The Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-25 Facsimile Edition hits Wednesday!
DC’s latest Facsimile Treasury Edition is out this week, and it’s a doozy — 1974’s Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-25, featuring Neal Adams’ classic red-background cover, and filled with exciting Golden, Silver and Bronze Age stories and features.
1975’s Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-37 — the “Special All-Villain Issue” — may be the best Batman treasury ever, but there’s an awful lot to recommend this one, which was the Caped Crusader’s first. Keep in mind, all the pages below will be a muscular 10″ x 13″.
So, dig 13 THINGS TO LOVE ABOUT BATMAN’s FIRST 1970s TREASURY EDITION:
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1. The Cover. It’s a killer. The Neal Adams Batman image is a re-do from 1973’s Batman #251 (with utility belt this time), but it’s made all the more striking by that bright red background. (It will look so good in foil!) Now, there’s been some recent online speculation that perhaps Adams didn’t do this cover or that perhaps a second artist tweaked it, but Adams himself made no mention of that when I interviewed him about it back in 2016. Knowing Adams, he would have said something if that were the case.
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2. The Story Selection. There’s an eerie Joker story (“The Case of the Joker’s Crime Circus,” from 1941’s Batman #4), a Silver Age classic (“Hate of the Hooded Hangman,” from 1966’s Detective Comics #355), and a much-loved Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams collaboration that pays homage to Joe Kubert (“Ghost of the Killer Skies,” from 1970’s Detective Comics #404). And that’s just the half of it.
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3. It’s an Artists’ Spotlight. Each story has a different penciller, and the descriptions in the table of contents make it clear that was the intent. Oddly, though, the book isn’t billed as such, and even stranger, none of the writers are listed! Here they are for the record, in order: Bill Finger (Batman #4); Don C. Cameron (Batman #14, 1942); Cameron (Batman #24, 1944); John Broome (Detective #355); Mike Friedrich (Batman #221, 1970); O’Neil (Detective #404). By the way it’s actually “The Mayors of Yonville.”
Hot Time in Gotham Town Tonight! Written by Mike Friedrich. Art by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano.
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4. My Copy Has Two Dick Sprang Signatures. When I picked one up at a convention some years ago, I was delighted to find that Sprang had signed it twice — once on the table of contents, and once on the splash page for “The Mayors of Yonville!” What a bonus! (I don’t think the dealer knew, because there was no mention of it at all on the sticker. I had no idea myself until I got home.)
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5. More Evidence This Was an Artists’ Spotlight. This:
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6. The 1966 Pinups! The issue features not one, but two of the classic 1966 pinups by Infantino and Murphy Anderson (to which we dedicated the weeklong 1966 BATMAN PINUPALOOZA earlier this year)!
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7. The Adams Centerfold. They could have used any of the other four pinups as the center spread, but instead went with Adams, who was comics’ biggest star at the time. I’m not sure where this image was originally from, but it does kinda-sorta look like a tweaked version of the back cover. (See No. 13, below.)
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8. This Sequence. Batman gets his ass kicked in a big way by the Hooded Hangman — decades before Bane. At the height of Batmania, no less! I think in the ’60s, only Blockbuster put a bigger beatdown on the Caped Crusader.
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9. This Page. A great reminder of just how creepy the Joker was before they lightened him up in the ’50s and ’60s.
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10. This Page. Adams doing Enemy Ace a la Kubert.
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11. A Bob Rozakis Maze!
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12. The Inside Back Cover. A fab photo history of “Batman on the Screen,” though it does skip the 1949 serial. The TV show was still very much in the public eye, at least among kids, in the 1970s, thanks to heavy play in syndication.
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13. The Back Cover. Wanna know how this looks all cut out and diorama-ized? Walt Grogan has you covered!
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The Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-25 Facsimile Edition is out Wednesday, Aug. 19. The regular edition lists for $14.99. The foil-cover edition lists for $19.99.
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MORE
— RED HOT! BATMAN’s First Treasury to Get FACSIMILE EDITION. Click here.
— 13 QUICK THOUGHTS: Why LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-37 Is the Greatest BATMAN Treasury Ever. Click here.
