ENGLEHART AND ROGERS: How Fans First Reacted to Their Classic BATMAN Run

A special Steve Englehart birthday celebration…

There is probably no single Batman story that I have spent more time covering at 13th Dimension than Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’ classic 1970s run on Detective Comics. That’s hard to quantify, of course, but just last year, we published an 11-part interview with Englehart in which we explored in depth every issue of the run, what led up to it, and its aftermath.

One area we haven’t covered? How fans reacted to the storyline as it unfolded in 1977.

So for this year’s Steve Englehart birthday celebration — he was born 74 years ago on April 22, 1947 — we present the letter columns that covered the entire storyline, including the first two chapters that featured art by Walter Simonson and Al Milgrom.

Dig this — because the fans definitely understood what they had on their hands (save for a couple of cranks):

DETECTIVE COMICS #469

DETECTIVE COMICS #470

DETECTIVE COMICS #471

DETECTIVE COMICS #472

DETECTIVE COMICS #473

DETECTIVE COMICS #474 and #475

DETECTIVE COMICS #476

GENERAL COMMENTARY

MORE

— INSIDE THE BATMAN: THE STEVE ENGLEHART INTERVIEWS Complete INDEX. Click here.

— An INSIDE LOOK at ENGLEHART AND ROGERS’ Unfinished BATMAN Trilogy. Click here.

Author: Dan Greenfield

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4 Comments

  1. I love this! Please post more letters pages like this. I love reading reactions to classic books from the time, but it also involves buying expensive old books since the letters are never reprinted.

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  2. Hey, that was ME praising the conclusion of the run. “No other ending Is plausible.” After Englehart left, I barely stuck around long enough to see my letter printed; I was do disappointed with everything that followed, I wound up taking a break from comics, a break that lasted until the early ‘80s.

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  3. Man, look at those low (for the time) paid circulation numbers (around 100,000). A shame this classic run was being read by much fewer people than in the Silver Age.

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