Posted By Dan Greenfield on Dec 28, 2023 | 9 comments

Going out with a flash of lightning…

Batman #255 came out Dec. 28, 1973 — 50 years ago. To readers of the time, it simply featured yet another gorgeously illustrated Batman story by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano (written this time by Len Wein) — Moon of the Wolf. But what wasn’t immediately clear to the average fan was that it marked the end of a relatively brief but extraordinarily influential era — Adams’ classic, six-year period redefining the Darknight Detective.

The late Adams’ first foray into Gotham was published on Halloween 1967, inking over Carmine Infantino’s cover for Detective Comics #370. He was adhering to the Infantino-driven house style but you could already tell he was itching to do what he did best — portray characters as actual people and bring his photorealistic style to the comic-book world as he had to the Ben Casey comic strip.

Adams’ artistic journey from the late Silver Age to the Bronze Age has been well documented here and elsewhere: the covers, the stints on The Brave and the Bold, Deadman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Batman and Detective, and so forth (not to mention his work for Marvel and others). By late 1973, he’d moved away from regular comics work in favor of his lucrative Continuity Associates and, finally, with the publication of Batman #255, Adams’ time with the Caped Crusader in regular comics was at its end. (He and his Crusty Bunkers continued with merchandising work and he did some covers later in the ’70s, but it would be decades before he returned in full force, with Batman: Odyssey.)

It was a tenure of remarkable creativity, mostly with writer Denny O’Neil. In this fertile period, O’Neil and Adams delved into Batman’s gothic roots, with stories that frequently crept to the edge of the supernatural. More notably, they introduced Ra’s al Ghul, defined Talia, brought Two-Face back for modern readers and, perhaps most influential of all, returned the Joker to his cold-blooded, homicidal roots.

Moon of the Wolf is a classic, with a straightforward plot: A man named Anthony Lupus is turned into a werewolf by the evil Professor Milo (a Wein favorite) and Batman has to take care of business. In Wein and Adams’ hands’ Lupus is, like Lon Chaney Jr.’s character in 1941’s The Wolf Man, a tragic figure, a man who wishes not to be a feral beast and is anguished with every transformation. The climactic battle between Batman and beast takes place in a driving rainstorm, a powerful and memorable set piece:

If you’ve not read the story, I won’t give the ending away, even though it’s been five decades.

But I would like to discuss the cover, which has long been a topic of conversation among the Adamscenti.

Given Adams’ brilliant cover work, there’s an irony that the Batman #255 front underplays one of his most dramatic images — a chained Darknight Detective set upon by the werewolf:

DC was just embarking on its 100-page format for ongoing series and by necessity, the primary image shared space with a group of vignettes or floating heads. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. In the case of Batman #255, which on the whole has a colorful and inviting cover, fans have long been frustrated by the dimensions of Adams’ illustration, which is far more dramatic in its full size — and will be included in the upcoming Neal Adams Classic DC Artist’s Edition:

Illustrators like Scott Dutton, who is well known for coloring or recoloring classic comics images, have even imagined what Batman #255 might have looked like without the 100-page format:

Hell, even Adams himself made a point of recreating the image, which is available for sale as a giclee at NealAdamsStore.com:

“This was one of Neal’s favorite Batman stories, certainly artistically,” Peter Stone, Neal’s son-in-law and a 13th Dimension columnist, told me. “He would have liked to have inked it himself, but time did not permit. He had inked Batman #251 with the Joker and that ate up more time than he wanted. He was getting more and more upset with DC because his art was everywhere and for everything he found, he sent a bill to DC. They, of course, ignored it.

A recolored panel from Batman #255

“There are so many interesting images in this issue… When Neal was considering creating motion comics for potential sale to DC Comics, this issue was the first one he started work on. He actually created the entire sequence of Batman confronting Lupus and being knocked out with gas… leading to our hero chained to the ground at a construction site. Neal loved this issue artistically because he had (in his words) spent a lot of time drawing more sedate stories. Len gave him a chance to draw a new villain who was exciting and feral, so when he was looking for possible images he could recreate for sale, the werewolf story sprang immediately into his head.

“He liked the composition of this piece because it was always very attractive to him… the kind of Batman image that got his juices flowing. And he got to ink it himself — always a bonus.”

Because it was written by Wein and came months after the seminal Batman #251, Moon of the Wolf has long felt to me like an epilogue to Adams’ classic run — and it would be a fitting inclusion to DC’s Facsimile Edition program, or more specifically as a “Faux-simile Edition.” As you know, DC recently reprinted Batman #428 — but instead used the material produced in case Jason Todd survived a 1988 telephone poll. The issue has been such a success, a second printing is coming Jan. 30, with two new covers:

Since the publisher — which clearly has Adams on the brain — went to all the trouble to create that “From the DC Vault” logo, why not give us a Batman #255 “Faux-simile” that reprints just the lead story but with a cover that includes Adams’ full image, similar to what Dutton created?

I’m willing to wager it’d sell — and pretty well, too — as a fitting salute to the end of a very important era.

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MORE

— Classic BATMAN-RA’S AL GHUL TREASURY EDITION to Be Released As a Facsimile Edition — IN FULL SIZE. Click here.

— NEAL ADAMS’ Classic DC ARTIST’S EDITION Gets Release Date. Click here.