After the break, it's crimefighting time!
If you're keeping track of these, this is number eight. When did we record it? None of your business, turkey hunters! This time around, on Batman Books Are Burning In Hell, Matt Seneca & Tucker Stone are talking about Batman: Strange Apparitions by Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers.
Dive in. Need to read it? You could do that digitally. (But why?) Or you could go whole hog, which means: start with Detective Comics #469, stop with #479. You won't regret it! (At this point, if you're reading these words, how could you be the kind of person who would?)
Good podcast. As often, I enjoy your guys talking about these old comics more than the comics themselves. As it happens my excellent library system has a copy of Strange Apparitions. It's okay, more readable than most 1970s comics but also kind of meh. I appreciated the comment that Englehart was doing a pastiche of the old pulps like the Shadow. That makes sense and ties in with the constant reference to the early Batman creators, Finger, Robinson etc. But! a little pulp pastiche goes a long way. In general, Englehart's plots are disjointed and don't always make sense. There's no sense of pacing or urgency as in the best of these thriller comics. Silver St. Cloud is a teenage dream of a woman more than anything. The stuff that worked best was actually the ghost of Hugo Strange haunting the ward boss.
The art is better than the writing but also limited. Marshall Rogers is also doing pastiche of early 20th century pulp and deco -- the limits of his approach can be compared to Kaluta, channelling the same material but much more organically. Everything is wooden and stiff. I think in some ways the coloring, although atmospheric, does a disservice to the art, hiding it's best effect. Look at issue 474 page 6 and compare to original at on Heritage: https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/panel-pages/marshall-rogers-and-terry-austin-detective-comics-474-story-page-6-batman-original-art-dc-1977-/a/7141-93203.s
Posted by: Jeet Heer | 2024.05.26 at 21:25