We've never done one of these before ... let's see how it goes ...

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Number 938


...and featuring Sonny Bono as Burt the ghostly ex-lover...


Looking at this story makes me realize how long ago 1973 really was, and yet seems so recent, still vivid to me. Maybe it was the sideburns or the turtleneck sweaters, maybe the bell bottom trousers, the wide lapels...man, have we ever approached the coolness of that time since? (That's a joke, son...)

Frank Bolle, the artist on this story for issue #2 of Charlton's Haunted Love, had the look of 1973 down well. Bolle had a clean ink line, and looked like he drew from photographs. The audience for whom the comic was intended, mostly pre-teen or teenage girls, wouldn't be fooled if he had faked it. I wasn't part of the intended readership, but Haunted Love was one of my guilty pleasures in 1973. I was so embarrassed about buying any comic book with "love" in the title that I always hid it in the middle of the stack of comics I bought.

Bolle was born in 1924, and his work pops up many places over several decades of the history of comics. He has his own website, if you want to see other illustrative work he's done. The story is written by Charlton scripter Joe Gill.
















In Batman Beyond: Hush Beyond, wrier Adam Beechen offers an interesting conglomeration of the Batman Beyond cartoon and Batman comics universes. The book takes a bit from column A and a bit from column B, and I liked that; it was not terribly hard (if I understood correctly) to understand where this book took place in regards to the Batman Beyond cartoon, where it's recently coming from and where it might be going next. As an introduction to Batman Beyond, fans of the cartoon might consider the conflicts between the characters worn ground, but Beechen also offers lots of possibilities for future story growth.

[Contains spoilers]

What I appreciated about Beechen's first Batman Beyond outing is how accessible the story is. Once the reader understands relationship between Bruce Wayne and the young new Batman Terry McGinnis, most of the rest of Beechen's story is filled with familiar faces and foes: Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Catwoman, Hush. Fans of the Batman Beyond cartoon, which I recall had its own set of original (not second generation) villains, might very well find this story set too much in the comics Batman universe -- the Jokerz don't appear, for instance, and we barely see Terry's friend Max or his girlfriend Dana -- but as a casual Batman Beyond fan I was nonplussed.

In the good "Hush" tradition, Hush Beyond is a mystery, though with what I felt was a sufficiently Batman Beyond sci-fi solution. This differentiates the story from a regular Batman tale, and I hope Beechen continues to use the more outlandish sci-fi elements in the future. As a reader, I'll have to train myself that Batman Beyond is not Batman -- my guesses to the new Hush's identity were much too far afield, encompassing elements of Jeph Loeb's Hush, when Beechen ultimately provides the reader all the hints they need right there in the story.

I was quite satisfied with the way Beechen blended the comics and cartoon Batman universes. Hush Beyond would seem to take place after the end of the Batman Beyond cartoon series and the Return of the Joker movie, as suggested by Tim Drake's presence in the book; but before the Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue" (Hush Beyond foreshadows that episode). Unless Beechen will re-tell Return of the Joker for this comics universe (and I don't mind if he does), then we already know that Hush Beyond doesn't mesh with the exploits of "our" Tim Drake, and that Hush Beyond's cast are not "our" Bat-characters. Still, Batman: Cataclysm factors strongly into this book, not to mention considerable discussion of Batman's fights with the original Hush, Tommy Elliott (I also appreciated covers by Dustin Nguyen, adding a kinship to Paul Dini's "Hush" stories). One potential explanation for the timeline discrepancies? Esteban Pedreros is going to love this one -- Beechen hints at the end that Batman Beyond might tie in to Flashpoint ...

I was not an ardent Batman Beyond-watcher when it was on air but it did seem to me (I say, a little blithely) that just about every other episode had Bruce Wayne arguing with Terry and threatening to or actually taking away Terry's Bat-suit, before the two reconciled in the end. The conflict between Terry and Bruce is at the center of Batman Beyond -- Can Terry live up to Bruce's expectations? Will Bruce learn to let go and let Terry be his own (Bat)man? -- but there's an extent to which it lacks suspense; of course Terry will still be Batman by the end, else we don't really have a show.

Beechen deals with the same conflict here -- Terry's tired, Bruce thinks Terry's being too flip, Bruce "fires" Terry and replaces him with robotic Bat-Wraiths (reminiscent of Batman's Kingdom Come robots, another clever nod Beechen makes to DC Universe continuity). Beechen perhaps doesn't mean for it to be all that surprising that Bruce learns by the end to give Terry a little slack, and Terry renews his commitment to the cowl -- I just hope, as an introductory tale, Beechen's got it out of his system, and that future stories instead move the characters to uncharted ground, like the suggestion that Terry might finally join the future Justice League, and the mysteries involving the new Catwoman and Cadmus's imprisonment of Killer Croc.

As a lead-off to Beechen's new Batman Beyond series, however, I was sufficiently entertained throughout this book (enthused enough by the Batman Beyond character, in fact, to watch the free "Making of Batman Beyond" feature available online). Previously DC Comics released a similar "live action" take on the Space Ghost cartoon, and what put me off that book was that I didn't feel the author quite conveyed the Space Ghost character in the story, and that there wasn't enough play between the comic and the Space Ghost cartoon. Beechen avoids both of those problems -- if Batman Beyond: Hush Beyond covers some familiar ground, at least it feels familiar -- and I'll be in for another volume to see where Terry goes from here.

[Contains full covers. Printed on glossy paper]

Thanks again to Adam Beechen especially for participating in our focus week this week. New reviews coming next week -- see you then!
Adam Beechen has written Robin, Teen Titans, Batgirl, Countdown to Final Crisis, and more for DC Comics. He is the new writer of a "mainstream" Batman Beyond series; he is also an ardent Phoenix Suns fans. Recently we chatted by email about Batgirl, Batman Beyond, and of course, collected editions.

Collected Editions: After your Robin and Teen Titans stories were met with some controversy, it may have surprised some readers that you were tapped to write the Batgirl: Redemption miniseries. Why do you think DC Comics chose you as the writer of the series? What made you want to take on the project?

Adam Beechen: It surprised me that I was asked to write the Batgirl mini (which was originally called Redemption Road). I remember getting the call from Editor Mike Marts in which he offered me the gig, and asking him if he wantedto have himself burned in effigy outside the DC offices. But Mike laughed that off -- he knew the backstory of my work on the Robin and Teen Titans stories that involved Cassandra, and was extremely kind and generous enough to offer me the chance to write the story that tried to make sense of it all and bring her back on track.

Because the story hadn't ended the way I'd hoped it would however long before, I was taken with the idea of resolving it on my own terms, in a way that satisfied me, to finish it the way I wanted. And I think the Batgirl miniseries makes sense of what happened with Cassandra during that period. Maybe not to every fan's liking, but I think it's consistent with the rest of the story and it works on its own merits.

It initially came from a place of character that made sense to me. I'm proud of the work, and proud of the work artists Jim Calafiore, Mark McKenna and Jack Purcell put in on it. It's not a perfect story. But I've never disavowed it, and I never will. Still and all, to many fans, I'll always be "the guy who ruined Cassandra Cain," fairly or unfairly, because you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And I suspect some of my work since has been dismissed because I'm still tarred with that brush. But you'd probably be surprised by the number of fans I meet at conventions that tell me they actually liked Cassandra's story.

CE: What pleases you most about the end of Batgirl: Redemption?

AB: That the story has a definitive ending. At the end of the miniseries, why she turned to the dark side is fully explained, she goes through a personal trial, and she's firmly back on the side of good. Some readers may still hate that she turned evil to begin with, and some readers may not like how her redemption was executed, but in my mind, the story is complete and it makes sense.

CE: If it were not for the Cassandra Cain controversy, how would you like to be known by fans as a writer?

AB: I can't focus on that. I mean, every writer wants to have his or her work appreciated, of course, but I've learned, since I started and took a lot of criticism on the web, that there's just stuff I can control and stuff I can't control. I'm never going to make everybody happy. Every writer is someone's favorite and someone's least favorite. Every reader has different tastes. I try to write stories I think I would enjoy as a reader, and hope there are others that feel the same, but not everyone will.

That's just the way it is. All I can control is trying to write the best story I can, every time out. I want to do right by the characters, I want to tell what I think is a strong, fun, story, I want to please my employers (the editors) by writing quality stories on deadline and be easy to work with when they have notes or changes, and I would love for the fans to enjoy the work I do. But the reality is, I can only control the first two, I can control some of the third, and I have very little control over the last. All I can do is the best I can do and let the chips fall where they may. And what I've really learned is that it's best for me to not search out stuff on the web too much and just write the stories, because the criticism, which can get very personal, can really bum you out and shake your confidence if you let it.

CE: Your Batgirl: Redemption miniseries drew from stories begun in a number of other titles, including Robin, Teen Titans, and Supergirl; your Robin and Teen Titans stories equally had basis in earlier stories (not to mention Countdown to Final Crisis!). How do you negotiate the role of continuity in your comics writing? Do you find that working in a shared story universe benefits or limits the kinds of stories you want to tell?

I think the best word to describe it is "challenging," because when it works, it can be brilliant. But in a crossover event in particular, you have to have a great story to start out with, and you have to have all your creative personnel across all your affected books on the same page, and you can't change horses in mid-stream and start telling a different story, or it can be a disaster. There are just so many points at which things can break down. Again, though, if you can pull it off, it's absolute magic. In terms of day-to-day comics, when there's not a massive crossover going on, it can still be tricky, because the communication isn't always there between editors, or between editors and creators, to the point that everyone would like, and so if I have Superman show up in the book I'm writing, but he's on Alpha Centauri at the same time in another book, then it becomes a matter of figuring which one came first and how does this fit into the timeline, and everyone gets a big headache.

That's all by way of saying, for me, writing Justice League Unlimited was so wonderful, because I was beholden only to the animated series' continuity (and even then, only slightly, as we hardly ever referenced it), and because I was the only one working with those characters and that continuity. I could tell the stories I wanted without having to check with a hundred different people first. Batman Beyond is similar, but a little more tricky. I'm mostly beholden to the animated series' continuity, and I'm the only one working in it, so I can kind of cherry-pick what elements of current print continuity to mention. But when I do, I find it's best to check with the Editorial Batcave at DC so they know what I'm up to and can make sure I'm not throwing off anything they have in their plans. Fortunately, the decades-long gap between current DCU continuity and the future in which Batman takes place is so long, there are plenty of opportunities to write off or explain little things that might seem inconsistent. Anything could have happened in that time, you know?

CE: In both Batgirl: Redemption and Batman Beyond: Hush Beyond, Dick Grayson plays at times an antagonizing role. How do you see the relationship between Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne (historically or in your own work)? How do you think your approach to Dick Grayson follows or differs from other writers of the character?

AB: A really interesting question I've never been asked before. My perspective on Dick is this -- he came to Bruce almost completely unformed, at a very young age. He came to worship Bruce as a father and a role model, but at the same time, he didn't get a lot of paternal love from Bruce because that's not how Bruce is wired. Bruce doesn't know how to express love very well -- so Dick, now that he's an adult, is more determined to let the next generation of "Bat-kids," like Tim, know they're loved.

Anyway, Dick grew up with this curious mix of awe and gratitude and resentment toward Bruce, wanting to be just like him, but be his own version of him, while knowing he was never going to be exactly what Bruce is as Batman -- for better or worse. He's always going to be thought of, first, by way of his connection to Batman/Bruce. That might make others want to rebel and go the other way, but Dick has such a strong sense of morality that he's super-loyal to Batman's mission -- and still, there's this undercurrent of anger below it.

In Batgirl, it made sense to me that Dick would be wary of Cassandra, given all the ups and downs she'd had prior to that storyline, even though she was theoretically "part of the family" and someone close to him. Having been through everything and seen everything, Batman wouldn't trust her -- therefore Nightwing shouldn't. And he hated that he found himself not trusting her. In Batman Beyond, Dick found out that, in the most extreme conditions of Batman's mission, even he, Dick, was expendable, or at least not of primary priority. On the one hand, having been raised by Bruce, Dick understands that. But on the other hand, as Bruce's adopted son, it's gotta be incredibly painful. It all makes Dick, I think, an incredibly complex and interesting character, always fighting conflicting impulses, never really finding peace.

CE: Despite a large fan following, Batman Beyond would seem to me a difficult title to write, in that it's removed from the ongoing DC Universe and to an extent crossovers and other methods of drawing in new readers are limited. How will you keep Batman Beyond relevant in a comics market often based around event tie-ins and such?

AB: The animated series has an incredibly devoted fan base that seems excited to see the character back in action in any form. And there's a certain percentage of fans that will pick up the book just because it's an extension of the Batman mythology. Our hope is that, by tying the series just enough to mainstream continuity through these little "drop-in" references, we'll attract more mainstream readers who might not otherwise give it a chance, and who will then regard it as sort of an island from the event tie-ins. A universe that crosses over with the mainstream universe just a little bit, like two circles in a Venn diagram.

CE: How does the fact that your stories will most likely be collected in trade shape how you put together story arcs? Do you find a certain benefit as a writer to the monthly versus the collected/long-form formats? In what formats do you enjoy comics as a reader? (Not to worry, I'm not biased just because it's "Collected Editions!")

AB: I thought about that a lot before we moved into the monthly series, and discussed it a good deal with Editor Chris Conroy. "Accessibility" became our watchword. We wanted to have the tension of ongoing stories, but not make them so long that new readers had to wait forever to jump in, if they wanted. We settled on three issue arcs (though we may go longer at some point, if the story dictates), with stand-alone issues in between them. That seemed to be the best of both worlds. If a new reader wanted to get in on the series and we were in the middle of an arc, they wouldn't have to go back too far to catch up, or wait too long for a story that served as a better jumping-in point. The stand-alones would spotlight important parts of the Batman Beyond universe and, to some degree, advance the larger story arcs, while the three-issue stories would be complete in their own right as well as lead into things down the road.

Speaking personally, that's the kind of storytelling in comics I enjoy. I like sitting down with a collected edition, but if it's enormous, or is part of a series of volumes all telling one story, I find myself getting impatient and having trouble keeping track of what came before. The essential meat of "The Great Darkness Saga," one of the great multi-part stories of our time, was told in five issues. Five! Nowadays, the temptation would be to have it run over an entire year and incorporate three or four other titles. I want Batman Beyond to be accessible to readers no matter where they start, and no matter how much of it they read. My goal is for every chunk of "Batman Beyond," whether it's a one-off or an ongoing storyline, or a mixed package of the two, to make sense on its own terms.

CE: Speaking of "The Great Darkness Saga," do you have other stories or runs that have inspired you as a comics writer over the years?

AB: Gosh ... if you were collecting the story arcs that have inspired me the most over the years, it'd be an awfully big collected edition! "The Great Darkness Saga" would be there, but so would there:

- Alan Moore's Marvelman
- Dave Sim's Cerebus
- Garth Ennis' Preacher
- Grant Morrison's Zenith
- Greg Rucka's and Ed Brubaker's Gotham Central
- Paul Grist's Kane
- Howard Chaykin's American Flagg
- Both runs of Frank Miller's Daredevil
- The "Who Remembers Scorpio?" arc by Dave Kraft and Keith Giffen in The Defenders, which deserves a color reprinting more than any storyline yet to be so collected.
- The "Panther's Rage" arc by Don McGregor in Jungle Action.
- The "Devils and Deaths" arc by Darko Macan and Edvin Biukovic in Grendel Tales.

The list could be a lot longer than that, but all of those would be absolutely indispensable arcs that affect me whenever I sit down to write comics.

CE: Finally, do you have a favorite Batman Beyond episode to share?

AB: "The Call, Parts 1 and 2," because they give us a glimpse of the world outside Gotham and how Terry's Batman might fit into it.

Thanks to Adam Beechen for taking the time to answer these questions. Don't miss our Batgirl: Redemption review from earlier this week, and be here tomorrow for the Collected Editions review of Adam Beechen's Batman Beyond: Hush Beyond. See you then!

Number 937


I'd walk a camel for a mile


All American Western was the continuation of DC Comics' All American Comics. Western comics were popular in the late '40s and superheroes had lost their audience, so All American added "Western" to its banner and covered another genre entirely. This issue, #126, is the last under that title. In 1952 All American Western was canceled and replaced by All American Men of War, a title that lived on until 1966.

The last we see of Western action hero Johnny Thunder he and his girl are watching their horses return to them in the desert. They had just had an adventure with some Arab raiders on camels who tried to kill them. It's probably a story not likely to decrease tensions between our cultures. But camels in the Southwest, imported as pack animals, were a reality. The experiment of using them in the deserts of the United States territories just didn't work and by the Civil War the experiment was essentially over. As Western historian Will Bagley writes:
It wasn't that the camels couldn't adapt to the West; the West couldn't adapt to camels. They were not friendly animals, even to fellow camels, and they held grudges. Despite their bad temper and ability to spit the contents of their stomachs with the accuracy of a Kentucky marksman, it was camel stench that helped do them in. Odor usually was not an issue for Western muleskinners, but the slightest whiff of camel stench played havoc with a mule train. Sometime in 1865, camels stampeded a pack train bound for Missoula and turned the whiskey-bound town's Fourth of July celebration into Montana mud. It was not long before camels were banished from northern mining camps.

Their vast advantage as pack animals notwithstanding, it was America's affection for horses that doomed Western camel caravans. Camels and their legends long survived among the boomtowns and ranches of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. A grizzled sideshow camel with a U.S. brand turned up in San Antonio in 1903. Arizona declared camels extinct in 1913, but hunters reported seeing them in the desert around Yuma into the 1950s.
As interesting as the history is, and it probably influenced this Johnny Thunder episode, it wasn't noted by the writer or editor Julius Schwartz, who loved to drop these types of facts into stories in the form of footnotes.

"Phantoms of the Desert" is written by Robert Kanigher, drawn by Carmine Infantino and Seymour Barry, from All American Western #126, 1952.








In writer Adam Beechen's Batgirl: Redemption, artist J. Calafiore draws Cassandra Cain relatively straight and angular, a far cry from artist Damion Scott's first depiction of the character -- rounded, small, often almost disappearing into corners of the panels until she might spring into action. There's a tendency among many, myself included, to decide in this difference that Beechen and Calafiore's Cassandra Cain is not "our" version of the character; rather I came to understand this change in presentation later as an indication of how much Cassandra Cain has grown as a character since her first appearance.

[Contains spoilers starting right now]

In Redemption, Batgirl Cassandra Cain embarks on a Heart of Darkness-type journey to find her father David Cain, encountering him finally in just the wee final pages of this book.  It's only there at the end of the story that a way to rationalize the recent controversial changes to Cassandra Cain really crystalized for me. David Cain taunts his daughter that despite her protestations that she's not the assassin he raised her to be, it only took minimal drug inducement by the villain Deathstroke in the pages of Robin, Supergirl, and Teen Titans to get Cassandra to kill again. Fan outcry over Cassandra turning rogue in those pages was loud and ardent, but I think I finally get it: Cassandra Cain fell off the wagon.

That is, David Cain raised Cassandra to be an assassin, and we know she was one, too. We haven't seen overmuch of Cassandra's pre-Batgirl life, but we know she killed at least one businessman for Cain, and possibly others. If we grant that Cassandra was indeed raised as a "killing machine," that killing comes somewhat naturally for her and that forsaking murder was a late-life decision when Cassandra left Cain and joined Batman, then Cassandra's turn bad suddenly makes sense to me. Deathstroke set free what's essentially always underneath the surface for Cassandra; the "evil Cassandra" is as much in line with the character (or not, depending on your view of the following examples) as the Dark Supergirl or Smallville's Clark Kent under the influence of Red Kryptonite.

Granted, Beechen himself contradicts this when he has Cassandra argue that, at another time, what Cain took for her bloodlust was instead Cassandra's amazement at the toys and signs of happiness that a murdered family possessed. Cassandra envied not the murder, but the domestic bliss; Cain only thinks Cassandra has that darkness within her. Indeed the theory of Cassandra Cain as a "natural born killer" won't hold up with every fan either, and admittedly to an extent it's just excuses for the change in story direction from bad Cassandra to good. Beechen has to devote two dialogue-heavy pages at the beginning to explain away all of Cassandra's bad behavior, and doesn't even quite succeed; Beechen concludes one of Cassandra's new murders took place after she was supposedly cured (I'd have just flubbed the timeline, myself), an issue never quite resolved.

Redemption is essentially a good example of a phenomenon I'd venture is somewhat limited to serial comic books and political agendas: a mid-stream course correction. Had Cassandra Cain the villain been wildly popular, Redemption wouldn't exist. And it is a good and at times thought-provoking story that pays homage to many of the high notes of the Cassandra Cain Batgirl series -- her relationship with Oracle, her conflict with Deathstroke and Cain, her begrudging alliance with Deathstroke's daughter Ravager, and the loss of Cassandra's boyfriend Zero -- but especially in the first chapter, one can just about hear the tires squealing as Beechen forces Cassandra's trajectory 180 degrees away from where it had been headed in no less than three other DC Comics titles.

In the end Beechen does offer Cassandra the redemption of the title, but I think he tempers it in a wise way (or at least takes good advantage of external circumstances). First, Cassandra essentially lets Cain die, and it's only by virtue of some good luck that Batman saves him; Batman gives Cassandra a pass, but the reader understands that Batgirl is more Manhunter than Superman at this point. Second, Batman offers to adopt Cassandra, taking her in a hug and promising the family she never had, as long as he lives ... and Calafiore adds a rather unusual tombstone shadow coming off Batman with the letters RIP, most definitely a reference to Batman RIP minus some monthly issue text copy.

I take from this that what we need to understand about Cassandra Cain Batgirl is that she's a hard-luck hero; things are not ever going to be easy for her, up to and including that she's going to lose her Batman father-figure just as soon as Final Crisis brings Darkseid to town. If I had to project into the future, I wouldn't be surprised if Cassandra Cain gets in touch with her evil side a few more times (though DC Comics wouldn't be that crazy); the road to redemption will always be an uphill battle for her. We know that wasn't what DC was trying to say when they first turned Cassandra evil -- rather, I think, they just wanted a good villain -- but I think that's what Beechen is trying to say now. Again, that won't please everyone, but it makes enough sense to me that I think Batgirl: Redemption brings a satisfactory close to the matter.

[Contains full covers]

Adam Beechen Week continues on Collected Editions, including a Q&A with the writer and our review of Batman Beyond: Hush Beyond, both later this week. Be there!

Number 936


Grim Paree


Looking through some old crime comics I noticed that stories of Parisian criminals looked back at me from three of the five comics I leafed through. What was it about Paris that incited writers of crime comic books? France had been liberated from the Nazis just a couple of years before, yet there is no mention of war in any of the stories. Crime in any country is much the same as any other country, and god knows the USA has enough crime of its own. But Paris, to those comic book scripters of 60+ years ago, must've been a very exotic place, full of people who wore neckerchiefs, and exclaimed "Parbleu!" or "Sacre bleu!" They had the bleus in Paree in those days...

From Crime and Punishment #2, 1948 comes "The Plague Of Paris," illustrated by Fred Guardineer, he of the fastidious ink line. It is a reprint from its older sister magazine, Crime Does Not Pay #48, from 1946. And speaking of Crime Does Not Pay, Rudi Palais, his usual over-reliance on flying sweat drops missing from "The Blonde Queen of Crime," does the illustrative honors, picturing the blonde queen in fishnet stockings and her man in a beret, thus apprising us via such visualizations that yes, they are Frenchies! The story is from issue #39, 1945.

Our last story was drawn by Bob Butts, who signed his name R. Butts in the penultimate panel of page 7. I have featured the splash panel before in Pappy's #727, in my continuing quest to find all the swiped figures of what I call "Jeepers Girls."* The story, "Murders On The Rue Brevet," set in Paris in 1925 is from Pay-Off #1, a crime comic from 1948.
























*More Jeepers Girls here.