Steve Englehart Batman Run

[YoungOnce]

As I get older, I’m trying to go back and read some seminal runs that I missed back in the day. I had heard good things about the Steve Englehart run for Batman in Detective in the late 70’s, so I preordered the collection recently released of that run.

Turns out, I already had most of those issues tucked away in some long boxes already. Oh well...

Regarding this much-heralded storyline though, I finished the series and was kind of let down. I really, really wanted to fall in love with it. I’m glad for the many who do love it, but I couldn’t find what was exceptional about the run.

Somebody help me... Mr Englehart says that he wanted to take Batman back to his pulp roots, but I didn’t see that. When I think of pulp, I think of The Shadow, or Doc Savage, or the Aparo Spectre run.

[Earth 2 Chris]

I can help you.

Read any other Batman comics coming out around this time, and you'll find the "spark" from the early 70s "BIG CHANGE" (mostly from the late great Denny O'Neil, taking Batman back to his Creature of the Night roots) was gone. The stories had become mediocre at best. Englehart's run is like a bolt out of the blue. It reads like the earliest Batman stories through the captions, the emphasis on atmosphere and mood, and even little things like John Workman's lettering, with his circular first letters in each caption. This is where the pulp influence is strong.

Englehart also brought in Marvel style soap opera elements as well, giving the stories an urgency that honestly hadn't existed in the series before. Subplots percolated as the narrative developed, up unto the crescendo of the 2-part Joker story line.

And that's not counting the art of Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, who drew Batman so unlike anything anyone at DC had seen before, there were folks like editor Joe Orlando, who thought they were going to wreck Detective Comics. He was flat wrong. Rogers evoked the mysterioso mood Bob Kane was trying to get at through his crude art of the late 30s, and paid it off.

If you read these books in the context of today's comics, in many ways they aren't overly special, other than being nice to look at and entertaining. But in the context of the time, they were a huge step forward, and in many ways, backward for the character of Batman, and DC Comics in general. They had to adopt more and more of the Marvel methodology to survive, but Englehart fused it with what made Batman the hit it was in the first place, so it doesn't seem like a "Marvelized" Batman either. It was a formula that influenced future Batman comics, the 1989 movie, and BTAS.

My podcasting partner Ryan Daly and I have been covering these issues over on Batman: Knightcast.

http://fireandwaterpodcast.com/show/batman-knightcast/

Chris

Chris

[PNGwynne]

Chris, please check/clear your PMs--need some Bat-advice. Thanks!

[YoungOnce]

Thanks Chris.

I did notice first thing the old original style lettering in the caption boxes and enjoyed that nod.

I also liked that he used the top shelf Batman villains to tell the story, so there was that. The run up through 1979 with all the Detective Comics and Batman 311 were pretty good but the jump to the new books starting in ‘98 lost something for me. The Joker/Aquaman arc was just bizarre. That could have been that I wasn’t familiar with that version of Aquaman and his character seemed a little “dense” to me. There was the comedy of that whole undersea cast too.

I don’t know why, but Silver St Cloud seemed a whole lot like Abby Arcane in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run. Not a bad thing I guess, but I felt like the “this-can-never-work” relationship felt really close to that story. I can’t say it was derivative I guess because I can’t remember which came first. (Actually, I’m thinking the first half of Steve’s story came first, then A.M’s Swamp Thing run, then Steve’s continuation was later... guessing there...)

Anyway, it wasn’t bad or even below average to me, it just didn’t meet the hype. You may be right that the impact would have been greater if I’d remembered it in context from back in the day.

[YoungOnce]

Gonna check out the podcast too. Can’t wait to hear y’all’s thoughts.

[warlock664]

Thanks Chris.
I don’t know why, but Silver St Cloud seemed a whole lot like Abby Arcane in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run. Not a bad thing I guess, but I felt like the “this-can-never-work” relationship felt really close to that story. I can’t say it was derivative I guess because I can’t remember which came first. (Actually, I’m thinking the first half of Steve’s story came first, then A.M’s Swamp Thing run, then Steve’s continuation was later... guessing there...)

Moore’s Swamp Thing run came about 5-6 years after Englehart’s Detective stories, but, of course, Abby had been around for years prior to Alan Moore, debuting in Wein/Wrightson’s early 70’s Swamp Thing. But honestly, other than perhaps a superficial resemblance (Abby has white hair with a black streak, Silver of course had a more platinum colored head of hair), I don’t see many similarities myself.

[YoungOnce]

Moore’s Swamp Thing run came about 5-6 years after Englehart’s Detective stories, but, of course, Abby had been around for years prior to Alan Moore, debuting in Wein/Wrightson’s early 70’s Swamp Thing. But honestly, other than perhaps a superficial resemblance (Abby has white hair with a black streak, Silver of course had a more platinum colored head of hair), I don’t see many similarities myself.

To me, the doomed romance that no one can understand more than anything. Can’t help it. My mind just went there as I read it.