13 THINGS TO LOVE About BATMAN’s First 1970s Treasury Edition
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,...
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