SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BATMAN VOL. 1

[MatterEaterLad]

I guess I was lucky then to have an older brother who didn't have any interest in super-hero comics. He was much more interested in marbles and baseball cards.

Although, I always wish that he (when he was seven in 1956) had had the uncanny luck to buy several copies of Showcase no. 4. We would be rich!

Or better yet, if my mother or father in 1938 had thought to buy Action no. 1 (both being in their late teens around then). Now that would have been a miracle of great fortune.

My dad (born in 1925) wouldn't have bought a comic to save his life, my mother (1929) actually did have a lot of Golden Age comics (she liked the Flash). I asked her about them and she said "why would I have kept a COMIC book?".  Accordingly, she threw out all my comics sometime in the 70s...but they were read to death and pretty ragged.

[Super Monkey]

Hm, I get this warning that this topic hasn't been posted in in 120 days, but I haven't posted here in a few years.  All things are relative.

But I finally remembered my password--and might not remember it again--and didn't want to waste the opportunity.

But that's my opinion. And I'm entitled to it.

Welcome back!!! We missed you! Write that password down somewhere

[Super Monkey]

My dad is as old as Superman himself!!! As he was born in 1938!

[TELLE]

The Filmation and Hanna Barabera  shows (Superfriends, The New Adventures of Batman, Batman/Superman Hour) were really my intro to the character in the 1970s.  To this day, I'm not sure if my favourite Bat-voice is Adam West or Olan Soule, but I do know that Ted Knight is the best narrator of anything, ever.  I first saw the 60s live action series even after I saw the live action Challenge of the Super-Heroes show.  However, none of these led me to buy Batman comics.  I got one in a trade in the late 70s (a Brave and Bold: Batman and King Farraday vs Two-Face in New Orleans) but that wasn't enough to make me a fan of the comics.  Neither was leafing through a young friend's plastic coated collection.  What did it was the DC Blue Ribbon Digest featuring some classic gems and the Joker's 5-Way Revenge and the Batman encyclopedia --two great intros to the some of the greatest kids comics ever created.

I hope the Showcase volumes have the same effect on a new generation.

[Klar Ken T5477]

I started buying Batman around the same time I started buying the Superman titles in 1961-62 just prior to the New Look.  I really liked the new look and Carmine Infaniton's work a lot but in retrospect a lot of those stories were by Sheldon Moldoff (imitating a new style and still signing 'Bob Kane') and Sid Greene.

I remember thinking  --wow - Bob suddenly is drawing good. Looking back I  find the stocky, static Moldoff style the real New Look and I had discovered the insane world of Dick Sparang in the annuals and paperback reissues.

My First issue though would probably be an issue of World's Finest or the annual with the Gorilla Crime Boss on the cover.  That cover was pretty intense and the stories well worth the 25 cents.

[nightwing]

I started reading comics around 1972 or so (at age 7) and had the extreme good fortune to discover Batman in the days of O'Neill and Adams, Haney and Aparo, Robbins and Novick and so on.  Bronze Age Batman was an astonishing character to me and never failed to entertain; there was mystery, action, the occult, you name it.  I loved Superman as the archetypal superhero, but Batman books had an air of spookiness to them that kept me coming back.  Plus with guys like Adams, Novick and even Dick Dillin on art, and stories set in the "real world," Batman almost seemed like a real person to me, which is something I could never say about Superman, Spider-Man and the rest.

One of the great things about the Bronze Age were those 100-Page Super-Spectaculars, and through them I discovered the earlier ages of Batman, developing an appreciation for Dick Sprang, Jerry Robinson and others, but I noticed something over time; the 60s were a "Dead Zone" for me (sorry, India!).  I never warmed to Shelley ("Bob Kane") Moldoff's art from the "New Look" years (Infantino's stuff was great, but comparatively rare) and many of the stories were plain awful, especially the execrable "Outsider" plotline. I always devoured the Bat-stories of the 40s and 50s in those Spectaculars, and plodded through the 60's entries like an elephant through quicksand. Basically, the Adam West series was for me the only saving grace of that whole period in history.

In other words, I won't be buying the Showcases.