the Reaper has returned to Gotham, handing out death to any criminals who have the misfortune to encounter him.

And when the still-inexperienced Batman confronts the Reaper, he barely survives the encounter.

Now, the Batman is forced to consider how far he is willing to go in escalating the violence of his own campaign against crime.

The Reaper is a great villain, older and more skilled than the young Bruce Wayne of this series, and completely ruthless in his crusade against crime.

Wayne's thoughts of using a gun do seem a bit silly, as it seems unlikely that a pistol is going to make that much of a difference against the Reaper, but the gun, of course, is really just symbolic. And it does make for an awesome image on the cover.

Jim Gordon and Doctor Leslie Tompkins are solid in their supporting roles here, and the newly-introduced Rachel Caspian is an intriguing addition to the story.

This doesn't have the initial kind of impact that Batman Year 1 did, but it's still a very good Batman story.

Rating: 7/10

13 Assassin #4

No idea how I ended up with this. It's from TSR (the company that originally published Dungeons & Dragons) during their short-lived foray into comics. Let me assure you, there were reasons why it was short-lived.

Title: 13 Assassin
Issue: 4
Publisher: TSR
Date: 1990
Writer: Mike W. Barr, Scott Haring
Penciller: Robb Phipps, Frank Springer
Inker: Alfredo Alcala, Steve Mitchell
Letterer: Pete Iro, Teresa R. Davidson
Colorist: In Color, Les Dorscheid

So at some point in the early 1990s, among a number of bad business decisions, game publisher TSR (the folks who brought us D&D) launched a line of comics. This particular issue ties in with their espionage roleplaying game, Agent 13. Now if you played any roleplaying games in the 1980s, you might be saying to yourself, "Wait a minute. I thought that TSR's espionage roleplaying game was called Top Secret". Did I mention that TSR was making bad business decisions around 1990?

So this is a comic based on a game that pretty much no one ever played, and it includes a card-game tie-in that you can cut out and play, which I doubt that anyone ever did.

Two stories here. First up is the conclusion to the ongoing main story. It was complicated. There were disembodied spirits and various henchpersons involved, but basically it came down to a villainess named China White and a magical emotion-manipulating crystal that she finally got her hands on and planned to cause mayhem with. This alien artifact could be used to project emotions. For instance, when a group of soldiers try to arrest her at one point, she points it at them and gets them to start fighting each other. Following so far?

So her plan is to put the thing at the top of the Sears Tower and use it to make the whole United States emo. More so than it already is.

To illustrate this, there is a scene that is so unintentionally hilarious that it may have actually been intentional satire. If that was the case, my kudos to writer Matt W. Barr. It goes like this: In order to show that the gem is causing chaos, the scene cuts away to Washington and the Senate Subcommittee on the Environment, where the Senators are ripping up and burning the important paperwork they had been working on, making paper airplanes, and demanding booze and loose women.

Get it? Clearly the crystal has absolutely no effect at all on members of our government! Well, thank goodness for that, because the good guys weren't being to successful at stopping China White up to this point.

Eventually, 13 (the hero; I hadn't mentioned him so far because he's not very interesting) does indeed save the day, and it can be assumed that the Senate can go back to their normal business of making paper airplanes and demanding booze and loose women.

The backup story involves three people from different secret conspiracies all on the run together. Eventually they begin to suspect that this might all be one big conspiracy.

There were actually a lot more plot developments in both stories, including a few interesting moments and one pair of characters who were actually quite likable (a henchwoman who has fallen in love with one of the disembodied spirits), but so little in this was done effectively that the effort put into plot falls flat along with the rest of the book.

The game, by the way, is a card game of good and bad emotions that looked pretty simplistic, but had a fortune-telling vibe to it that was at least interesting in flavor.

TSR was heading toward serious financial problems when this was published. And this definitely was not helping them.

Rating: 3/10

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Limited Edition Preview

Title: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Limited Edition Preview
Date: 1993
Publisher: Malibu Comics
Writer: Mike W. Barr
Artist: Gordon Purcell
Editor: Tom Mason

Preview ashcan distributed in Hero magazine for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comic series from Malibu Comics. Not much actual comics in this preview. There are fairly generic interviews with the writer and artist, followed by a preview page in script, sketch, and finished form. There's also a nice center pinup of the cast and the space station, and a sketch of one of the original characters from the comic series. The interviews felt like sports interviews, where the players are just picking from their lists of cliches. These sorts of things are necessary, but in this case they didn't add much. I would have liked to see a bit more in the way of finished pages so that there was more sense of what to expect story-wise from the full-length book.

Gordon Purcell's artwork looks good, and the digital coloring gives it a photo-like quality that works well for a TV adaptation.

Rating: 4.5/10