And it just sold at auction, too! I don’t think there’s any argument — at least not any legitimate argument — that there are any Bronze Age Batman/Joker stories that top Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge! in 1973’s Batman #251, and Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin’s The Laughing Fish! two-parter that began in Detective Comics #475, about 4 1/2 years later. Both were not just enormously popular, they’re among the most influential Bat-stories of the last five decades. You can debate which is better, but I think you can at least make a solid case that The Laughing Fish! wouldn’t have happened without O’Neil and Adams resetting the tone of the Clown Prince of Crime in The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge! (Side note: Sadly, only Englehart and Austin are still with us.) Now, Adams was a particularly proud guy. He was very quick to talk at great length about his favorite artists, particular those who had come before him, but he wasn’t known for homaging others’ work in his own. Adams, for the most part, did Adams, and that was that. So it’s absolutely fascinating to see him homage Rogers — who came after him and who’s often considered second only to Adams himself when it comes to the Darknight Detective — in this undated original illustration that this week sold through Heritage Auctions: What jumps out immediately isn’t just that Adams flopped the image, but that he stayed absolutely true to Rogers’ take on the Joker Fish and the Clown Prince’s body language from the cover of Detective #475. At the same time, he kept the face his own, as if taken directly from the Batman #251 cover. The final price? $4,500 (including buyer’s premium), which is a helluva bargain, even if it’s well out of my price range. Note to our friends the Adamses, though: I certainly want a print of this. Here’s the official Heritage description: Neal Adams – Joker with Joker Fish Guns Specialty Illustration Original Art (undated). “All it takes is one bad day.” The Clown Prince of Crime flashes a maniacal grin while brandishing twin Laughing Fish guns in this wicked reinterpretation of Joker from the classic Detective Comics #475 cover by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, which introduced the Joker Fish. This one really reels us in,...
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: — 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. — 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. — 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.” — 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,...
EXCLUSIVE: A new, ongoing feature done in conjunction with Neal Adams’ family…
The first installment of a new, ongoing 13th Dimension feature…