Welcome back, friends! Last time we discussed the first Superman volume, I think it’s only fair to discuss its simultaneously released counterpart. The most anticipated release of the first week, and [at least according to InStockTrades—take that for what it’s worth], the best selling Finest.
I am vengeance.
I am the night.
I am Batman!
(I know that I’ll eventually run out of those cute lil catchphrases, but for now I’m sticking with it.)
I. Historical Context
March 5, 1986.
Worlds lived,
Worlds died.
Nothing will ever be the same.
Those words, babbled out by the Psycho-Pirate as he slipped further into madness, became the epitaph for the old multiverse, and the promise of the new DC Universe.
A new dawn on the New Earth.
The real world was much as it had always been. 1986 would be a devastating year for Cold War politics. The explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, still the worst nuclear disaster in history, would rock Soviet Union and become a portent of doom for the Eastern Bloc. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration was discovered to be illegally selling missiles to Iran and funneling the profits to fascist rebels in Nicaragua. Luckily for Ronny Rayguns, none of the conspirators would face any punishment, as is the proud tradition of the United States. The American voter will let you do a lil' high treason. As a treat. At least we got my favorite American Dad! bit from it.
In culture, the original Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee dominated the box office, James Cameron directed a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, the exceptionally titled Aliens, but my favorite film of that year is the deeply-flawed-but-perfect-in-my-eyes Transformers: The Movie. Stephen King published the mammoth novel It, British author Diana Wynne Jones began her Howl series with Howl’s Moving Castle, and writer/artist Art Spiegelman brought some much-earned respect and acclaim to the medium of comics when a collected edition of Maus was brought to market.
Notable births for DC include future Harley Quinn, Batwoman, and Batman respectively with Lady Gaga, Ruby Rose, and Robert Pattinson. Dune author Frank Herbert, Golden Age actor Cary Grant, and World War II Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov all died in 1986.
Getting back to DC, the company had finally begun to fully recover from the devastating “DC Implosion” of 1978—a mass cancelation of books across the line. Under the leadership of publisher and president Jennette Kahn, DC became a powerhouse going into the late 1980s. Fresh, top level talent and a focus on mature storytelling brought them prestige, while new takes on classic titles brought in new readers.
For his part, Batman got the best of both worlds, he was relatively unscathed following COIE, but still was given a new direction by writers like Miller, Starlin, Barr, and Collins. From Detective Comics nearly getting canceled in 1978, to being DC’s premier line, the Caped Crusader’s recovery was in no small part due to Denny O’Neil becoming the Group-Editor for the Bat-Titles in ‘86.
O’Neil’s overarching vision combined with renewed interest in Batman from the 1989 film lead to a Bat-Renaissance we’ve yet to see recreated. All of which started here, with Batman #401 and ‘Tec #568. He’d oversee the death of the second Robin, creation of the third, reintegration of the first, as well as the first “Bat-Events,” the first new Bat-ongoing since 1940, the first mini and ongoing for Catwoman, and all while maintaining a level of quality storytelling unrivaled at DC at the time (if you don’t believe me, read latter day New Titans or Extreme Justice).
But all of that is in the future, in some cases by several years. What about now? What about the stories presented in this volume? Let’s find out, but first…
II. My Perspective
If you’ve spent any amount of time on this blog, you’ve probably noticed I like talking about Batman characters. The majority of my posts since restarting this page have been about Batman related topics, hell I did an entire history followed by eight fics about Dick/Babs in January. Batman was my entry into superheroes and thus comics via BTAS. Love Batman, I can’t help it. No matter how hard I try, I always circle back to Batman.
But what about this specific era of Batman? The early Post-Crisis period?
I’d say I have a fondness for it, but it’s far from my favorite era for the Dark Knight. There’s a level of nostalgia for a time I never saw, that being the end of the Bronze Age. A lot of the comics here feel like continuations of the Bronze and Silver Ages with more contemporary dialogue and references. It’s fun, but I prefer a more well-developed Batfamily than a classic Batman & Robin issue.
Speaking of Robin, this is the era of Jason Todd. I don’t mind Jason as much as the kids of the 1980s did, honestly I like him as Robin II. I think the stories in this volume plus The Cult do more for the second Boy Wonder than anything published since, but we can get into that some other time.
Despite the new origin being introduced in Batman #408, Jay really remains pretty much within the mold of pre-NTT Dick Grayson. Which is fine, but it’s not very exciting. In my estimation, they never really do enough with the new origin to justify changing it. A lot of ink has been spilled on how the new origin made the writers and fans hate him, but I just don’t buy it. I think the writers didn’t want to be saddled with a twelve-year-old, and the readers wanted Dick or bust. Jason’s new backstory is hardly relevant across any issue of Batman or ‘Tec until A Death in the Family and the issues immediately preceding it.
This to me is the last sort of “business as usual” era of Batman. This is Batman and Robin as we roughly expect them. Sure, it’s a different kid, but he doesn't act too differently.
III. Stories
This volume collects Batman (1940) #401-412, Annual #11, Detective Comics (1937) #568-579. Aside from the titular stories, it also contains Jason’s new origin, but no notable first appearances (unless you count the Mime as notable).
Much of this material hasn’t been in print since 2015-2017, with 402-412 presented in Batman: Second Chances (basically just reprinting Jason’s origin), and 568-579 in the first volume of Batman: The Dark Knight Detective. Both are heavily sought after books, so it’s great to see them here with Year One & Two as well (those were skipped in the older collections).
The stories here are still nice and short. Punchy. We’re not getting bogged down in 100 issue epics that ruin the status quo for a year. At the same time, the supporting cast—my favorite part of the Batverse—is still quite limited. Bruce, Jason, Alfred, Jim Gordon, Dr. Thompkins, and that’s about the extent of it. No Dick, no Babs, not even Harvey Bullock. The most base of the bat-supporting cast. The counterpoint is that this gives us very focused, Batman driven stories. Not much to get in the way of the Dark Knight, and that’s a bit refreshing.
As for the highlights, there’s a good number here. The Barr/Davis run on ‘Tec is here, which is a cute little Silver Age throwback. Then we have Batman Annual #11. A couple of really great stories in that, including a Preston Payne tale by Alan Moore (which I consider to be vastly superior to The Killing Joke) and a very sweet Penguin reform plot. We also have the aforementioned origin redux for Jason from Batman #408 to 411. I enjoy it well enough, but it isn’t setting the world on fire. No, the thing people are interested in are the titular Years One and Two, collected together for the first time here.
Year One, what can be said about Year One? Or at least, what hasn’t been said by 100 million others a 100 billion times. It’s probably the best, tightest Batman story ever told. It’s a very clean origin, able to be slotted in perfectly to the new ongoing continuity. It’s stylish, witty, gritty, and gave us a new standard for Batman comics going forward. However, I highly doubt anyone is buying Year One for the first time here. It’s been in continuous publication for longer than I’ve been alive.
Year Two, by contrast, is not nearly as well known. It also doesn’t obviously take place over a year, or necessarily needs to happen that early in Batman’s history, It’s a bit of an odd duck, as a result. I don’t hate it, but it’s very far from my favorite Batman story. That said, this was the main appeal to me to buy this. I missed out on the deluxe edition, and had no intention of paying over cover price for Year Two, so this seemed like an ideal opportunity to pick it up.
For what it's worth, I am happy with my purchase. It’s just that I like the presentation of this volume, rather than specifically Year Two.
By my estimation, I’d say this is a very solid value. You get a number of good stories (plus Year Two), presented in publication order together for the first time. I’d be all over this collection if it was just for that.
IV. Remaster/Build
This volume comes in at 632 pages. A pretty heft book, but not the upper limit of a Finest. Not too many two page spreads to check gutter loss, but of what I can see in Year One it doesn’t look too bad.
Here’s where the real meat of this section comes into play: the coloring. Unlike the last review, I actually do own an issue from this era! My favorite in fact, “Fear for $ale” from Detective Comics #571 by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis. This is one of those issues I have permanently downloaded on DCUI. The perfect Batman vs. Scarecrow story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it waiting in line or before the previews at a movie. I just love it to bits, and any excuse to talk about it, y’know?
As you can see, the different paper causes the colors to be much brighter. I actually think this looks better, that it’s more vibrant, but one less inclined could call it garish.
Robin’s tunic here is a deeper red, and Batman’s cape is a closer to navy blue. Scarecrow’s shades of brown are darker, while the Batcave is a brighter orange as opposed to a soft yellow.
I’d say the difference is noticeable, but I don’t think that it’s dramatically worse or better.
The more interesting comparison is to Year One, where they specifically recolored the book in the 2000s to look better on modern paper. This Finest is the first time I’ve seen the old colors on new paper, so I think it’s worth seeing how big of a difference the paper made! Unfortunately, I don’t own the original issues to compare it. I do have something better, the Absolute edition which has both colorings on the correct (oversized) paper.
Here we see original coloring vs. original coloring. I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world, but I do tend to agree with colorist Richmond Lewis that it doesn’t work as well with these bright yellows and blues. That final page (right) just looks bad in my opinion.
The new colors do a much better job of presenting the intended tone of the scene when printed on glossy paper. The left comparison in particular, the top panel actually looks like it’s at night with the modern colors.
It’s very nice to have the original colors (something the Finests have been mostly consistent about), especially since the only option to read them published this millennium is the Absolute. Year Two here is presented with its restored colors, so I suppose it isn’t guaranteed what you’ll get, but for the most part they’ve favored the old colors.
V. Closing Thoughts
A very strong start for the Batman line of Finests. A lot of collectors have been begging for a comprehensive series of reprints that pair Batman with ‘Tec (myself very much included), and that is word for word what we get. As with all the Finest releases so far, I really do wish we got some extras, but if I had to choose between extras and more issues, I pick issues one hundred percent of the time.
I think that the people who should really look into this are new readers and Jason fans.
For the former, you get Year One and the beginning of Denny O’Neil’s new direction for Batman.
For the latter, not only do you get Jason’s new origin (which as mentioned was out-of-print for almost a decade), but you also get Barr & Davis’s Detective run, which contains the elusive “Jason as a good kid” stories. These are also just some of Jay’s best comics as Robin. Definitely read this if you haven’t.
VI. Place on the Shelf
This volume would go right behind the as-of-yet-unreleased final volume of DC Finest Crisis on Infinite Earths or alternatively behind the final Pre-Crisis DC Finest Batman: Red Skies (1985-1986). Batman is already running away with the number of Finests per year, as one might expect.
Next time, we round out the trinity with the first Wonder Woman Finest! With any luck this one won’t take me multiple months.
I decided make this GIF useing Panels from my favorite Alan Moore Supeman story DC Presents #85 'The Jungle Line' and combine it with a GIF of Green Luquid from @htmlstim : The Art from this story was drawn by Rick Veitch a legendary creator in his own right.
