A Month of Wednesdays: September 2026

BOUGHT: 

Batman: Gargoyle of Gotham—The Deluxe Edition (DC Comics) Mesmo Delivery and The Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child artist Rafael Grampa's Batman epic is an instant classic, a must-read masterpiece of a graphic novel that is the best Batman comic, perhaps the best superhero comic, in recent memory. 

The book began life as 2023-2026 four-issue Black Label miniseries (when you see Grampa's art, you'll understand why it took years to publish four issues), and is now available between a single set of covers, in a handsome "Deluxe Edition" that collects Grampa and his collaborators' story along with a substantial introduction and about 40 pages of variant covers by various all-stars and Grampa's preparatory sketches and paragraphs of prose on how the story took shape.

Now, I've been reading Batman comics for as long as I've been reading comics—about 35 years now. I sometimes despair that I have at this point read too many Batman comics, as I did when I read the first collection of current Batman writer Matt Fraction's run, as it can be hard for me to be surprised by a Batman comic at this point, and sometimes even the better-written, better-drawn ones seem filled with elements I've seen before...repeatedly.

That is not the case with Gargoyle of Gotham, which not only surprised me, but occasionally shocked me. 

That said, there are many elements of it that did remind me of past Batman stories. The cult-like group of elites reminded me of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Court of Owls. Batman planning to "kill off" Bruce Wayne to focus on Batman-ing full-time was part of the Bruce Wayne: Murderer and Bruce Wayne: Fugitive events. The network of young crimefighters evoked The Dark Knight Returns, Legends of the Dark Knight arc "Faith" and We Are Robin. The stuff about the occult-tinged pseudoscience about the city's energy put me in the mind of Gothic and Dark Knight, Dark City and even part of Garth Ennis and John McCrea's  '90s Demon arc. The elites gathered on a skyscraper as the world—or perhaps just the city—seems to end reminded of Batman/Spawn: War Devil. 

None of which is to suggest that Gargoyle is derivative of any of the above, of course; if we've seen similar things before, they are remixed and reorganized here in service of a story I don't think we ever have before. 

At the story's opening, we see a Batman we are pretty much familiar with (This being a Black Label series, of course, means it takes place in its own distinct setting, rather than within Batman "canon"). Batman fights crime by means of detective work, martial prowess, gadgets and scaring the beejuzus out of the superstitious and cowardly criminals (The "It wasn't a scream. It was bait." bit on page 7 was great, by the way; that's a tactic I don't recall ever seeing). Sometimes these criminals include particularly insidious ones who, like Batman himself, are extremely colorful and have gimmicks of their own.

He is aided by his butler Alfred Pennyworth, and Gotham City Police officer Jim Gordon, his best and perhaps only ally on the police force, given his vigilante status.

Though familiar, none of this looks quite like anyone else's Batman. Seen from a certain distance, Grampa's Batman looks to be wearing the same basic gray and black that we've become accustomed to, although if you look closer, Gampa's design is distinct, unusual and...well, cooler than Batman is usually drawn. Grampa's Batman looks realistic in armored without looking overtly militaristic or like the product of a Hollywood costuming department. There's a balance that suggests a bullet might not penetrate his chest or that his cowl is actually a helmet, but he still looks lithe and graceful enough that you can imagine him running over rooftops and casting Mazzucchelli-style silhouettes.

Perhaps most notably, Grampa's Batman wears gray "chaps" over a black undersuit, suggesting the "underwear on the outside" look without Batman actually having trunks over his tights. And while I'm not sure how Grampa and/or colorist Mat Lopes achieve the effect, thin white lines are drawn over the blacks in Batman's costume, so that it looks quite detailed and rather realistic up close, while still being all-black. 

There are other differences than the standard issue Batman too. Bruce Wayne is incredibly good-looking, which I don't think I've ever thought while looking at anyone's version of the character before. Grampa's Bruce is actually beautiful.

Commissioner Gordon is deeply, extremely Catholic, based on the iconography of his apartment and office...and his exclamations and, later, visions.

And that colorful villain? Well, it's not The Joker or any of the usual suspects (this series is set a few years into Batman's career, although it doesn't seem like he's encountered any of his usual rogues yet...maybe a Joker, if that's who the grinning, drooling silhouette with the white teeth seen in Arkham is meant to be. 

No, this is Crytoon, one of several original villains Grampa creates here. He has a disturbing photo negative look, with white details over his black skin and clothing, and is obsessed with a particular character from the earliest days of animation. The violence he resorts to, which he cries about beforehand, is the stuff of cartoons, fighting with hammers and mallets. In one battle with Batman, he knocks the Dark Knight out by throwing an anvil at him. 

While the book starts on fairly familiar, if uniquely Grampa-ized, ground, the creator immediately starts deconstructing Batman. 

While the crimefighters hunt for a mysterious serial killer and Batman battles Crytoon, we learn of an untold event that happened on the night Bruce's parents were murdered, an event that is truly scary and one of those moments in which the book shocked me. It's incredibly different than anything I've seen in a previous story about that night, and while if this were an issue of Batman or Detective it might alter things in an unpleasant way, it makes a degree of sense, and fits in with what we know about Batman/Bruce Wayne and the way he lives his life.

The fall-out to this leads to a brief chapter in young Bruce Wayne's childhood, one which is hidden from him...and the why of it also makes a degree of sense as presented. 

And then this leads to big, spooky, conspiracy-style mystery that involves Bruce Wayne's life, Batman's career and the nature of the city as a whole, as Grampa has the title character wrestling with where exactly the idea of Batman came from, who is responsible for his creation and what he is for.

Is he the living gargoyle of Gotham, as he thought, here apparently taking inspiration from a scary "bat-man" gargoyle he saw as a child and learned about from his mother, a frightening figure that protects the city from evil? Or was the idea planted within him by sinister, exterior forces, and he's actually a devil of sorts, meant to do evil himself? 

The journey of the book involves several new rogues—Moth-er, The Virgin, Doctorgeist, Little Joker, Geisterman Wounder—some of whom seem as as much horror movie monster as comic book villain and some of whom have potential (Grampa's backmatter says he hopes that others will pick up and use these villains. Given that Gargoyle of Gotham is such a thing of its own, it might be hard to imagine, but it's not like mainstream Batman comics have imported characters from the sixties TV show or The Animated Series or elsewhere before). It involves a great deal of attention paid to class inequality in the city, the divide between exploitative rich and the exploited poor, and Bruce Wayne flailing as he seeks to find where Batman belongs. And its players include young, poor crime-fighters with "R" patches on their chests (Which stand for "Ratz" not "Robins", although a line of dialogue connects them to Robin later). 

Batman ultimately discovers a truth about who he is and who he wants to be, a self-characterization that circles back to his Golden Age decision to use fear as a weapon against crime. Here's how Grampa strikingly, memorably puts it. 

"The villains will come back," Bruce Wayne says to himself:

Soon.

Darker.

Madder.

I'll answer with worse.

A VILLIAN TO THE VILLAINS.

This sequence accompanies the first of two new suits that Batman will adopt throughout the narrative...beyond his "original" suit, which is Grampa's own takes on Batman's usual look. 

The first of these is stitched together by the Ratz as Bruce Wayne prepares to join them in a battle to save the city, climbing out of the underworld of the sewers to face the terrorism and mad acts of a populace filled with sleeper agents activated to act by the ringing of huge bells  (I'm not sure if the highly stylized CLANGs that fill these panels are the work of Grampa drawing them directly into the art, as he seems to do with sound effects throughout, or letter John Workman, whose contributions are so significant it is hard to imagine this comic without him).

This is a sort of junkyard Batman, wearing work boots and gloves, wielding hammers and cloaked in black coats. He has knives taped to his forearms to form the scallops of his classic gloves, and chains and cannisters hang from his waist to suggest a utility belt. It seems completely held together with straps, wires, bandages and tape.

And then there's the "final" Batman, what Grampa tells us in his afterword is his Batman, a truly terrifying creature of armor and mechanical wings, less a Dark Knight and more a Black Knight, more demon than gargoyle. Given all the Elseworlds and multiversal stories DC has published over the last three decades or so, we have now seen a lot of different Batman costumes, many of which were specifically designed to be weird and scary-looking. This is the weirdest, scariest-looking Batman I've ever seen. (I'm tempted to share it, but think it's better encountered in context; when I first got the book, I flipped through it, and paused when I hit this page. It's hard to imagine this Batman in action*, but the context here is just him posing on the edge of a building—you know, like a gargoyle—and scaring the shit out of someone. 

Perhaps when you've achieved that level of scary, you don't need to do as much running, jumping, punching and kicking.

I hesitate to call this something like a Dark Knight Returns for a new generation, something a blurb from Jeph Loeb on the cover suggests ("Every once in a generation, we are lucky enough to have a visionary who reimagines how an iconic character like BATMAN is presented," he wriest. "Neal Adams. Frank Miller. Now, Rafael Grampa has taken another giant leap forward in storytelling and illustration..."). 

I mean, I think we have to wait a few years to see if this book ends up influencing other comics the way DKR did...something that's actually hard to imagine, given that Miller's book's influence wasn't just because of its overall quality, but because of other factors unique to its time and context. 

That said, reading through Gargoyle of Gotham felt an awful lot like being 13-years-old and reading a trade paperback collection of Dark Knight Returns at my friend's house, unable to put it down as he asked me to play Tecmo Bowl with him. 

Supergirl Vol. 2: Hometown Horrors (DC) First, before I put my critic's hat on, let me take a moment to express my excitement at the second volume of Sophie Campbell's Supergirl coming out. Allow me, if you will, a woohoo. (Woohoo!) 

For what it's worth, this is the only Big Two ongoing superhero comic I am currently purchasing (I probably would have stuck with Justice League Unlimited too, but it's very second volume was a crossover with a series I was borrowing from the library, so...)

Unfortunately, this second volume is...less than ideal, due to two reasons probably outside of Campbell's control: The fact that the book is a current ongoing, which necessitates a degree of participation in other goings-on throughout the line and the fact that DC wanted to give the character a movie-inspired spotlight (and obviously wanted to include the current Supergirl writer in that spotlight). 

There's a third reason I liked this a little less than the first volume—that is, it has less of Campbell's art—but we'll discuss the visuals a bit later. Suffice it to say that Campbell is one of my favorite current cartoonists, and I will always prefer reading comics that she both writes and draws over ones she either writes or draws (Although given how hard and time-consuming I personally find writing versus drawing, I wouldn't blame her at all for sticking to writing and just drawing for fun or special occasions**). 

Those first two affect the flow of the book though, with the narrative thrust of the first 80 pages being interrupted—quite literally so, which is actually kind of fun—by a character from outside of the book showing up to tell Supergirl it's time to go appear in a Superman family event, which I'm not sure will be followed up in the pages of volume 3 of this series or elsewhere. 

And then, because the book collects Supergirl #7-10 and the Summer of Supergirl Special, it goes on for another 40 pages. And those last 40 pages are divided into three stories by three different creative teams. And each of them is a more-or-less standalone story, with no connectivity to Campbell's ongoing Supergirl storyline, really. 

So, structurally, the book is less than satisfying, and tonally, it's a bit all over the map, having three different writers and six different artists. (Joe Quinones, who draws Supergirl #9 and #10, thus does the lion's share of the art, despite the fact that his style is so different from Campbell's.) (Not that I don't like Quinone's art, of course! It's great! I just would prefer the book have a more consistent style and look and feel to it, especially when it's yet to hit twelve issues!).

That said, I'm not really sure how DC could have put the book together to avoid the weird structure. Like, Campbell did write one third of the Special, so it probably belongs in a Supergirl trade collection (and I wouldn't have liked it not being collected somewhere), but given its page count, its feels too big to serve as a back-up or epilogue, and sort of warps the narrative thrust of the mass (Perhaps DC could have included Campbell's story from the Special here, and excised the other two shorts? As we'll see later, they are hardly essential).

I don't know; I guess that's just the price one sometimes has to pay for reading comics that are published serially in trade paperback collections rather than single issues...

Anyway, this volume's four issues of the title are all organized around holidays—Thanksgiving, the Christmas season, New Year's and Valentine's Day—which makes for a nice hook and also allows Campbell to gradually fast-forward a bit (I'm not so sure I like what's going on with Lena's hair as it grows out, though; I liked it how it was!).

The first issue, the one set on Thanksgiving, is the only one that Campbell draws, starts with Supergirl being exposed to turquoise kryptonite (Yes, that's a new one) and transforming into a mermaid, which forces her into the sea. There, she meets Princess Shark, learns the character's origins and helps free her from the cures of a Sea Hag (a Sea Hag, not The Sea Hag). Meanwhile, Lesla Lar is learning about the Earth holiday, and, by the climax, pretty much the whole cast gathers around a table...including Princess Shark, who is now on the side of the angels (And, apparently, is going to stick around as part of the extended cast).

Yes, it's quite Silver Age-y, but Campbell's whole-hearted embrace of Silver Age Supergirl is a large part of what makes this title so fun and, I think, makes this particular Supergirl feel more like the "real" Supergirl as opposed to all of those many, many attempts to reinvent her over the decades (Some of which will be cataloged if not explored in one of the Special's stories, where some Superboys rattle off what seem like preposterous number of different cities she's lived in and jobs she's had).

Speaking of Superboys, Conner Kent appears in two panels, as he is apparently in attendance at the Danvers' Thanksgiving. Which is good, as it makes it less jarring when she shows up later. 

Also, I'm glad Campbell drew this particular issue, as not only does it give her a chance to draw the whole extended cast, but both the Sea Hag and her little hagling, both of which look like the exact sort of gnarly things that Campbell is probably into. After this issue, Campbell only draws covers for issues #8-10 in this volume. 

Next, Haining comes on as guest artist for one issue. This one focuses on the Christmas season, during which Supergirl is apparently always blue. It also gestures to her original origins, and includes a take on an old Silver Age concept that is at first scary and then tragic. I like Haining's art a lot, and think the style of it compliments that of Campbell's quite well; ideally, if the book needs fill-in artists, the editors would find a single artist to handle them and who can switch off with Campbell herself.

But that's not what happens, as Quinones then comes aboard (and only 40-is pages in, the book has already had three different artists and three different colorists!). His style is much more realistic than that of either of Campbell or Haining, and the figures often look posed, or at least drawn from reference. If they weren't all so strongly designed already, you might not know who they were meant to be out-of-context. (The nameless, shirtless goth hunk from the previous volume, for example? I only recognized him in these issues due to his distinctive pink kryptonite heart earring. Similarly, I thought Luna didn't look quite right.)

Anyway, in issue #9, Linda, Lesla, Lena and Luna attend a New Year's Eve party, where both Lena and Linda experience a degree of drunkenness thanks to some meddling on Lena's part (Lesla on purpose, as she declares "I wish to experience the effects of booze," and Linda on accident, when she takes a swig from Lesla's "soda").  Crushes are too-impulsively kissed, a couch is lifted aloft and a super-fight breaks out. By the end of the issue, Lesla is returned to Kandor and Supergirl is on the outs with Lena. (I do kinda wish Campbell had drawn this one in particular, as I'm really fond of how she drew Lesla in Kandor, before the yellow sun of Earth made her bigger and curvier. I like skinny, awkward ladies in glasses; sue me.)

And, finally, in #10, Linda goes on a date with the nameless goth hunk...and it's up to Lena and Luna to save her from the love spell his earring is inadvertently casting...and the Kryptonian entity trapped within it. It is on the last page of this issue, when Supergirl and Lena are having a heart to heart, that Superboy Conner Kent swoops in to tell Supergirl that Kandor is in big trouble, the last panel featuring a big, bold "TO BE CONTINUED IN REIGN OF THE SUPERBOYS!"

Amusingly, Campbell at least nods towards how abrupt Superboy's interruption of her story is, with Lena yelling at him, "I was in the middle of a sentence, jackass."

And that's all save for the Special. As noted, it features three different stories by three different creative teams. Two of these are team-ups, and the third features a bunch of characters talking about Supergirl, although she herself doesn't appear within it.

First, Campbell teams with the Special's cover artist Belen Ortega for "Main Man's Best Friend," a Lobo team-up. Which seems a very unlikely team-up...until you remember he was in her movie this summer. This isn't even the first time the pair teamed up this year, as this story immediately follows the events of Lobo #4, according to an editorial box. 

What happened there isn't super-important, really, and I had no trouble following this story. Campbell zeroes in on something the two super-powered aliens have in common—they are both dog owners—and the comic opens with Supergirl, Krypto, Lobo and his dog Dawg (and Princess Shark) in a space court, awaiting sentencing. Lobo is sent to rehabilitation program at the Sunny Hearts Facility on the Chobos N82 Space Station, while Dawg is remanded to Supergirl's custody on Earth.

The story follows Supergirl and her two super-dogs doing good deeds in Midvale, and what happens when Lobo shows up after his program to reclaim Dawg.

Campbell does a nice job adjusting the knobs of Lobo's various portrayals until she lands on something that feels like him but also fits in with her Supergirl title. Sure, it's weird seeing Lobo doing good deeds during the team-up portion of the traditional Fight Then Team-Up ritual, but, well, dude loves his dog, right? (And he did just get out of rehab, which had managed to at least temporarily turn him into a "a fraggin' DWEEB").

Ortega's art is as great as always, and it's particularly fun to see her draw the various "versions" of the events that landed the characters in court in the first place, including an unhinged looking Supergirl and Krypto in Lobo's version. 

The story also features a brief appearance by Lobo's daughter Crush, who is seemingly crushing on Princess Shark ("Umm, you could... ...introduce me to that fine-ass apex predator," she says when Supergirl asks how she can repay her for bailing her out of space-jail).

That's followed by a Mary Marvel team-up by Gail Simone, Emma Kubert and Sandra Hope. This one felt a little...weird to me, in part because Supergirl seemed a bit off (She narrates and mentions studying; is Supergirl still in school? Really? That's weird. It seems like something readers should know by the tenth issue of her series, right?). And because the Marvel/"Shazam" Family has felt off to me for, like...30 years now...? 

Mary, who is only named "Mary Marvel" in the credits panel on the last page of the story (Where it says "Supergirl and Mary Marvel in: "Lost Girls"), joins Supergirl to fight Amazonia, a female super-robot from one of Lex Luthor's labs on a rampage. This is made slightly more difficult when the robot intercepts Mary's magical lightning bolt somehow, and starts to rattle off its own robot gods...though not the powers it gets from them ("S for Superman Robots...H for Hourman....A for Amazo"...it's a cute idea, but only half-executed, and perhaps wasted, as a throwaway gag).

The robot business only takes five pages, leaving the second half of the story for Simone and company to show the two young heroines with a lot in common (And they should have a lot in common, as Supergirl's very existence was inspired by that of Mary Marvel, who predated her). This is, according to this story, their first meeting, which doesn't sound right (Surely they've met in some crossover by now, even if we're here assuming Mary Marvel continuity began with The New 52 iteration of the Marvel Family or run into one another on the JLU Watchtower...?).

And knowing the characters' real-life histories, it feels weird to have Mary fangirling over Supergirl and alluding to being inspired by her (In terms of DC continuity, I guess this is probably accurate, as the Marvel Family didn't join the DCU until the 1970s and, again, this Mary is apparently from around the time of the New 52, whereas this Supergirl has been around since the '60s, having been temporarily dead between Crisis on Infinite Earths and "The Supergirl from Krypton" arc in Superman/Batman).  It's just a little thing that bugs me personally, like The Elongated Man debuting before Plastic Man in the official DC timelines, even if we know the opposite to be true in reality (Again, this reflects DC Comics publishing reality, as Elongated Man debuted in 1960, long after Plastic Man began his comic book career in 1941...although DC didn't publish a Plastic Man comic until 1961).

I didn't much care for the art style of this one, either, I'm afraid. The rendering was very realistic, although the character designs weren't necessarily all that realistic themselves.

Finally, there's "Who Is Supergirl?" by Mark Waid and Cian Tormey (Those panels above featuring the Superboys are from this story, of course, if you haven't seen Tormey's art before). This one is basically a dramatization of the character's entry in Waid's own New History of The DC Universe, with other characters talking about Supergirl's new continuity.

Superboy Conner Kent and Steel Natasha Irons are updating "the Super-Family Files" on the Justice League Watchtower (since, as Superboy puts it, "ever since that time Kilg%re infested the computers, everyone's data has been a clusterfrag").

In walks Super...guy(?) Jon Kent, and the three talk about Supergirl while updating her records, going over her Silver Age origins, her death in "the Great Crisis" and the fact that Darkseid had stolen her body (Which confuses me; would she have had a body, or would it have been erased from existence when the Multiverse collapsed into a single Earth...?***) and eventually brought her back-to-life in that Superman/Batman story arc. 

"There were others who took the name while Kara was gone," Batman says, dramatically entering, and apparently referring to the Matrix version and/or the version Peter David wrote and Cir-El, "Almost as if the universe wanted there to be a Supergirl."

Similarly, Martian Manhunter walks in at one point to share some bits of her new, streamlined timeline. 

Between New History of the first volume of Campbell's Supergirl, I don't think we necessarily needed all this restated again, but whatever. 

The bits with Jon making fun of Superboy's leather jacket by making repeated George Michael references was weird, though. I mean, Jon was born in, what, 2015...? And here he refers to Michael twice, including a song from 1990. 

Not a big fan of the art on this one either, but it seems to matter much less, given how far removed it is from the events of the main title.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Mirage Years 1984-1987 (IDW Publishing) Way back in the early '90s, one of my earliest comics purchases was Mirage Publishing's The Collected Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1 (or Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Collected Book Volume One, as it said on the cover), a big, thick trade paperback collecting the first 11 issues of the original TMNT comic and all four of the character-specific "micro-series" one-shots, all under a brand-new painted cover by artist A.C. Farley.

It was a great package, and one that included what was essentially the first "act" of the Mirage Turtles' story, from their first introduction and initial battle with Shredder and the Foot Clan, to their meeting of long-time allies April O'Neil and Casey Jones, to their adventures in time and space (during which they would learn how exactly they were mutated), to the shocking return of the thought-dead Shredder and the Foot, to their retreat from New York City to the Northhmpton, Massachusetts farmhouse and the start of their new life there. All in all, it encompassed the entirety of their time in NYC, a terrible defeat and the start of the next chapter of their life.

This new collection is a bit different...but just a bit. In terms of contents, it only goes up through issue #10, the climactic battle in April's burning apartment building. It therefore ends on more of a down note than the previous collection of this material I have, as we see the protagonists defeated and running for their lives, but not how they process that defeat or how they start to move forward. 

It works though, as one imagines the next volume in the series will be set entirely in Northhampton...or mostly in Northampton, as the three-part "Return to New York" arc will be included, and now I can't quite recall where Mark Martin's three issues are set, geographically or along the timeline. (There's already an Amazon listing for the next volume in this series, which has the years 1987-1990 on the cover. It apparently includes #11-23, and #27-29, skipping #24-26. So, it's skipping Rick Veitch's three-part "The River" storyline for some reason. As for what's included, there are comics from Eastman and Laird (working together, and with Eric Talbot and Mike Lawson, respectively) on some Northhampton stories, all four of them working together on various parts of "Return to New York", plus fill-in comics from Michael Dooney, Mark Martin, Mark Bode, Stephen Murphy and Lawson and A.C. Farley. It's a hell of a diverse group of comics, in terms of style, content and genre, and should be in sharp contrast to the cohesive story, look and feel of the first volume in the series.) 

This new collection obviously doesn't have Farley's cover painting but instead uses the wraparound cover of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's original issue, which looks shockingly, but charmingly primitive up there (Note Donatello's sword, too!). 

The paper is glossy rather than pulpy, and the dimensions are smaller than my earlier collection. At 6-by-9-inches, it seems closer in size to a DC Compact Comics collection or a Marvel Premier Edition trade, although I don't have any of those handy to compare to this.

Anyway, I have read and re-read and re-re-read these comics over and over throughout the last few decades, and thus did not re-read them anew just because I bought this new trade. But given the title, and the copy on the back, which mentions the work of other creators, I assume this is the first in a series of trade collecting the entirety of the Mirage series, so I might as well start with the first volume, so I'll eventually have the whole series on my shelf (Also, this will make a nice reference copy of the comics within; my original collection is yellowed and fragile to the point that I get nervous handling it now).

I regret having not bought the big, oversized, hardcover Ultimate Collections when they were available, as those had notes from Eastman and Laird about each issue, so I guess I'll stick with these.

By the way, I bought two copies, intending to give one to my nephew. When he told me of some recent comics he bought, he said he had bought the initial Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover, so I thought I should show him where those characters originally came from...

BORROWED:

Archie's Halloween Spectacular (Archie Comics) I borrowed this via Hoopla, thinking it would be a good opportunity to check in with Archie Comics and maybe a good candidate for review on Good Comics for Kids. Unfortunately, while it is definitely for kids, it did not meet the other criteria for comics I like to review for the site. That is, it's not very good.

The cover promises "Over 40 Pages of Chilling Tales!", but only 10 pages of this $7.99 special are actually new material, the other three-fourths of the book are filled with old stories with varying degrees of quality and connectivity to Halloween (How old are the comics? Well, three of the five pencil artists listed on the inside front cover are long dead). 

Even those new ten pages aren't really all that great, I'm sorry to report, and read like they could have used another pass by an editor who might suggest some changes for the sake of clarification.

It opens with the title "Cosmo The Merry Martian in Haunted House Hustle!", and said merry Martian is about to enjoy his sandwich aboard his spaceship when Medulla informs him that "The W.E.I.R.D. sensor just picked up something majorly anomalous just outside a small town called 'Riverdale'." What is "W.E.I.R.D." an acronym for...? We're never told.

Cosmo investigates, only to find Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica in Halloween costumes, being chased by an old house with metal arms and four big, wooden legs. It is being driven by Medusa Doom, daughter of Mad Doctor Doom (You may wish to consult your Archie Encyclopedia if some of these names mean nothing to you; I certainly had to). 

Cosmo is soon joined by superhero Fly Girl of the Crusaders (whose codename evokes memories of In Living Color to me, an old person) and, thanks to some advice on how one deals with houses on Halloween from Reggie Mantle, they are able to save the day. Er, night. (Reggie, for reasons entirely unclear to me, is dressed as a vampire...but also has a fishbowl-style helmet over his head, of the sort that the Silver Age Justice League would have donned to visit Aquaman in Atlantis, or spacemen in the middle of the last century might have worn). 

This is the work of writer Ian Flynn and artists Bill and Ben Glavan. I think the most interesting aspect may be that the Martian and Crusaders maps seem to indicate at least the general area of the country where Riverdale might be located. (Looks like somewhere in Illinois...or possibly Wisconsin or Iowa.)

This story is followed by four more:

•Betty and Veronica in "The Secret of the Old Music Hall" This 11-page story is signed "Gladir & Decarlo, Jr.", and is thus apparently the work of George Gladir and Dan Decarlo Jr. It features The Archies (the band) rehearsing in an old, abandoned music hall and facing a series of dangerous misfortunes attributed to a ghost. There's no real Halloween connection beyond the Scooby-Doo-like plot. One can tell its relative age by its mentions of a "flash dance", MTV and the fact that, at one point, Betty pulls a car key out of the ignition. 

•"Haunt Taunt" A one-page, five-panel gag strip that isn't credited, but appears to be the work of Harry Lucey, whose name is listed among the artists but not the writers on the credits page.

•"Monster Bash" A two-page strip by Samm Schwartz with some groan-inducing wordplay that culminates in a pretty strong gag at the very end.

•"Clothes Make the Monster" The strongest story in this slim collection, this 22-pager is the work of writer/pencil artist Fernando Ruiz and inker Mark McKenna. And because this one was strong enough to make me curious, I looked it up on The Grand Comics Database, and it seems to have originally been published in 2009's Archie & Friends #135. 

In it, most of the gang head to a new costume shop in town in order to get costumes for Halloween. The witchy-looking proprietor outfits them all with costumes of the basic Universal monster-inspired varieties, but these are no ordinary costumes, as they literally transform the wearers into the monsters they are dressed as. 

Unfortunately, her plan is frustrated by the fact that the teens' personalities—or, this being Archie Comics, each teen's single personality trait—overwhelms their monstrous impulses, so that a vampire Jughead is more interested in mooching fries than sucking blood, a mummy Chuck heads straight for the comics shop, etc. 

I was a little annoyed that Dilton, who ends up saving the day, is shown working on an experiment that makes him too late to join his friends at the shop, but that experiment never comes into play in the story. Is there no Dilton's Experiment equivalent to Chekov's gun in Archie Comics...?

Pretty nice art, right? 

Anyway, if you're at all curious about this holiday one-shot, I would recommend seeing if your local library has Hoopla and reading it for free. I don't think 40 brand-new, high-quality pages are worth $7.99, let alone 10 so-so new pages and 30 pages of reprints. God knows your eight bucks can go a lot further at archiecomics.com and, last time I was in the grocery story, I noticed a much fatter Archie Comics Digest Halloween Special for just $9.99.

REVIEWED: 

Shinobi Undercover Vols. 1-2 (Viz Media) This turned out to be a lot of fun. It imagines secret organizations of good and bad ninjas operating the behind the scenes in modern Japan and focuses on one young ninja who is as socially awkward as he is gifted at fighting and the ninja arts. Assigned to go undercover as a high school student to secretly bodyguard a young woman who the bad ninjas want to kidnap, he has to battle an assortment of colorful opponents (easy enough) and deal with talking to fellow students (not so easy). At its core, it seems like a fairly typical shonen fight comic, but its premise recalls 21 Jump Street (at least the old TV show; I never saw the far more recent movies) and the ordinary high school life elements reminded me a bit of Skip and Loafer, while the socially awkward star put me in the mid of Komi Can't Communicate. An interesting assortment of touchstones, to say the least, then. Here's my review at Good Comics for Kids. Viz seems to be publishing it at a bimonthly pace at this point. 

*In the backmatter, there is an apparently earlier sketch of Batman's "final form" costume, an all-black costume that features the jack o' lantern-like mask, but foregoes the armor and the huge, mechanical-looking wings for a cape. The costume is still cool and scary, but less elaborate, and one that it easier to imagine Batman doing his regular Batman stuff in. 

**I would love to see a Campbell-pencilled, Eastman-inked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic someday, though, based on how great their cover collaborations with that division of labor looked during Campbell's run on TMNT. So she should definitely draw more ninja turtles one day. In fact, if I could wish a comic book into existence, it would probably be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Daredevil crossover, written by Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman and Frank Miller, with art by Campbell and Eastman (with Klaus Janson and/or Miller drawing flashbacks, dream sequences or other special scenes.

***That said, the Justice Society remembering the events of COIE and holding a funeral for the dead Earth-2 characters confused me when I read about those events recently-ish in Last Days of the Justice Society of America, and commenter Jacob T. Levy had to set me straight about how the Crisis was perceived by its survivors in the immediate aftermath versus how it came to be perceived by DC characters later on.

Review: Blue Box Vol. 1

I recently saw an ad for this series in the back of another Viz book, which referred to the protagonists as "sports-crossed lovers", and that was enough of a hook to grab me. He's a high school badminton player, and she's on the basketball team: Can they make it work? Sure, I'll check that out to see for myself!

The male lead is junior high student Taiki Inomata. That's him on the right, with the badminton racket over his shoulder. He's quite devoted to the sport, and works super-hard at it, going to the school gym early every morning to practice.

Someone else is also always there early, practicing hard at her sport: Chinatsu Kano, a first year in high school who is already a basketball star...and extremely popular with the boys at their sport-centric school (That's her on the left, obviously).

Taiki is smitten with her, and after a kinda sorta first page meet-cute, wherein she accidentally throws a basketball into his face and then, to make it up to him, gives him a candy bar, Taiki tells his friend and teammate "I'd sure love to marry her". He then spends a panel imagining what it might be like to be an adult living under the same roof as Chinatsu.

He'll get his wish before the first volume is over...well, sort of.

We learn early on that both Taiki and Chinatsu's mothers played on the same basketball team when they were younger. Taiki is briefly distraught when he learns that Chinatsu's family is moving overseas, and he thinks he will never see his crush again. And then he is relieved when he finds that while her family is moving, she will be staying to attend school and play on the basketball team...she'll just be staying with a family friend. And then he is shocked when he wakes up one morning to find Chinatsu in his kitchen; apparently his own mother is the family friend Chinatsu will be staying with, and now Taiki and Chinatsu actually are living under the same roof...! (As to why Taiki's parents didn't mention this fact to him beforehand, I guess because it was more dramatic if they didn't...?)

The guy-living-at-close-quarters-with-his-crush seemed a bit of a cliche to me, and I found that a lot less interesting than the pair's budding friendship (and maybe, eventually, more...?), and the fact that what seems to attract each to the other isn't their looks or anything else so much as their dedication to their respective sports, the lens through which Taiki seems to see the world (When first talking to his friend about his crush, for example, they use sports metaphors to discuss the possibility of a relationship with her; "Set your sights on advancing to the quarter-finals," his friend Kyo advises him, "Like, get her to know your name. Or ask for her number.").

Eventually, he sets his sites on getting to nationals in badminton, and extreme longsho. This, of course, means training super-hard, even harder than before...which seems to endear him to Chinatsu further.

The pair isn't on a glide path to being happy couple, though. There are, of course, complications. 

One is Hina Chono, Taiki's teasing classmate and a rhythmic gymnastics prodigy who might have a crush on him...at least, it sure seems like it to some of their classmates. 

And then there is Haryu, who is Chinatsu's classmate and friend (and who calls her by the nickname "Chii," while Taiki calls her "Chinatsu Senpai") and who is also on the badminton team. In fact, if Taiki really wants to make it to nationals, he's going to have to beat Haryu, making the upperclassman a potential rival in more ways than one.

So even at this early point, we have potential romantic rivals in the cast, and the makings of various love triangles. What Haryu and Hina have in common with the leads are that they too are completely devoted to their sports too, making them admirable and attractive, and giving them things in common with the leads as well. 

Now, as little as I knew about high school boys' volleyball before reading Haikyu!! (which I loved) or soccer before trying Blue Lock (which I decided wasn't for me), I know still less about badminton, and found it a weird sport to feature in a high school sports romantic comedy comic (Is badminton big in Japan, perhaps?). Odd, and a little funny, if I'm being honest.

Still, manga-ka Kouji Miura tries to make it look cool and action-packed. This isn't a sports manga in the way that Haikyu!! is—sports occur within, but the playing and outcomes of the matches aren't the focus—and so when Taiki and Haryu play badminton against one another, we don't see how each point is scored, but just a few moments of the match as it's played. 

But what we do see looks pretty cool, the lines that compose the characters' arms and rackets blur to show their movement, the backgrounds occasionally become speedlines, and Miura draws the "path" the shuttlecock takes from racket to floor with the same kind of focused, laser beam-like line that Haruichi Furudate would draw the volleyball during spikes.

Near the end of the volume, Miura draws this double-page splash during the Taiki vs. Haryu match, the volume's most obvious attempt to make the playing of badminton seem cool and maybe even a little badass:

I admit that I found it a bit funnier than I did dramatic.

There are a few scenes of the girls and their sports too, but only very short sequences in this volume.

Perhaps I will come to understand and appreciate badminton in future volumes, as I came to understand and appreciate volleyball before. So far, we see one key different between it and basketball; badminton is basically a solo sport when it comes to competition, whereas basketball is a team sport, and Taiki mentions that what he likes about badminton is it's all on him to succeed or fail (My high school sports were cross country and track, which are both technically team sports, but which your performance is down to you as an individual, rather than a team, for the most part).

It's all pretty well-executed and does what a first volume should: It makes me want to read the next one (I've actually already ordered volumes 2 and 3 from the library!). The romance/sports hybrid nature of it turned out to be just as appealing as it seemed.

Now, why do you think it's called Blue Box...? Is that some badminton or sports reference I don't get...?

A couple more things about Punisher: Confederacy of Dunces (Plus a little bit about "Welcome Back, Frank)

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, about Marvel's new trade collection of Punisher: Confederacy of Dunces, there were a few other aspects I thought were of some interest that I just couldn't quite fit comfortably there. So, I wanted to mention them here. 

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Three jokes I don't think Marvel would have published if these issues had come out today:

1.) Transgressive of transphobic? Ennis has a reputation for pushing the envelope (an understatement if ever there was one), and this means his jokes are often crass, tasteless and seem calculated to offend...jokes of the "I can't believe they actually did that!" variety. 

Of the works of Ennis' that I've read, this often includes him "punching down", making jokes about out groups or particular social minorities, jokes on subjects that aren't generally considered fair game...especially today (Think jokes about overweight people, alcoholism, the homeless, gay panic, etc.)

I obviously can't say if Ennis makes these jokes because he's trying to be intentionally transgressive and attemping to shock or offend his audience—certainly a book like The Punisher is full of over-the-top material—or if he sincerely thinks this stuff is funny, and it therefore reflects his own personal beliefs.

Regardless, a lot of his jokes from the '90s and '00s seem particularly cringe-inducing today. I noticed three in "Confederacy of Dunces" which I have a hard time imagining Marvel keeping in were they publishing the series anew today, rather than collecting a modern classic. 

The first is above. It comes on a page that introduces the perpetual loser Soap into this particular arc, a character whom Ennis is constantly heaping various misfortunes and indignities on, as well as the sarcastic bartender Kevin, who always belittles and bullies Soap, and their relationship to one another. The page also reminds readers of Soap's current relationship with The Punisher, who enters two panels after the one above ("Here's your pal to cheer ya up; maybe he's heard some jokes or somethin'," Kevin says when he notices The Punisher enter the bar to talk to Soap. "Though I seriously feckin' doubt it...").

Now the panel before the one I posted above has Soap seated at the bar, holding his face in his hands, and saying to Kevin, "I've made another of my terrible mistakes..."

Kevin's dialogue above alludes to that mistake and implies that Soap hooked up with a woman that was actually "a fella." 

Now, it's been so long since I read this Punisher run, in full, I can't recall if this refers to something that happened on-panel in the previous issue, or something off-panel, brought up only to characterize Soap and Kevin and remind readers of their relationship.

Therefore, I don't know if the implication is that Soap had an encounter with a transwoman, or a transvestite or, this being an Ennis comic, simply a man dressed like a woman for no particular reason. But regardless, the scene certainly evokes the harmful "trap" stereotype so often applied to transwomen. 

And it certainly further implies that a straight man being intimate with a transwoman is, well, the dialogue has Soap talking of "the horror, the humiliation, the endless misery" of his life. 

2.) "Homo!" Another Soap gag. While waiting for the bar to open so he can spend his day drinking and being insulted by Kevin, Soap is approached by some off-brand Girl Scouts (Who seem to be on the older side, as they are nearly as tall as Soap himself).

He offers to buy a box of the cookies they are selling, and when one responds sarcastically ("Just the one?...Oh, boy. Last of the big friggin' spenders"), Soap changes his mind and starts to lecture her on her attitude. She kicks him in the balls and, when he's on the ground, the three Girl Scouts all start kicking him and yelling at him: "Keep your stinkin' money, fat boy!" and "Friggin' pervert tried to touch us!" and, well, what you see in the close-up above. 

I was frankly pretty surprised to see the word "Homo!" in there. It's a word I heard bandied about quite a bit when I was in school—that is, in the '80s and '90s—along with the R-slur, the F-slur and "gay"-to-mean-"lame", but I haven't really heard since. (In fact, I only seem to see it used online now in the context of the phrase "no homo", always used sarcastically to make fun of gay panic.)

Would teenagers in 2004 been shouting it...? I don't know. But I'm pretty damn certain teenagers in a Marvel comic published in 2026 would not. ("Bastard" also sounds more like a thing an Ennis character would say than a 21st century teenage girl would say, doesn't it...?)

3.) "Bitch?" Finally, in the penultimate issue of the arc, The Punisher is trying to goad the captive and amnesiac Bruce Banner into transforming into The Hulk, in the hopes of using him as a weapon against the superheroes who have teamed up to take him down. 

He initially does so by slapping Banner around for a few panels and, once Frank has insulted Banner and smashed his face against a wall, Banner seems to remember exactly who he is and realize what's about to happen. 

As you can see above, he urges The Punisher to run but, instead of doing so, The Punisher kicks him in the balls and calls him a "bitch." This finally turns Banner's face green and seems to be what pushes him over the edge.

Again, this is a word I heard used as an insult a lot growing up, but less and less as I joined the adult world. Is this because adults generally don't use it like that, or because the word itself is no longer used as much, given that it seems more popularly understood to have misogynistic connotations in addition to the negative ones it's always had...?

Again, I don't know. Obviously, Ennis has Frank using it to try to piss of Banner as much as possible, so, in this context, I don't think it's meant to imply that Frank Castle is the sort of guy who might use the word, but it's telling that it works on Banner, isn't it?

Anyway, another line of dialogue I have a hard time imagining Marvel printing today.

***********************

Can we talk about Spider-Man's spider-sense for a moment...? I confess that I've never quite understood exactly how it was meant to work. 

Wikipedia calls it a "precognitive" ability and says he can use it to sense danger. In the newspaper comic strips and the Spider-Man comics I've read, I generally see it used as a sort of vague, early sense that something's not quite right, usually draws with wiggly lines emanating from Peter Parker's face, which will sometimes be drawn with the mask symbolically over half his face.

As to how exactly it works, it seems to vary from writer to writer and story to story, depending on what the writer wants to happen in a particular scene. One would think it would make it impossible for an enemy to strike Spider-Man—or at least very, very hard to do so—but he seems to get punched, kicked, zapped, whacked by mechanical tentacles and blown up with pumpkin bombs on the regular.

Anyway, I find myself wondering specifically how it works because of a scene in "Confederacy of Dunces," wherein The Punisher lures Spider-Man into a trap.

During "Round Two" of his battle against Spidey, Daredevil and Wolverine, The Punisher has prepared ways to temporarily neutralize each of them. 

When it comes to tackling Spider-Man, who out-powers him in every conceivable way, Frank waits for Spider-Man to come after him in a room which he had previously wired with mines and pressure plates. As soon as Spidey enters the darkened room, his right foot breaks through one of the boards and lands on a pressure plate. Frank flicks the light on and makes sure that Spider-Man knows the parameters of the trap before leaving him, taking Spider-Man out of the fight until he can somehow extract himself from the trap.

So, my question: Would this work?  

Or would Spider-Man's spidey-sense have warned him of the presence of the mines and pressure plates in the floor, and he could have thus used it to navigate the room without stepping on any of them?

Now, to complicate the question. While The Punisher is willing to fight the superheroes in order to preserve his own freedom, he doesn't actually want to kill any of them, and, in fact, goes to great lengths not to kill them (This because while they may act as his adversaries here, they're not actually evil people in the way that his victims are; in this particular arc, Ennis has The Punisher detail the horrific crimes of the men in a room he has just gunned down, demonstrating to readers just how bad these bad guys actually are and, one assumes, help ensure that readers don't feel too badly for Frank's victims).

That means that the pressure plates and mines aren't really meant to go off at all and are a just a feint to trick Spider-Man into staying put and not joining the fight. Spider-Man is doubtful of this, even when Daredevil explains it to him:

Remember what I told you: Castle wont' take an innocent life. He'll beat us and cripple us and terrorize us, but he won't go all out to kill us.

All he wanted to do here was take you out of the fight. Those mines have no explosive in them, or they're not wired to the detonator pad, or something.

But they will not go off when you lift up your foot.

And, of course, he's right.

So, did Spider-Man's spider-sense not warn him of the presence of the pressure plate and the mines because they didn't pose a real danger, and thus they didn't trigger his spidey-sense?

And, if that were the case, wouldn't Spidey know that the mines didn't pose a real threat, or nah?

One more complication: Note that last panel above. Artist John McCrea draws wiggly lines emanating from half of Spider-Man's face, which is how his spidey-sense going off is always depicted. So, is his spidey-sense going off there? And in reaction to what, exactly? (Can it be tricked, for example? Can The Punisher telling Spider-Man of the threat trigger the spider-sense, even if he's lying...?)

Yes, I know. I have now officially thought way too much about this scene.

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Remember a few weeks back, when I was talking about my difficulty in finding good graphic novels to start my comics-curious, 14-year-old nephew on? In that post, I talked about how hard it was coming up with a high-quality, evergreen, easily accessible trade featuring the X-Men or Spider-Man to hand him, and wrote that "Unlike, say, Batman, Spider-Man doesn't seem to have a Dark Knight Returns or a Batman: Year One (Or an Arkham Asylum or a Gothic or a Long Halloween or a Hush or a Court of Owls or...)"

I had been thinking about that off and on for the last few weeks now. Specifically, the fact that I could easily recommend a graphic novel or three or twelve for most relatively popular DC characters, but not so much with any Marvel character.

Now, I've always had a DC bias in my reading habits, so I'm not the best person to weigh in here, but it seems to me that Marvel Comics has always focused on producing comic book series, and had barely ever even dabbled in producing either original graphic novels or limited series or story arcs that could be collected into trades and then sold as graphic novels to the emerging market for them; not in the wake of Dark Knight Returns/Watchmen/Maus in the late 1980s, not when a market for trades emerged in the late 1990s, not when the Big Two started collecting everything they published to cater to the newer "wait-for-the-trade" audience, not when manga became a bookstore phenomenon, and not today, when bookstores and libraries are common places readers find comics. 

Marvel, stubbornly, seems to still be a comic book publisher whose only real "graphic novels" are trade collections of their regular comics, while DC has spent decades catering to readers who get comics in places that aren't specialty comic shops. 

Like, whenever I think of the more famous Marvel storylines I know of, they almost always tend to be runs on titles rather than stories that can be collected into a single pair of covers. It seems rare for Marvel to actually publish something that 1.) features a popular character, 2.) is by a noteworthy creator, 3.) is distinct enough to offer a particular take on a character or concept, 4.) is easily accessible to a general audience, 5.) is somewhere between 100-400 pages and —and this part is important—6.) is actually in print and available for purchase.

As you've been reading, these last few paragraphs, you've probably been thinking of counter-examples. I'd like to hear them in the comments as, again, I am not a Marvel guy. I've been thinking of counter-examples too, and haven't come up with many that quite seem to fit the six criteria in the previous paragraph (Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz's Elektra: Assassin would seem to fit the bill, for example, but I just looked it up on Amazon, and it looks like it was last published in 2019...and is not currently in print. I don't think I've ever seen it outside of the rack of a comic shop, either). 

Much of the Marvel Premier Collection line, which is where I would expect to find what Marvel considers its graphic novels, features books that are parts of runs: Greg Pak and company's Planet Hulk, Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four and Avengers, Grant Morrison's New X-Men, etc. They feature stories, sure, but they are each only parts of bigger, longer storylines. For a while I considered Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's Civil War, which was a limited series...but (in addition to not being very good, and reading worse and worse each time I revisit it) it was such a big "event" that Civil War proper is just part of a massive story too, comprised of hundreds of pages, some of them quite relevant, that aren't collected between the covers...and would be too numberous to do so (What about Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's The Visions...? I've never read that, but it seems to be quite limited in scope...)

In the end, I came up with two Marvel comics that I think fit my criteria: Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' 1994 Marvels and Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon and Jimmy Palmiotti's 2000 The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank. Two very different books, but also two books that you can hand pretty much any reader, and they could easily make sense of and, I imagine, find things to appreciate about (Although the former is obviously a bit more geared to a popular, general audience than the latter; I wouldn't be in a rush to hand my nephew any of Ennis' Punisher works and say "Here, you like Marvel superheroes, right?").

Actually, I'm not 100% on whether or not Marvels is currently in print or not. Amazon shows a 2018 "Remastered" edition, and there doesn't seem to be a Marvel Premier Edition version of it for some reason.

Thinking some more, I thought of a couple others that standalone as actual graphic novels and that Marvel seems to agree are significant enough to keep around. 

There's Millar and McNiven's Wolverine: Old Man Logan, which I never read (I had read enough Mark Millar by the time it came out) but that seems to be a discrete story of its own (Marvel's efforts to turn it into a "world" of its own, and to import the title character into their mainline universe for a while aside). There's a Marvel Premier Edition of that. 

And there's Roger Stern and Mike Mignola's Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment. That seems to have been out-of-print for some time now (Marvel seems to have stuck it in a Doctor Strange Epic Collection in 2023...I could have sworn I heard Marvel was re-releasing it, though). (Then again, is either Doctor a Spider-Man or X-Men level character...? Probably not). 

Do any of you have any other suggestions of something akin to Marvels or Welcome Back, Frank or Old Man Logan...? Something that reads like a standalone graphic novel, rather than part of a run or series  or series of series...? 

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I suppose I should mention that there are a decent amount of recent standalone works starring Marvel characters that are meant for general audiences who find their books in bookstores and libraries. They just aren't published by Marvel but licensed to other publishers. 

These include Jeffrey Brown's Hulk Teach books (Scholastic/Graphix), Mike Maihack's Spider-Man "Mighty Marvel Team-Up" books and Dean Hale and Douglas Holgate's Iron Man "Mighty Marvel Team-Up" books (Harry N. Abrams), Patrick McDonnell's The Super Hero's Journey, Alex Ross' Fantastic Four: Full Circle and Marvel Dimensions and Chip Kidd and Michael Cho's The Avengers in The Veracity Trap (Harry N. Abrams again) and the standalone Spider-Man manga Fake Red (Viz Media; they also publish Kizuna, Octo-Girl and Shadow Warrior, but those are all manga series).

On Punisher: Confederacy of Dunces

I didn't realize that Marvel was going to be publishing a new collection of "Confederacy of Dunces", the story arc that ran through the last five issues of Garth Ennis' 2001-2004 The Punisher ongoing series, until I saw it waiting to be shelved at the library.  

It was the cover that caught my eye (as covers should). I noticed the big "PUNISHER" and skull logo in the middle of the cover, the odd assortment of characters and the very distinct art of John McCrea, who has long been one of my favorite comics artists. The previous collection of the arc, 2004's Punisher Vol. 6, used series cover artist Tim Bradstreet's cover for The Punisher #37. It was a nice enough cover, a highly realistic, portrait-style image of The Punisher, but it looked like all of Bradstreet's coves for the series, featuring as it did a weathered-looking Frank Castle among recurring elements like skulls, guns and bullets.

 Like so many Marvel covers of that period, Bradstreet's cover eventually became a sort of visual white noise, offering no indication of what might be occurring within that particular comic, or how it might differ from the issue before or the issue after it (Here, scan this gallery of Bradstreet's covers, for example; how would you choose one over another? Some indicate that Spider-Man or Wolverine guest-star within, sure, but there's nothing in the covers for the five issues that make up this arc to indicate that Spider-Man, Wolverine and Daredevil all guest-star in them, as the three team up with one another to take on Castle).

This new collection, released in 2026, has a far better cover then, I think, as it features all of the characters involved and is also drawn by the same guy who drew the interiors. But I think it goes a little too far. For example, The Hulk is on the cover (and the copy on the back cover also mentions "things go from bad to worse when the Incredible Hulk shows up!"). 

This is a pretty major spoiler for the story, after all, revealing a plot point which Ennis quite carefully keeps from the reader until a double-page splash at the end of the penultimate issue. The arc involves The Punisher busting up an unusual auction taking place among the various factions of the New York criminal underworld, the prize being a little naked guy lying unconscious in the back of a van...and a videotape revealing who the guy is. 

As said guy has amnesia (and McCrea draws him sans glasses), no one except The Punisher knows that this guy is actually Bruce Banner until Castle forces him to transform into The Hulk and points him in the direction of the trio of heroes who have decided enough is enough and it is time to bring down The Punisher once and for all.

Well, there's that, and the fact that the new cover is a composite of figures from three different panels; someone apparently chopped up McCrea's interior art and rearranged it rather awkwardly on the cover. They probably should have just commissioned McCrea to draw a new, original cover. 

As I said before, this was the last arc of Ennis' first Punisher ongoing, which followed he and pencil artist Steve Dillon's 12-issue, 2000-2001 maxiseries, which has since been collected as Welcome Back, Frank (Most recently in a "Marvel Premier Collection" for just $14.99). Dillon and inker Jimmy Palmiotti followed Ennis onto the ongoing as well, and that was the team for much of the 37-issue run, with some fill-ins. 

McCrea, who of course worked with Ennis on DC's The Demon and Hitman, took over as series pencil artist at the very end, drawing the last five issues, the "Confederacy of Dunces" arc. (Previous to this, Ennis and McCrea had also collaborated on a pair of Marvel projects in 2001: The Tangled Web arc "The Thousand" and that the miniseries Hulk Smash). 

Obviously, McCrea knew how to draw an Ennis script as well as anyone at that point, and he was a perfect artist for Ennis' particular take on The Punisher character, a sort of black comedy that juxtaposed the absurdity of superhero comics with the single-minded, sociopathic killer of a protagonist and reveled in the friction that doing so produced. (That, and Ennis, Dillon, McCrea and others seemed to delight in the relatively slack chain that the Marvel Knights imprint and mature readers rating gave them to present Castle as an ultra-violent mass-murderer; the stories were often quite silly, sure, but, in their way, also took the idea of a vigilante with The Punisher's astronomical body count more seriously than the previous decades' worth of Punisher comics ever had.)

Also, Ennis and company's Punisher comics were all set firmly in the Marvel Universe, which meant Daredevil and Spider-Man and others might pop by now and then. Ennis' next Punisher ongoing would be a "Max" series, and thus non-canonical (And, outside of the Marvel Universe, they tended to be a lot more realistic and a lot more violent...and, if you ask me, a lot less fun. Is a guy who has colorfully, creatively killed hundreds of people, even if they were all bad guys, someone who should be cheered for? Or recoilded from?).

Anyway, "Confederacy of Dunces" was basically the grand conclusion of Ennis, Dillon and company's take on The Punisher, that which was staked out in "Welcome Back, Frank." The "dunces" of the title, which was borrowed from John Kennedy Toole's 1980 novel, are, of course, the Marvel heroes seen on the cover and already mentioned: Daredevil, Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Despite that title, Ennis and McCrea treat Daredevil and Spider-Man more or less seriously, whereas it is Wolvie who is presented as a clown: Rather silly-looking and always talking in goofy tough-guy cliches (McCrea draws Wolverine sans costume, as he wasn't really wearing one at the time, and his hair looks like an exaggerated version of how Hugh Jackman's Wolverine hair looked in the live-action movies; that is, like a more-or-less normal head of hair, with two "ears" rising out of it for some reason. The "ears" here, however, are long and pointy, more Batman-like than wolfman-esque).

Now, Marvel's heroes deciding that they really should do something about the fact that there's a killer vigilante in New York City, where most of them live and operate, makes sense; especially since, as this story tells us, Castle has killed "thousands" and has been doing so for "thirty years." (I'm not sure what to make of that timespan; debuting in 1974, The Punisher had been around for 30 years at that point, but that's assuming Marvel characters aged in real time. Like, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to believe that Spider-Man is in his late fifties and Daredevil in his early sixties in this story, even if the young, fit-looking Castle is supposed to be a veteran of the Vietnam War.)

As for why it is these three heroes in particular and not, like, The Fantastic Four and The Avengers, well, obviously Spider-Man and Daredevil run in the same circles as Frank, but, in the context of this series, all three had previously guest-starred and, as Daredevil says when he summons the other two to propose the mission to them, they all got "put through the ringer." 

In Daredevil's case, the "ringer" was mostly a moral and emotional one, whereas Frank used Spider-Man as a human shield during a rematch with The Russian, and Wolverine...well, Ennis had Frank exploiting Wolverine's by-then amped-up healing factor by subjecting him to cartoonishly over-the-top acts of violence. Like running him over with a steamroller ("An' then--th' final iggomininny!" as Wolvie tells it here, "The dirty frikker drives a steamroller over my head!")

Had there been a story previous to this one where various Marvel heroes decided to treat The Punisher as the supervillain he essentially is...? If so, I had never read or heard of it.

Anyway, because these three had such recent history with Frank, with The Punisher getting the better of them each (And of course he did; it was his book they were appearing in), their appearances in this arc make for various callbacks, and give Ennis' final arc on the series a real sense of climax. 

Surely, no reader would have much concern if Frank found himself facing off against any number of armed criminals, but facing off against a group of superheroes determined to finally take him down? Well, that's suspenseful ("Any one of these three could dismantle me in about a second," Frank tells himself during the first of three rounds he fights against the trio).

The arc isn't just one big fight scene, of course. The Punisher is going about his regular punishing while Daredevil proposes the alliance to the other two, and, once he gets wind of the big underworld auction, he of course wants to be there. Not because he cares about what is being auctioned, but because he wants to gun down everyone present for the bidding (This he starts to do in a big double-page splash; on the previous page, bad guys notice him arriving and shout from off-panel "NO!" and "God! No!!", while Frank's thoughts are an almost sexual response of "Yes. Oh yes."

Having killed all of the attendees, he ends up in possession of the amnesiac Banner, who he keeps locked away and feeds stew with suspicious insistence...another aspect that will only be explained at the climax.

And then there are subplots involving characters Dave, a kid and neighbor of Frank's from "Welcome Back, Frank", and Soap, an unlucky, pathetic, sad-sack police officer who was assigned to The Punisher Task Force and has been acting as Frank's kinda sorta Commissioner Gordon throughout the series. Both of them get send-offs in this arc as well. 

As for the Punisher vs. the superheroes conflict, as I stated above, it basically consists of three rounds. 

In the first, Frank manages to outsmart them and make his escape by distracting them (which he does by doing the opposite of what one might think he might do when challenged to a fight), sparking a berserker rage in Wolverine that forces the other two to focus on stopping their teammate rather than him.

In the second, he plans ahead and has come up with ways to neutralize Spider-Man and Daredevil, while poor Wolverine takes a rocket from a rocket-launcher to the gut, skeletonizing much of his body until he can grow his "meat" back. (Frank still gets the shit kicked out of him by Daredevil here, though, ultimately only defeating him through some lucky circumstances. Wolverine aside maybe, Ennis does play "fair" in the conflict, coming up with plausible reasons for how Frank might actually triumph over guys who are more skilled and/or more powerful than him.)

And, in the final, he wields the rampaging Hulk like a weapon against them, not entirely unlike the way he famously weaponized some polar bears against foes in "Welcome Back, Frank" (Here, Wolverine gets punched all the way to Boston, where he lands claws first on a poor duck in a pond).

As the conflict winds down, Ennis has The Punisher try to explain to a pinned and helpless Daredevil why it's useless for them to try to bring him to justice anyway: 

Look at the lengths I've had to go to not to kill you.

This fight you've picked wastes everybody's time. Let this be an end to it. 

Once and for all. 

...

I understand.

You want to stop me murdering criminals by taking me off the streets. That's stupid. Send me to prison and I'll just kill everyone I meet.

There's only one way to stop me. You know that.

If you haven't got it in you to do it, don't waste my time.

Will that argument convince Daredevil? One would assume not, and that the pair would thus be locked in an eternal struggle of sorts. But because Frank makes this little speech in the last issue of the series, well, it's not Ennis who will have to deal with the question of why Marvel's heroes don't stop The Punisher. 

The last four pages feature a sort of coda, one that intentionally echoes the events of "Welcome Back, Frank." In that story, Ennis and Dillon had Frank rather famously throw a criminal to his death of the Empire State Building. 

Here he hauls another criminal to the top of a building and throws him off, staring intensely at the falling figure until we get a big, red sound effect of "SPLAAAT" to let us know the poor bastard has hit the bottom. 

Interestingly, the section features The Punisher thinking about the events of 9/11, Marvel's in-comics reaction to which were...varied, to say the least (Twenty-five years later, it is John Romita Jr's drawing of Doctor Doom shedding a tear at Ground Zero that I remember most strongly).

"Four years ago," Frank says to himself in a narration box, referring to 2001, when "Welcome Back, Frank" was completed...and Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center (Again, Ennis suggests that time passes in the Marvel Universe at the same rate it does in ours). "The view was different then," he says, and continues:

I remember the day the Towers came down, not for all the sound and fury, not for the streets awash with smoke, but for the looks on the faces of the people.

The stricken horror of innocence killed stone dead. 

See? I thought.

See now? 

See what the world is really like?

The City, now, it knew. 

It had known all along.

For a moment I seem to hear it talking.

Frank, it says: Don't ever go away again.

But I'm not going anywhere. 

I need you, Frank. Says New York City.

Here Ennis seems to suggest that, as The Punisher sees it at least, 9/11 was to New York City what Frank's family being gunned down to criminals was to him, and now the city (perhaps the country?) was ready to embrace the remorseless killing of killers, to excuse the suspensions of such niceties as trials and human rights in the pursuit of a just vengeance.

Was he right? I'm not happy to report that Ennis' Punisher maybe got America's number there. 

Despite Frank's promise not to go anywhere, he would eventually go away again...although that seemed to have more to do with Marvel struggling to find a way to keep the character relevant while simultaneously distancing The Punisher and they themselves from all the bad people who had co-opted his iconic skull symbol in the real world. Many of whom tended to be...well, not people that a comic book publisher/business of any kind would want to associate with.

There were some attempts to replace the skull symbol on his chest with other logos and, as I understood it, he was even given a weird "ending" to his story at one point.

At the moment, I have no idea where The Punisher is in the Marvel Universe. If he's alive or dead, active or temporarily retired. But Marvel did publish this trade, so it's not like they've abandoned him. And he did play a prominent role in this summer's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of the most successful movies of the year and, if I understand it correctly, ever. 

So perhaps Frank is right. He's not going anywhere...and, even if he does seem to disappear for a while now and then, he'll be back sooner or later.

**********************

While rereading this story arc, there were a few things that caught my eye as worth talking more about—some dialogue that I don't think Marvel would have published in 2026 even if they allowed it in 2004, some questions about how Spider-Man's spider-sense actually works—that didn't quite fit into this post, so we'll return to this story arc (and maybe Ennis' earlier Punisher stories in general) again next post. 

More words than anyone could possibly want on 2025's Nightwing Vol. 1: Bludhaven (collecting the 1995 miniseries and the first eight issues of the ongoing)

While I read a lot of Batman comics in the '90s, I sat out Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel's Nightwing ongoing series. I mean, as a teenager and college student with limited income, I had to draw the line somewhere, and that seemed like a good place to draw it. 

I had obviously read a lot of Dixon, and while he was not a particularly colorful nor imaginative writer, he was great at coming up with new crimes and heists on a monthly basis, and penning comics that read like mini action movies that happened to have a superhero in them. I wasn't familiar with McDaniel at all. I imagine if the book had been drawn by Norm Breyfogle or Tim Sale or Vince Giarrano or Jim Balent, I might have snapped it up, but it was not (I am now trying to imagine the book drawn by any of the above and can't quite see it).

Also, I remember balking at the very existence of Bludhaven, the fact that Gotham City happened to have a neighboring big city that was even more corrupt and crime-ridden that no one had ever mentioned before. That was too much for Teenage Caleb's suspension of disbelief (Grown-up Caleb doesn't care and, in fact, I now see it was completely integral to making the Nightwing ongoing interesting; having Dick as Batman Lite fighting crime in Gotham City just wouldn't have worked).

So why am I reading it now, especially given the fact that the reputations of the series' creators are now so, as Travis Hedge Coke pointed out on my Bluesky post about it put it, "tarnished"...? Well, as I explained a few posts back, my teenage nephew is starting to get into comics, and  he said he liked Nightwing. I ordered this particular trade paperback online for him and, when it arrived, I noticed that not only did it collect the beginning of the monthly, but also a four-issue 1995 miniseries penned by the late Denny O'Neil. 

That was of particular interest to me, as not only had I not read the miniseries, but I don't think I had ever even known it existed. Released when it was, the mini, penciled by some guy named Greg Land and inked by a Mike Sellers, would have slotted in between the events of "Prodigal", the multi-book event storyline during which Dick Grayson temporarily became Batman after "KnightsEnd", and the launch of the Nightwing ongoing.

So, after giving my nephew a brand-new copy for his birthday ("Can you pose like that?" his mother asked after he unwrapped it, trying to strike the pose Nightwing did on McDaniel's cover for the trade), I ordered a copy from the library to read for myself...and, of course, blog about.

Having now read the four-issue miniseries, I'm not entirely sure why it was published (Pretty great Brian Stelfreeze cover though, right? Unfortunately, it has Dick in his previous costume, and probably wouldn't have worked for the collection cover; Stelfreeze also drew the cover of the second issue, and McDaniel provided those for issues #2 and #3, neither of which are quite as strong, and McDaniel covered the fourth and final issue).

It's not exactly that nothing happens, but not much of real consequence does. The plot provides a couple of potential big, life-altering events for the Dick Grayson—he decides to quit superheroing and try out life as a civilian, he meets a new love interest and he learns a secret that might mean he was wrong about who actually killed his parents—but, by the fourth issue, all of those things are resolved in such a way that he's pretty much right back where he was at the beginning of the series, albeit it wearing a new costume. 

If the point was simply to get him into a new costume, DC probably didn't need to a publish a 90-page story. Surely that could have happened in Nightwing #1...or simply off-panel. I wonder if perhaps the reason DC published a Nightwing miniserires was to test the waters and gauge market interest in a Nightwing ongoing series.  DC had just published a one-shot—Nightwing: Alfred's Return—a few months previous, and the monthly launched about nine months after the mini concluded.

Regardless of the why of it, let's discuss the what of it.

The opening scene finds Nightwing, still wearing the costume seen on the cover above, atop a rooftop at night, looking down on a quartet of very large men in an alley, one of whom is about to execute a young woman with a pistol. He intervenes, chattily beating everyone up and saving the girl...but not before the leader of the gang forcefully drives her face into a brick wall, knocking off her glasses and knocking her out.

"Without her glasses, she's beautiful," Nightwing thinks, and then follows that up with "I can't believe I thought that.

For reference, here she is with glasses:

And here she is without: 

Jeez, what does Dick have against glasses...? If he went to the high school in She's All That, I suppose he would have thought Rachael Leigh Cook was some sort of hideous monster before Jenna Malone gave her a makeover. 

Ironically, the last I knew, Dick was in a relationship with Barbara Gordon, who famously wears glasses.

Anyway, Batman shows up and the two glare at one another as if they are about to fight, but, instead, they chat a bit about what just happened.

The girl is Miggie Webster, she had been kidnapped and the cops were unable to crack the case...but Nightwing was able to find and rescue her in the nick of time. The former Dynamic Duo talk about their history over the course of a few pages of climbing a wall, swinging from extremely thick ropes that get all McFarlaney below where they hold them and running across rooftops.

At the end of the scene, Dick says he's going to quit the hero business, and hands Batman his old costume: "Put it in a trophy case. Give it to the Salvation Army. Burn it."

The next day, Dick goes to see Miggie in the hospital, and gives this weird-ass explanation:

You probably don't remember me...My name is Dick Grayson. I was there--in the alley a couple of hours ago... I have a friend who was one of the paramedics... Anyway, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd see how you are--

I found this amusing because not only does Nightwing have a relatively small mask (It's not like it might disguise his facial features the way that Batman or Daredevil's masks hide theirs) but at this point he also has a very distinct, flowing blue-black mullet. I mean, if you encounter two such young, fit guys with that same exact hairstyle in a matter of hours, you might be a wee bit suspicious, no...? I think of this hairstyle a little like I've always thought of Oliver Queen's distinct goatee; it's just a little too distinct to successfully pull off a double identity with.

I don't know if Miggie does recognize Dick as Nightwing or not. As he's leaving, she says, "I feel I owe you something...a cup of cappuccino?"

If she knows he's Nightwing, sure, that makes sense. He did save her life. The least she can do is take him out for coffee. But if he was just some guy in the alley with his friend, what does she owe him for...? For checking on her the next day...?

Well, whatever. Dick returns to his dusty, grocery-less Gotham apartment and lays atop his blanket-less bed in a tiny pair of red and blue briefs.

(A little something for the ladies, from Greg Land and Mike Sellers.)

The next morning, Alfred, who Dick's narration tells us is his best friend (Take that, Wally!), arrives with a plate of pancakes, a thermos of coffee and a bunch of papers, in order to feed Dick and talk about how happy he is that he's considering a life beyond vigilantism. (Dick is considering law school, he says).

Among the papers, however, is something that will fuel the events of the rest of the series. A threatening letter written in yellow scrript—what, did the writer use a highlighter?—addressed to his parents, mere days before their deaths. It reads:

If you say anything about what you saw, they will kill you and your whole family.

Be warned.

Pickles The Clown

It was in an envelope postmarked from the Principality of Kravia, one of those little fake countries that must make the maps in the DC and Marvel Universes so much more complicated than those in ours. Apparently, Haly's Circus visited there shortly before the Flying Graysons were killed, and now Dick is questioning whether it was really Tony Zucco who killed his parents all those years ago...or someone from Kravia.

Just when he thought he was out of the hero game, he finds himself pulled back in...!

Kravia is ruled by a rather ridiculous looking dictator named Prince Balsik, who wears a blue, green, purple military uniform with lots of medals, shoulder cords and a sword. His face is badly scarred with big, thick scars that look like a wild animal had mauled him. 

His soldiers wear orange and yellow armor and helmets that looks like something out of a video game...or, perhaps, the future, and though their guns fire bullets, Land draws them more like laser guns. 

When Grayson starts making inquiries, the prince sends an assassin after him, but between meeting the assassin and then having the first of two fights with him, Dick manages to go on a date with Miggie, who seems oddly desperate to spend time with Dick (This is, for the detectives at home, Clue #2 that Miggie's life isn't as perfect as Dick, who spent his childhood training under the World's Greatest Detective, assumes it must be).

Eventually, Dick visits the Batcave, gets a briefing from Oracle, whom he just refers to as "Oracle" (no mention of how she looks in glasses) and, now regretting his decision to give Batman his superhero outfit, is in need of something to wear.

Enter Harold, "Batman's chief mechanic, computer whiz and all 'round genius...not to mention costume maker!"

It is Harold who is responsible for Nightwing's new costume, the simple, mostly-black one with the stylized blue "V" over the chest that runs down his arms. I'm pretty sure this is the very best of all of Nightwing's costumes (and, notably, all of those that followed it over the course of the next 30 years have mostly just been slight variations of it). While Harold is responsible for it in-comic, I wonder which real-world artist designed it.

Anyway, here's Dick's first appearance in it:

For some reason, Land gave him long, claw-like nails on two of the fingers on his right hand and, amusingly, once Dick puts his hair into a ponytail, it seems to be about five times as long as it was when he was wearing it down. Did Harold also give Dick extensions...?

From there, Dick infiltrates Kravia, and does so during Prince Baslik's first night of an ethnic cleansing. In a rather grim scene, one that prefigures that one gag from Family Guy, Baslik hands a subordinate a light brown card and asks, "Your men have copies of this card, Colonel?"

When he responds affirmatively, the prince follows up with, "They understand they are to terminate anyone whose skin is darker than this?"

Dick's not there to save the country or end Baslik's rule, but he inadvertently does so, in the process fighting lots of those weird futuristic-looking soldiers, discovering a very dark and melodramatic secret about the Kravian leadership, escaping a particularly scary-sounding deathtrap, deciding whether or not to kill someone who might have had his parents killed and ultimately learning the truth behind Pickles The Clown's threat to his parents.

As I said earlier, after his little adventure, Nightwing's status quo reverts to where it was on page one, the only real change aside from his costume being his acknowledgement or acceptance that Batman and Alfred had given him a good childhood after all. "You and Alfred gave me a home and you gave me what we don't mention," Dick tells Batman on the penultimate page. "The L word." (Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim ruined the moment for me.) 

I've shared enough imagery above that you probably have a good sense of what the miniseries looked like. It's always interesting to see Land's work from this early in his career, when it seems to have genuinely been created by Land putting pencil to paper...something that can't be said of his work in the 21st century.

I mean, I have no idea exactly how he creates his artwork, but, when I think of Land, I think of images like this now, images so obviously photo-referenced that it seems as if he is finding photographs and then digitally manipulating them to add on superhero costumes...and not even with much care, so that, say, Reed Richards or Sue Storm's face may look like those of completely different people from panel to panel.

I honestly don't get it, as that seems just as tiresome to me as drawing would. (But maybe easier on the hand?)

 There are a few examples of...well, let's say shortcuts in this series, published 31 years ago.

Here, for example, is an image of Batman and Nightwing swinging through the night together:

And here, on the very next page, is Batman and Dick-as-Robin swinging through the night together:

Obviously, the point is that the images should be similar, demonstrating how Dick has changed even if his partnership with Batman hasn't, but jeez, if Land was going to repurpose the Batman pose, couldn't he at least have changed up the exact weird tangling of the ropes, or the angle of his wrists, or which foot is visible or something...? Like, gestured towards making them look different...? Colorist Cathi Bertrand did a little bit more work in distinguishing the two images of Batman, making his costume seem a bit bluer in the second image.

(Again, these images appear on consecutive pages; in fact, there are only five panels between them). 

Here's another, more obvious one, in which Dick punches the assassin four times in the mid-section in four panels, although Land only drew two panels and then repeated them:

A pre-cursor of what was to come, perhaps...

With the miniseries now out of the way, the rest of the trade is devoted to the first eight issues of Dixon and Beatty's ongoing, which was inked by Karl Story. 

That's a pretty hefty chunk of comics there, twelve issues total, in a $19.99 trade paperback. Pulling up the calculator on my phone, that works out to $1.66 per issue...a pretty solid value, really. 

Now, while the miniseries isn't really necessary, and doesn't really come into play at all in the events that follow, those first eight issues of the ongoing do all belong together, as they are all more-or-less a single storyline. 

In it, Batman sends Nightwing to Bludhaven in order to find out who was responsible for killing 21 men in a very particular fashion (Their heads were all turned around backwards and they were thrown in the water, eventually floating into Gotham), and Dick spends those eight issues trying to get to the bottom of that particular mystery...which involves the city's kingpin of crime Angel Marin going missing, and some unknown player seemingly assuming his role in secret.

It's only in the later issues that Dixon and McDaniel start to hint at the new kingpin of crime (and yeah, I'm using "kingpin" on purpose, as the title seems less Batman Lite and more Daredevil Lite, including having a very large villain in the suit in the antagonist role). 

Fist he's just a voice, then a figure in the shadows, and then a civilian name being bandied about and, ultimately, on the very last page of the seventh issue, hie revealed visually and his supervillain identity spoken aloud (In a very dramatic lead-up to that splash, McDaniel draws three consecutive panels of Nightwing addressing him, gradually falling under a shadow as the gigantic crime boss apparently stands up in front of him).

Now, these comics are from 1996, so, chances are you already know who this mysterious villain is. I mean, I did, and, as I said, I didn't read Nightwing back then...I just knew Dixon had made use of the character via osmosis I guess, seeing issue of Nightwing on the new comics racks and, eventually, reading about it on the Internet. 

If the comics weren't 30 years old, I'd be hesitant to name the character at all here, but, well, they are 30 years old, so I guess I will name him eventually, so I guess you can stop reading now if you don't want his identity spoiled.

The book isn't presented as a mystery—that is, there are no suspects, and Dixon doesn't provide the reader with enough clues to guess at who the crime boss might be—but it is mysterious, and Dick spends seven issues trying to get to the bottom of it as he feels out the local criminal underworld.

It seems unusual to me as it is essentially a single, eight-issue story arc, with the mysterious villain revealed at the end and, while the conflict isn't resolved, it is only at that particular point that the book's premise is finally unveiled and the hero gets a new status quo. 

The hopelessly corrupt city lacks anything approaching a hero and is portrayed a lot like Frank Miller presented the Gotham City that Batman returned to in the Batman arc "Year One" (Although Bludhaven lacks a Jim Gordon and a Harvey Dent to help Batman do his work) and, realizing all of this and the fact that it is in the clutches of an honest-to-goodness supervillain, what started as a mission for Dick becomes his vocation.

Just as Batman has his Gotham City, then, here Nightwing gets Bludhaven.

While I said these eight issues basically constitute a single storyline, this isn't any sort of Bendis-ian decompression...in fact, was there decompressed storytelling in mainstream comics circa 1996...? Dixon breaks the eight-issue story into smaller chunks, one-issue stories and short arcs, even if they are all part of the same story (Outside of the big crossover events, I'm having a hard time thinking of a Batman arc from the '90s that went on quite as long as this; that is, Nightwing #1-8 weren't advertised as an event, but the story was more event-sized than most comics from the Bat-office at the time).

Each issue has a big action sequence and features Nightwing foiling some kind of crime. In some cases, these are the work of "Reynard", a member of Gotham gangster Black Mask's False Face Society who wears a fox mask; in other, they involve Nightwing going after pressure points in Marin's organization in an attempt to find out where he is and who it is that is replacing him.

Along the way, Dick rents a seedy apartment in a terrible neighborhood, an act that introduces a running gag and, I assume, a potential love interest. The building's super is a woman named "Clancy" with an Irish accent that seems to always be behind a closed door or somehow covering her face when Dick tries to talk to her (washing her hair in the sink, carrying a stack of boxes, etc.) She turns out to be of Chinese descent (Though she was adopted by an Irish family, which is where she picked up the accent, before moving to the states).

Dick also takes a job as a bartender at a local cop bar, which he hopes will provide him with a source of intel.

Oh, and he loses the ponytail during his first encounter with Reynard and Black Mask's gang.

Dixon and McDaniel thus stock the book with brand-new supporting characters, although familiar faces do pop up. There's a page in the first issue, in which Batman charges Nightwing with the murder investigation and Bats later checks in via computer. Oracle and Wally West literally phone-in appearances. And Robin Tim Drake guest-stars in issue #6, where, during some downtime in crime-fighting, they discuss how different the pair are when it comes to the role of Robin.

Ah, the simpler days, when there were only ever three Robins, and one of them was totally dead forever...!

The creators also introduce the first of several new villains created for the series: Lady Vic, a British aristocrat/assassin who fights with various bladed weapons. McDaniel gives her an interesting look, although I have to admit it's one of those designs that doesn't quite look right when someone else draws it (And thus probably isn't the best of designs). I think it's the mask/helmet that does it.

As for the major villain, that is of course, Roland Desmond AKA Blockbuster. The second Blockbuster, to be precise, although he was basically just like his brother, the fist Blockbuster: A big, strong, simple-minded engine of destruction. 

During 1995 event Underworld Unleashed, he had sold his soul to the devil Neron, and in exchange was given brains to match his brawn (visibly signified by his huge, swollen head, from which dangled a skullet). He menaced Manchester, Alabama in the Impulse tie-in issue to the event series before Dixon decided to use him as a Wilson Fisk-like giant, super-strong crime lord in Nightwing.

Earlier in the post, I mentioned that it was hard to imagine this series being drawn by some of my favorite Batman artists of the '90s, and that was largely because of how distinct it was visually. Yes, the cover of the trade that my sister made fun of isn't that great (That of the first issue, or #7 might have been better choices), but the art inside is much better.

McDaniel is a completely original artist, to the point that, looking at his art, I can't really see who might have influenced him, nor can I think of other artists with whom to compare him. His art is instantly recognizable and, although I wasn't a big fan of it back then, I've come to appreciate more and more. 

His page layouts are all quite dynamic, but his art doesn't necessarily look animated or invigorated on a panel by panel (or panel to panel) basis. Many of his static images nevertheless seem to violently fly off the page at you; there's a real in-your-face quality to much of the action, particularly when it involves Nightwing leaping, which he does a lot of.

A signature technique that McDaniel employs, and the thing I think of when I think of his art, is to draw multiple images of Nightwing in the same panel to indicate how much and how fast he moves. It's an old comics trick, although I find it notable that McDaniel doesn't accompany the multiple figures with speedlines, nor does he draw the "past" images of Nightwing as less substantial than the "current" one...he'll just draw 3-12 Nightwings in a panel or splash, inviting the reader to follow the character as he jumps and flips and swings around.

It is, of course, a great trick for a character known for his athletics and acrobatics—and the sleek, cape-less character design makes it easier to pull off than it might for a character like Batman—and it allows a reader to appreciate how Nightwing moves. 

It's also pretty effective in fight scenes, as it gives one the impression that Nightwing is everywhere all at once (One thing I always liked about Breyfogle's art is how he would pose Batman so that he was fighting multiple opponents at once. So that, for example, he might be standing on one leg while he kicks one guy in the face, his right hand might be smashing a second guy's face against a wall or table, and his left hand extended in a throw, as a batrang whizzes across the room at a third guy. Sometimes when McDaniel draws Nightwing fighting a group, he does so by drawing four Nightwing figures in the panels executing different moves against different guys).

It looks like the previously linked-to cover for Nightwing #7 is the first time we see McDaniel's multiple Nightwings on a cover. Inside the book, it's on the tenth page of the first issue, wherein he leaps from a rooftop onto a speeding truck below:

Later, there's a fight atop a speeding train going through a tunnel, and McDaniel draws Nightwing doing what looks like a combination of an acrobatic routine and a live-action game of Frogger as he jumps off the train before it enters the tunnel, crosses the traffic on the overpass while thet train is passing through the tunnel, and then lands back on the roof of the train right behind his opponents, who used the more traditional strategy of guys on top of a train when it's about to go through a tunnel and ducked.

This is probably my favorite example, though, as Dick Grayson leaps back and forth between buildings in a way that suggests the old Ninja Gaiden videogame to me:

So yeah, I passed on this book in the '90s and, given the reputations of the creators of late, I hadn't felt any urgency to check it out, but I'll be damned, this is a pretty good action comic about a vigilante fighting crime and, thanks to McDaniel's idiosyncratic work—which often I appreciate more than I necessarily like—I can't think of another book that looks anything like it. (Other than, maybe, other McDaniel-drawn books, of course). 

The pair certainly did their job with these first eight issues too, as I now kind of want to know what happens next...