[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.]

We are told to give thanks for small miracles, but we should also give thanks for good comic book adaptations. At 38 issues, Batman: The Brave and the Bold had a slow and halting start, but by the end of All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold Vol. 3: Small Miracles, we’ve fully embraced the wild and magnificent possibilities of this team-up anthology. What’s more, capable and veteran creators like Sholly Fisch and Rick Burchett fairly have me clamoring for a compendium collection so that these great tales can get new eyes. (And so I can replace my battle-worn trades, which is all one can find on the secondhand market.)

While the Flash is yawning on the book’s cover, I found myself tearing through this volume at a speed that would make Wally West blush. (And yes, it’s Wally this time around, though Jay Garrick makes an appearance too.) It helps that we open with an absolute banger, “Batman Dies at Dawn!” Riffing on the title and visuals of one of my all-time favorites, Fisch’s version finds the Phantom Stranger assembling all the Robins on a quest to save their dying mentor. And when I say all, I mean all — Dick Grayson’s there, but so is Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne, with Stephanie Brown and Carrie Kelley on hand as well. Each Robin is lovingly rendered by Burchett, who nails the distinctions in their costumes and body language.

The plot ends up on the thin side, but Fisch has a ball butting the Robins against each other, as when Damian cautions Jason, “I know your future, Boy Wonder, and if you say one more word, it’s going to happen sooner!” The last-page punchline with Madame Xanadu is too fun to spoil, but suffice it to say it’s a teaser for another issue I would preorder in a heartbeat.

With a sly joke about saving Christmas every year, Batman teams up with Ragman in the next outing for a touching Hanukkah tale. I wish I’d had this story when I was a kid; I have such fond memories of my DCU Holiday Bash issues and digging out any holiday-themed floppies from my then-meager collection each December, so this would have made for a welcome addition. But if this tale is more sedate, the tale that follows - “No Exit” - makes me wonder why Flash is on the cover and not this issue’s guest star, Mister Miracle.

Longtime readers of my reviews will know that the Fourth World is well and truly my jam, so this issue was a delight. As Mister Miracle stories go, this one is fairly standard, putting Batman and Miracle in an unending death trap, but it’s fun to see if you can solve this mysterious case before our heroes do. Though guest penciller Stewart McKenny has trouble keeping Mister Miracle on model (resulting in bug eyes and an oversized cranium), Fisch lets him run the Apokoliptian gauntlet with villains Doctor Bedlam, Desaad, and even Darkseid himself. Seeing this Batman in particular square off against the god of evil feels especially resonant and potently Kirby-esque; Batman, Fisch, and the readers all recognize that Darkseid’s true defeat comes not in a physical match but “as long as people live free.”

Reading this story served as a reminder that the six collected editions in this series omitted two issues from the first volume of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and one of them (#20) was a Big Barda team-up that would have felt right at home next to “No Exit.” Robert Greenberger and Robert Pope spun a yarn about the disappearance of Mister Miracle, which saw Batman musing about whether a superhero could ever settle down in marriage. Perhaps this issue was overlooked because it wasn’t written by Sholly Fisch, or perhaps an editor finally caught the unfortunate art errors that make Mad Harriet appear topless throughout the fight with the Female Furies. Or perhaps the collections editor recognized that this story is really only for those of us who wanted to see more Kirby creations in the Brave & Bold style sheet.¹

Just as its animated predecessor did, this series concludes with Bat-Mite imploring his Caped Crusader not to let the adventures end, even raising the possibility of continuing the franchise with Batgirl. I’m sure Fisch is riffing on the cartoon (this issue is cover-dated April 2012, while the final episode aired in November 2011), though Burchett gets in a few good comics-specific gags, as when Bat-Mite’s origin is retold in the vein of Bob Kane or when Batgirl nearly marries a distinctive green alien monster.² What’s more, where the cartoon Batman felt the weight of his series ending, comics Batman helps us keep it in perspective a little better. “You still have your collection of my old issues,” he reminds Bat-Mite. “You can re-read them any time you want.”

It’d be a fitting enough finale for this volume, but the editors have seen fit to sweep up two more uncollected Fisch issues — the cover story with Wally West, in which Batman competes to solve a mystery before the Scarlet Speedster can, and a really wonderful one-off by Fisch and Robert Pope, entitled “A Batman’s Work is Never Done.” With the Bat-Mite finale feeling a little familiar, “Batman’s Work” is perhaps a more fitting conclusion; channeling the purest spirit of the series, Fisch gives us a week in the life, with mini-adventures starring no less than Metamorpho, the Inferior Five, the Creeper, and — most outrageously — a team-up with Chief O’Hara to defeat Doomsday. It’s as definitive a mission statement for this series as one could imagine: the apex signifier of darkness juxtaposed with the paragon of camp silliness, with the assurance that good will always triumph over evil.

It’s been, after all, the enduring legacy of the show. In a world where Batman was slipping grimmer and grittier, the stories concluding with All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold Vol. 3: Small Miracles reminded us (well, reminded me, at least) that Batman was a straight-faced advocate for justice who was all the same not without a sense of humor about himself, his friends, and his nightly crusade. What’s more, Batman’s street-level sensibility was never incompatible with the wildly weird DC Universe around him, and his chameleonic qualities made him such a versatile character that he was equally at home in deep space or in the ocean’s depths, in the Old West or in Crime Alley. This was a Batman who could well and truly be anyone’s “old chum” — and Dark Knight or not, shouldn’t we all strive for that?