The Doom That Came To Gotham!

I am not a buyer of Batman books by and large, though I have a weakness for the character when rendered by Neal Adams. But that doesn't mean I don't have a few collections here than there about the joint. The Doom That Came to Gotham was a gift and landed on a stack waiting its turn to be read. It waited and waited and then got covered up and waited some time longer, but at last I dug it up and I found myself in a Lovecraft mood.

I am a fan of the early Mike Mignola Hellboy comics though I've not followed the character much into the new century, save for the movies.  But The Doom that Came to Gotham felt a whole lot like a Hellboy story and that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. An Elseworlds project, the book is fun to read from the perspective of finding the new permutations of vintage characters revised for this new domain and there are scuds of those here. We have what might be the ultimate Penguin take and Mr. Freeze is exceedingly well handled. Two-Face is on hand to play a role but the main villainy is left in the care of Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia. Those two fit into a Lovecraft universe very well indeed. Man-Bat, Green Arrow and The Demon play significant roles as well and there are Robins galore for those want Robins. It's a diverting yarn, fun in its quasi-Lovecraftian ways but also a bit confusing and I found I had to read sections over a few times to glean what was happening, which is not a good thing for the pacing. Not bad overall. 

Here are the original Mignola covers. 

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Holy Historically Significant Anthology Batman!

Not too much to say about this collection. I probably picked it up cheap because of the handsome Amanda Conner cover art and because I like the Batman TV show more than Batman in general most of the time. I've always been a little cool to the Batman comics (save when Neal Adams drew them) and the earliest stuff is the very essence silly.

That silliness is captured in full flavor here with stories that introduce and then reintroduce The Riddler, the best of the TV villains, but who in the comic book can be a bit of a shmoe. The Joker stories here are dandy, and I found the one from the 60's a lot of fun though like so many stories for DC in that era it had the smell of a story meant to justify a cover. The Mad Hatter story drawn by Dick Sprang has some real energy in it. Mr. Freeze (called Mr. Zero in his debut) is a Bat-villain I've always liked better in the comic than the TV show. There's something about him which is scarier than even the Joker sometimes.

The only story in this collection I had in my collection in the original is Batgirl's "Million-Dollar Debut", a wonderful comic and absolutely typical of quality books produced in this time. This is a light breezy collection with a few stand out stories, not worth full price but maybe get it on sale like I did.

Here are the covers.

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Night Of The Reaper!

It is an absolute mystery to me why the Rutland, Vermont Halloween stories have never been collected in a single volume. (I'm talking to you Craig Yoe.) They are delightful artifacts from a bygone time when comics was a small world and dominated by two largish companies who had not yet been swallowed up by corporations and who treated their fans by inviting them into the story. Now these weren't exactly fans, but creators such as Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Berni Wrightson and Steve Englehart among others who participated, but the sheer fun of the fourth-wall busting events brought absolute glee to this fanboy's heart.

"Night of the Reaper" is arguably the best of the Rutland stories, perhaps simply by dint of the art from superstar Neal Adams. The story weaves in and out and around the parade and the follow-up party hosted by Tom Fagan. During this dark and sometimes gruesome tale we learn that Nazis prowl the darkness and that one in particular, a former commandant of a death camp has found a hiding place in the isolated quiet of Vermont. Batman tries to track down the deadly "Grim Reaper" who seems to be appearing and killing off folks. 

While Batman gets to the bottom of the mystery and as we all know bring some level of justice to the proceedings, comic book pros find all sorts of tomfoolery to engage in, some of it even beneficial to the case.

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