[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.]
In my last review, I wondered whether the Batman: The Brave and the Bold tie-in comics might need a little time to find their creative feet, as did their animated predecessor before them. (As would, I think, any new creative project, save perhaps for The Batman Adventures, which fired on all cylinders right out of the gate.)
The series is beginning to grow on me, however, with the arrival of writer Landry Walker and the issues collected in Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Fearsome Fangs Strike Again! Walker splits time with J. Torres, who had written some of the stronger installments of the first volume; with this duo of writers, there’s a clear distinction in what each proposes for the purview of this series. The Torres tales emphasize gonzo guest-stars, the deepest of the deep cuts, with Batman taking something of a back seat. Walker’s yarns, meanwhile, are all about Silver Age action, hokey honking plots that give Batman much more agency and a welcome excuse to flex his detective muscles.
The Fearsome Fangs begins with two stories by Torres, featuring the Doom Patrol and the Great Ten, respectively. These are two stories that seem to be aimed squarely at my particular sensibilities — I adore the Doom Patrol, and I always wanted DC to get the Great Ten right after Grant Morrison and the 52 crew had finished with them1 — so to see Batman meet up with each team is a treat. The Doom Patrol issue is filled with welcome winking nods, as when Negative Man proposes wearing a trenchcoat or when Batman wonders if the team-up hasn’t been “my greatest adventure.” But the Great Ten issue isn’t as strong, with Batman tracking down an abominable snowman who might be a member of the Super Functionaries.
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
When Walker takes the helm, it’s at the expense of the “Secret Bat-Files,” which gave half-page profiles to each of the guest stars. In their place, Walker allows each issue to include a title panel and a few shots of Batman climbing along skyscrapers, in a nice homage to the cartoon’s title sequence. It takes away some of the physical media fun that had distinguished this series from other Bat-books on the shelves, but Walker’s plots are a few measures stronger, covering quite a few genres in the mix. Batman’s team-up with Catman, for example, finds the Caped Crusader wondering if his new partner’s motives are all pure; in another, an encounter with the Atom turns Batman into an enormous kaiju.
The book’s final tale finds Batman caught up in the zeta beam of Adam Strange, for what might be the story’s ominously eponymous “Final Christmas.” I love a good holiday tale (the consequence, I expect, of those wonderful DCU Holiday Bash issues from when I was really getting into comics), and while the timey-wimey exploits in this tale are a little disorienting, it’s all in service of a terrific punchline that I can’t believe had been hiding in plain sight the whole time.
Points too for Walker’s inclusion of Alanna Strange as the sarcastic and clever third wheel, continually joking about how the boys take her for granted. At one point, Batman wisely intercedes with Adam regarding his wife’s barbs: “You probably shouldn’t answer that.” Batman as marriage counselor is the sort of delightfully wacky note that sounds sublime in Diedrich Bader’s voice, which Walker has captured astutely.
Of the book’s title story, I am less enthusiastic. I had entirely forgotten that the Fearsome Fangs were Brave and the Bold’s update on The Terrible Trio, who have never been among my favorite rogues (up to and including their abysmal episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which even Bruce Timm famously denounced). What’s more, this update saw the Fearsome Fangs reinvented as martial artists who trained alongside Batman and the Bronze Tiger. Penciller Carlo Barberi renders the story in swooping panels with ample action, but this sort of tale has never been my speed.
Among the book’s other highlights, each tale continues the pattern of prefacing the main story with a shorter prologue. (The exception being “Final Christmas,” which is told as a frame story around a conflict with Calendar Man.) I wasn’t familiar with the Olympian or Rising Sun (Global Guardians fans, where are you?), but the Huntress and Black Canary are more familiar faces for these opening salvos. Likewise, one particular prologue manages to pack in most of the magic users of the DC Universe, though I would have loved to see a Brave and the Bold iteration of John Constantine.2
More than once in Fearsome Fangs, we cross paths with Green Arrow, who’s a fun straight man for Batman’s even straighter man. Next time, Batman sees a different kind of green in a book that could only be called Emerald Knight.
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Indeed, I had the single issue of the Doom Patrol team-up years before I ever tracked down these trades. And though The Great Ten was never collected in trade after printing, inauspiciously, only nine issues, I still have them in my collection (even if I haven’t been able to slog through them). ↩︎
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Would Standards & Practices allow him to smoke and/or swear? Or would it fall to Batman to castigate those self-destructive practices? (Did I write that last question in Batman’s voice? You tell me.) ↩︎
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