BATMAN, WE ARE THE GREATEST: The Best Comic Book That Never Was
The FULL STORY behind a NEAL ADAMS birthday commission that’s taken on a life of its own… — UPDATED 5/5/25: Certain images tend to boomerang, y’know? Like the faux Brave and the Bold cover below. I saw it pop up on Facebook a couple times this week, without credit, so I figured it’d be a good time to “reprint” this piece from May 2022. The Neal Adams illustration, and the cover it was turned into, have a pretty groovy back story. Dig it! — Dan — Five years ago, for my 50th birthday, I commissioned a piece by Neal Adams that simultaneously paid tribute to one of the most famous panels from 1978’s Superman vs. Muhammad Ali treasury edition and, even more importantly, bridged the gap between fans of the lighter TV Batman and the darker comics Batman, which Neal himself helped reintroduce in the late 1960s in The Brave and the Bold. I posted it here at 13th Dimension and while I’m not surprised people dug it — it’s a really groovy illo by comics’ greatest artist — I am startled by how it’s taken on a life of its own. The image pops up all the time on Facebook, for example, and after Adams’ death last week, it made the rounds again (including here at the site, naturally). The beauty of the internet, though, is how creative people can be, and two of our fave folks — The Toyroom owner Anthony Durso and artistic superfan Walt Grogan — each have put their own spin on the image, with striking, colorful results: Walt did a mock Brave and the Bold cover and Anthony did a custom Mego two-pack box. And, as it happens, each had started work on their projects some time ago. So I wanted to give both of them a spotlight to show off their work. You can click here for Anthony’s column. To the Batcave! — By WALT GROGAN When I heard the news that Neal Adams had died, I was devastated. I grew up reading comics in the 1960s and started seeing Neal’s artwork on the covers and interiors of both DC and Marvel. His style was unlike anything at the time and brought a sense of realism to the stories that had rarely been seen before. Neal was one of the rare breed...
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