Review: Batman: The Brave and the Bold Vol. 1 trade paperback (DC Comics)

[A series on DC’s animated tie-in comics collections by guest reviewer Zach King. Zach writes about movies at The Cinema King and about comics on Instagram at Dr. King’s Comics.]

For many reasons, your mileage may vary on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Depending on what you thought of the animated series starring Diedrich Bader, and depending on how much Batman you like to see in a Batman book (to say nothing of whether you can actually find these trades any longer), Batman: The Brave and the Bold is necessarily a very different kind of beast from the DCAU tie-in comics that I’ve been reviewing for the better part of two years now. The style sheet and narrative rhythms are a wild change of pace, but the result is quite fun, even in its thin and ephemeral nature.

In this first trade, Batman: The Brave and the Bold is not aiming at fans of Batman or even necessarily at the cartoon that bears the same name. Instead, it seems squarely to target fans of more obscure characters who didn’t quite make it into the television series. After the heyday of the DC Animated Universe, and just after The Batman (starring Rino Romano) wrapped on the Cartoon Network, producer James Tucker took Batman squarely back to the Silver Age with Diedrich Bader voicing a stolid and earnest Caped Crusader who teamed up with a deep bench of DC characters, ranging from the obscure (B’wana Beast) to the improbable (roast comic Jeffrey Ross). Mainstays like Aquaman, Blue Beetle, and Green Arrow were frequent guests, but so too were the likes of Weird Al Yankovic and the Scooby-Doo gang.

You won’t find any of those wilder guest stars in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, but in some ways the supporting cast is more unique. Each issue in this anthology collection finds Batman teaming up with another DC hero, and this first trade is bookended by two characters who never appeared on the animated series. First up, Batman travels to London to help Power Girl defeat mad scientist Lex Luthor. As guest stars go, Power Girl is a wild choice to open the trade; the issue glosses over her Kryptonian origins, yet her secret identity as Karen Starr takes center stage when her computer programming skills come in handy.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Then at the end of the book, Batman teams up with - or rather is outshined by - the original Kid Eternity, who summons a bevy of also-rans from the DC vault, including Vigilante, Shining Knight, Viking Prince, and G.I. Robot. Batman lingers at the periphery of each action sequence, helpfully monologuing about each character’s backstory and abilities. Indeed, this final issue exposes one of the great creative challenges posed by this Batman; a stoic figure of justice and rectitude, Brave’s Batman is almost more staid than Adam West, who was not above a winking witticism. Still, this Batman gets more than his fair share of one-liners, like “Once the bough of evil breaks, the hammer of justice must fall!” and “My foot plus your face equals lights out!” Without Bader’s theatrical and confident presentation, these lines are almost baldly ridiculous, for only Bader could successfully fire off similar dialogue, as when he famously told Mrs. Manface, in what might be the most quoted and memed line of the show, “The hammer of justice is unisex.”

Alongside the elevated and campy dialogue, Batman: The Brave and the Bold also replicates the narrative structure of the cartoon. Each issue begins with a two-page caper, giving real estate to even more unlikely team-ups; there’s Superman and Wonder Woman, sure, but we also get the Haunted Tank and one feature where an infant Batman recruits no less than Sugar and Spike to the side of justice. In similar fashion, each issue concludes with “Secret Bat-Files,” half-page introductions to the guest star and main villain. Even for a seasoned veteran like myself, it was helpful to have a little primer on, for example, General Immortus and Dr. Cyber. Better still, it makes this series a welcome option for newcomers, playing in the deep pool of continuity without ever seeming insular or exclusive.

Still, though, this first trade feels a little thin in terms of its narrative heft. I’m not expecting something like Mad Love or World’s Finest here, but each Batman Adventures trade usually had a story or two that served as a kind of hidden gem. What’s more, The Brave and the Bold proper had a number of standout episodes, perhaps most notably the musical “Mayhem of the Music Meister!” Here, the stories are largely forgettable - and more or less interchangeable, to boot. There’s a kind of math at play when stories juxtapose another hero with a deep-cut villain, and so we get tales like Captain Marvel plus Queen of Fables, or Green Arrow plus Ultra-Humanite (with the latter’s human form¹ depicted like something out of a Jay Ward cartoon). But none of it adds up to terribly much, with Batman issuing a rousing “Job well done!” or “The kids are all right” at the end of each team-up.

Still, as I recall, the animated series took a little time to find its feet and its audience. Tucker’s cover promises the likes of Jonah Hex and Static right alongside Kirby favorites like Kamandi, Etrigan, and OMAC. If the series can find a way to do justice to even half of those, it’ll be a roaring success in my book.

Up next, the Fearsome Fangs strike again!

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1. The Ultra-Humanite did appear in the animated series, in his albino gorilla form, so this issue might be seen as a kind of prequel to that episode.  ↩︎