Comic Book Review – Batman: The Dark Knight Volume Four & The Caped Crusader Volume Two

Batman: The Dark Knight Detective Volume Four (2021)
Reprints Detective Comics #601-611 and Annual #2
Written by Alan Grant, Brian Augustyn, and Mark Waid
Art by Norm Breyfogle and Val Semeiks

Batman: The Caped Crusader Volume Two (2019)
Reprints Batman #432-439, 443-444 and Annual #13
Written by Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, James Owsley (Christopher Priest), and Kevin Dooley
Art by Jim Aparo, Pat Broderick, Michael Bair, and Malcolm Jones III

Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle continued their run on Detective Comics with a series of multi-part stories. In The Dark Knight Detective Volume Four, we get four plus a novel-length annual. This creative duo was a case of being in the right place at the right time on top of being immensely talented. They were working on Detective as Tim Burton’s Batman was released. Sales on the title went from 75,000 a month to 650,000 with that film’s debut. Their success on Detective would follow them to the Batman title for a couple years and even garner a spin-off ongoing with Batman: The Shadow of the Bat in 1992. Eventually, we’ll get to that one.

Alan Grant certainly had creative ideas and could intermix his new rogue gallery members while revitalizing old villains in the post-Crisis era. He also would deliver pulpy one-off stories, sometimes in two parts, about putting Batman up against a strange type of foe. In the three-part Tulpa, Batman witnesses a street racer crash into an alley. As he pulls the driver out to find out why he did this, the man’s body crumbles into dust. The driver was a creation of Tenzin Wyatt, a man who owes the mob a lot of money. He uses his trained ability to manifest tulpas (thought forms) to steal money to help pay the debt off before the mafia thugs kill him. 

It’s an okay story where Breyfogle’s art gets a chance to shine. The twist here is the inclusion of Kirby’s Etrigan the Demon halfway through the tale. Grant had written a Demon arc in Action Comics Weekly around this time and would eventually pen the ongoing title for the character. If you follow a comic book writer long enough, you’ll see that they like to shoehorn their pet favorites or side projects into books with more eyes on them. 

The next arc was far more ambitious and dipped deep into Batman lore. Preston Payne, the third Clayface, is taken out of Arkham Asylum by someone who appears to be Looker, one of Batman’s former teammates on the Outsiders. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure sets up shop in an abandoned theater in Gotham, bringing with him the remains of Matt Hagen, the second Clayface who died during the Crisis. This figure is revealed as Basil Karlo, the first Clayface, who is working alongside the mysterious Lady Clay, who had been an operative of Kobra. Karlo plans to infuse himself with the form-shifting properties of his comrades. Karlo has never had powers, just a Phantom of the Opera-styled villain.

The Mud Pack is a fun story for me because I don’t know much about the comic book Clayfaces. My familiarity with the character comes mainly from Batman: The Animated Series, where Matt Hagen combined elements from all three male Clays. Due to the nature of the Clayfaces, Breyfogle gets to show off his skills with the morphing, shifting forms. The story clocks in at four issues, which might be slightly more than needed. I found the inclusion of Looker into the narrative to be the one thing that might confuse casual readers, and she wasn’t entirely necessary. I definitely think the Clays deserve more love. It was nice to see them so prominently featured.

Of all Grant & Breyfogle’s creations, none seemed to have more legs from the 1990s into the 2000s than Anarky. A vigilante figure named Anarky emerges in Gotham to take down a chemical company polluting the city’s waters. He takes a more aggressive stance, which garners him support from the public, much to Batman’s disdain. There’s some narrative play with the vigilante’s identity, which provides the big surprise that he’s just a teenage hacker out to take down members of the establishment. It’s one of those stories that reminds us what a stooge for the status quo Batman really is. I was reminded of lots of Marvel movies where the villain has a reasonable demand to change things, but the neoliberal hero chastises them for not doing it with correct decorum. Anarky had a decent run, even getting an ongoing title in the early 2000s, but it seems that outside of Grant & Breyfogle, there were few creators interested in using the character.

The book closes out with a two-parter showcasing The Penguin. It seems that the longtime foe of Batman has died, and several people attend the funeral. Batman believes there’s more to the story and doesn’t believe the death at all. It turns out he’s correct as The Penguin struck a deal with Grant & Breyfogle creation Kadaver to fake the passing. His henchmen provide The Penguin with the keyword that revives him from his hypnotic state, and the villain fulfills his part in the deal by helping Kadaver escape prison. It’s a pretty decent Penguin story, but nothing I would say is considerably memorable.

The annual included is penned by Brian Augustyn and Mark Waid, the future Flash creative team. It tells a story about Batman facing down the KKK. It’s an okay story and a reminder of the days when annuals were more like illustrated novels that didn’t depend on continuity, just decent pulpy stories.

In the Batman title, things were much more scattered. There was no cohesive creative team, with lots of writers rotating in and out. Even if he wasn’t there every month, the only constant was artist Jim Aparo. Aparo had been drawing Batman since the mid-1970s, and growing up, his Batman was the one I imagined in my head. However, I was never really a fan of his work. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t my favorite style. We get Aparo’s art with a story penned by Christopher Priest under his James Owlsey pen name.

The rhythm is broken up by John Byrne coming on to write & draw a three-part arc titled “The Many Deaths of Batman.” The first issue is striking, a nearly wordless intro where Batman appears to have been killed. The reveal is that several men are showing up dead for various causes while wearing Batman costumes. The actual Batman searches for a pattern that connects the victims to determine the culprit, with an interesting twist being that Bruce Wayne is targeted by the mysterious culprit. I don’t think it’s Byrne’s best work, and honestly, this could have been a single issue or two-part tale. Three seems like it’s a little long. 

Then, we finally get an extended run on the book with Marv Wolfman joining to write, with several artists rotating in and out. Batman: Year Three is the opening story, nowhere close to Frank Miller & David Mazuchelli’s Batman: Year One. Year Three centers on the origins of Dick Grayson’s Robin but also serves to build towards the formal introduction of Tim Drake. Tony Zucco, the man behind Grayson’s parents’ deaths, is about to be released from prison. Throughout this arc, we get flashbacks to Bruce Wayne witnessing the murder, adopting Grayson, and training him to become Robin. Alfred worries that Grayson, who now operates as Nightwing, will kill Zucco and even contemplates doing it himself. 

I don’t think Marv Wolfman is terrible. However, I detested his Adventures of Superman run and found it boring compared to what Byrne was doing in Superman and Action Comics. Having read through his New Teen Titans run (maybe one day I’ll work my way through New Titans) he was benefitting from two things, aping Claremont’s X-Men and the incredible pencil art of George Perez. I would even argue that Crisis on Infinite Earths is a fine story that benefits from the spectacle and overwhelming roster of characters rather than telling a fantastic narrative. It has some great moments, but as a cohesive narrative, I’m not impressed. His Batman run is, in my opinion, not very memorable other than by introducing Tim Drake.

This is followed by a two-parter about the Crimesmith, one of many villains introduced by Wolfman that have the opposite effect of Grant & Breyfogle’s creations in that they are immediately forgettable and are never used again. An Annual is included, which features a story where Two-Face ends up on the fictional island of Santa Prisca with Batman in pursuit. Again, not memorable.

This is a really strange era of Batman. In one book, Detective, you have some vibrant & memorable stories and villains. In Batman, it’s a wildly mixed bag where the stories aren’t as memorable and the best you can say about it is a character was introduced that would become arguably the best Robin of all time, but not under these writers. I would like to note that Grant & Breyfogle had toyed with the idea of Anarky becoming the new Robin, but that was shut down by editors who wanted the more traditional approach with Drake. We can only imagine the different path the series would have gone down if we had that alternate Batman.