BLOOD OVER GOTHAM: DC and Marvel’s winged weirdos take flight for a Halloween season slap fight…
By WALT GROGAN
Hey, it’s that time of year again for ghosts, ghouls — and bats!
Two perennial comic book favorites are DC’s Man-Bat…
… and Marvel’s Baron Blood!
And here’s artist Tom Morgan providing a cross-company match-up between Gotham’s misunderstood anti-hero and World War II’s immortal vampire!
When Tom posted this horrifically awesome (or is it awesomely horrific?) piece the other day, I knew it needed to be turned into a terrifying splash page for a faux mid-1970s inter-company battle! So I gave it vintage colors and appropriate trade dress for an October Trick-or-Treat!
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MORE
— The Amazing HALLOWEEN Comic That Wasn’t: SHAZAM! vs. DRACULA — by GENE COLAN. Click here.
— THE DYNAMIC DUO OF EARTH-TWO: The DC Series That Should Have Been. Click here.
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A 10-year-old Walt Grogan fell in love with the Big Red Cheese thanks to essays written by Dick Lupoff and Don Thompson in the paperback edition of All in Color for a Dime, released in 1970 and bought for him by his father off a paperback spinner rack in a liquor store on the South Side of Chicago. Walt runs The Marvel Family Web Facebook page devoted to all incarnations of the Fawcett/DC Captain Marvel and blogs about Captain Marvel at shazamshistorama.com.
October 12, 2024
Looks awesome, Mr. Morgan and Walt! I’m a big fan of these chracters, and Roy Conway. 😉
The only thing else I can say is “CHUK!”.
October 12, 2024
Thanks, Chris! Next time, I’ll try to find one by Gerry Thomas!
October 12, 2024
It would make for a great company cross-over. I would also have loved to have seen the late, great Frank Robbins illustrate the story since he was one of Man-Bat’s creators, as well as having been the main artist on Marvel’s The Invaders series. Still, Tom Morgan does a great job here.
October 12, 2024
This absolutely proves that Wolverine stole his mask points from the Baron right after WW2. Don’t try to confuse me with publication dates or Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum innovations or other out of continuity real life stuff.
October 13, 2024
Well, that was obviously altered by the “Crisis On Indeterminate Earths: the Secret Warriors Saga” that not only got the Baron a glimpse of Wolvie’s headgear but wiped all other evidence of that first Crisis out of everybody’s memories. (Even Paul Kupperberg’s!)
October 13, 2024
Dang! If Paul’s memories were erased, then Showcase 100 never happened, and that was the only hope to have stopped all the ultimate crises before they ever happened—
October 14, 2024
Fun Fact: Man-Bat #1 was the only time Steve Ditko drew Batman