Julius Schwartz | the m0vie blog

Denny O’Neil & Neal Adams’ Batman – Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams, Vol. 2 & 3 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, July is “Batman month” here at the m0vie blog. Check back daily for comics, movies and television reviews and discussion of the Caped Crusader.

It’s really quite difficult to overstate just how influential the team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams were in redefining Batman during the seventies. Editor Julius Schwartz had made some steps in the right direction with his “new look” relaunch in the sixties, but his attempt to revitalise Batman wouldn’t truly bear fruit until the seventies. While the other definitive Batman partnership of the decade – Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers – had a clear run of issues with an over-arching story, O’Neil and Adams worked together on a number of issues scattered across a period of time when the entire Batman line was showing signs of improvement. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that we wouldn’t have Batman today without O’Neil and Adams, but I would argue that he would look pretty different.

Sharp pencil work…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adam, Arthur Reeves, batman, Batman: Vow from the Grave, Bob Haney, dark knight returns, Dennis O'Neil, Frank Robbins, gordon, gotham city, Grave, Julius Schwartz, Marshall Rogers, Neal Adams, O'Neil | 6 Comments »

Bob Haney & Neal Adams on The Brave & The Bold – Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams, Vol. 1 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Darren

In his introduction to this volume, Adams suggests that Bob Haney is one of the most “overlooked” writers in comic book history. “Though they have not gotten the recognition they deserve,” Adams argues, “Bob Haney’s stories are classics of good old comic-book drama, and dense in plot, incident, and twists.” I actually really agree with that summary of Haney’s work, and I think it’s a shame that he’s not included among Denny O’Neil and Steve Englehart as one of the writers who shaped Batman as comics entered the Bronze Age. His stories were ridiculous, but they had a sense of pulpy energy and dynamism to them. Idle folly like reason and logic are subdued to rapid-fire high-concepts, a no-nonsense Batman and a sense that literally anything could happen.

So this collaboration should be epic. Bob Haney is – to me, at least – a definitive Batman writer; Neal Adams is – widely accepted, I hope – as a (if not the) definitive Batman artist. However, combining the two doesn’t work quite as fluidly as one might hope. The stories here are solid, highly entertaining and beautifully rendered, but they’re nowhere near as effective as either creator would be working with a later collaborator. Still, even if not quite at the peak of their powers, Haney and Adams make for a powerful creative team, and there’s a lot to enjoy on their collaboration on The Brave and the Bold.

Wall-to-wall excitement…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adams, aquaman, batman, Bob Haney, BobHaney, Brave & the Bold, Creeper, gordon, gotham city, Haney, james gordon, Julius Schwartz, Kubla Khan, Neal Adams, uncle sam | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Darren

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium. We’ve got a special treat for you this week, which is “Seven Soldiers Week”, so check back each day for a review of one of the Seven Soldier miniseries that Morrison put together.

Seven Soldiers of Victory is perhaps the strangest comic book “event” that we’ve ever seen. It’s essentially two issues, with a series of seven four-issue miniseries unfolding between them. The idea is that the seven books each follow one of the eponymous seven members of the superhero team destined to save the world from an evil invasion. Of course, this is a Grant Morrison story, so there’s far more to it than that, but perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the crossover is that (with one exception) none of the seven members of the team actually meet each other.