The Classy Comics Podcast

The Catalyst Prime Universe begins with an amnesiac astronaut flying about the desert while his wife sets out to beat down anyone who stands between her and her husband.
Affiliate link included.
Read Catalyst Prime: The Event for free.
Transcript :
Find out about Noble. Is he a noble success, a noble fire or not noble and all. Find out as we take a look at Noble: Volume One: God Shots, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
While we talk a lot about Marvel and D.C. but there are other superhero universes out there and one just got started last year. It's the Catalyst Prime Universe from Lion Forge Comics. I'm going to take a look at the first book they released as a trade paperback. Now I did find an interview that they did just before the launch of cattle last primes first leadoff book, The Event, and there were some.. actually kind of interesting statements from Joseph Illidge who is the co-writer of the first story in the Catalyst Prime Universe and also is the founder of the company. He says, "Catalyst Prime is a superhero universe but it's pretty rooted in science". Well, the essential way that people get their powers in the Catalyst Prime Universe involves an event where several astronauts go off to stop a collision with the earth that would be an extinction level event, and they come back with superpowers and there are superpowers as a result of the fallout because apparently that's how science works. I guess if there's anything that's more scientific about this universe having it come from a single event, it's that it's probably slightly more likely that an event happens that causes strange changes in a multitude of people rather than separate events occurring where, for example, in the Marvel Universe you have the Fantastic Four getting transformed into superheroes by getting exposed to cosmic rays right before Peter Parker's bitten by a radioactive spider and Bruce Banner exposes himself to gamma rays creating The Hulk and Hank Pym discovers the ability to shrink himself down. It's slightly more plausible, I think, claiming the authority of science might be a bit much.
Elad says, "A second thing, quite frankly, is that Catalyst Prime is new. I think that we're singing in attrition of the capacity of fans tolerance for change. I think they're exhausted. I think they're tired of the reboots of Superman. They're tired of the rebirths of the Marvel Universe. It's exhausting and it's confusing. The idea that people can come into the Catalyst Prime line of books and start now, get it in on the ground floor of it, I think that's exciting for people". I think that…there's some things that's problematic about that. For one, it's kind of like he's dishing on those other companies. It's like a negative attack ad from a political campaign, but also assumes that by not being Marvel and D.C. and not having this massive continuity that that's going to draw fans, when the fact is that there have been several companies to come before that have tried this. He was part of One Milestone, there's also been Dynamite, Dark Horse, Image and so many others. Certainly there's a point where people get tired of being over-continuitied and retcons with characters they like, but you also if you're going to take advantage of that you need to provide them other characters they're going to like.
So, does the first Catalyst Prime book ‘Noble' do that? So, in revealing this I am actually going to start at the end...

The Catalyst Prime Universe begins with an amnesiac astronaut flying about the desert while his wife sets out to beat down anyone who stands between her and her husband.

Affiliate link included.

Read Catalyst Prime: The Event for free.

Transcript :

Find out about Noble. Is he a noble success, a noble fire or not noble and all. Find out as we take a look at Noble: Volume One: God Shots, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

While we talk a lot about Marvel and D.C. but there are other superhero universes out there and one just got started last year. It’s the Catalyst Prime Universe from Lion Forge Comics. I’m going to take a look at the first book they released as a trade paperback. Now I did find an interview that they did just before the launch of cattle last primes first leadoff book, The Event, and there were some.. actually kind of interesting statements from Joseph Illidge who is the co-writer of the first story in the Catalyst Prime Universe and also is the founder of the company. He says, “Catalyst Prime is a superhero universe but it’s pretty rooted in science”. Well, the essential way that people get their powers in the Catalyst Prime Universe involves an event where several astronauts go off to stop a collision with the earth that would be an extinction level event, and they come back with superpowers and there are superpowers as a result of the fallout because apparently that’s how science works. I guess if there’s anything that’s more scientific about this universe having it come from a single event, it’s that it’s probably slightly more likely that an event happens that causes strange changes in a multitude of people rather than separate events occurring where, for example, in the Marvel Universe you have the Fantastic Four getting transformed into superheroes by getting exposed to cosmic rays right before Peter Parker’s bitten by a radioactive spider and Bruce Banner exposes himself to gamma rays creating The Hulk and Hank Pym discovers the ability to shrink himself down. It’s slightly more plausible, I think, claiming the authority of science might be a bit much.

Elad says, “A second thing, quite frankly, is that Catalyst Prime is new. I think that we’re singing in attrition of the capacity of fans tolerance for change. I think they’re exhausted. I think they’re tired of the reboots of Superman. They’re tired of the rebirths of the Marvel Universe. It’s exhausting and it’s confusing. The idea that people can come into the Catalyst Prime line of books and start now, get it in on the ground floor of it, I think that’s exciting for people”. I think that…there’s some things that’s problematic about that. For one, it’s kind of like he’s dishing on those other companies. It’s like a negative attack ad from a political campaign, but also assumes that by not being Marvel and D.C. and not having this massive continuity that that’s going to draw fans, when the fact is that there have been several companies to come before that have tried this. He was part of One Milestone, there’s also been Dynamite, Dark Horse, Image and so many others. Certainly there’s a point where people get tired of being over-continuitied and retcons with characters they like, but you also if you’re going to take advantage of that you need to provide them other characters they’re going to like.

So, does the first Catalyst Prime book ‘Noble’ do that? So,

Adam Graham discusses how to Amazon Pre-order, Comixology sales, eBay, and more to get the best possible deals on your comic book purchases.
Transcript Follows:
Find out how to get the best price on your comic book purchases, straight ahead.
Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

Back in Episode Nineteen we discussed ways where you could read comic books for free, but for many people they want to own them, they want to actually buy and own their comics, and so we're going to talk about how to get bargains on comic books and on trades. We'll start with the obvious in regards to newer trades or trades that are coming out, is to pre-order the books on Amazon if you know for example that you're going to want to read a book that comes out at the end of the year. Pre-order it now. You won't get charged by Amazon until it's time for it actually to be purchased. But Amazon's got a pre-order guarantee which means that if the price goes down between now and when you actually have the book shipped out to you, you will get charged the lowest price and that can be a really nice benefit. I ordered Volume Five of the Silver Surfer – it was, I think, more than a year before publication and the publication date got changed and they added two more Issues to wrap it up, so I put in my request on a six-Issue trade, it became an eight-Issue trade, but before it became an eight-Issue trade the price dropped from nineteen dollars to ten dollars so I only ended up paying ten dollars for a brand new trade. And I had similar experiences ordering some of the Titan Doctor Who comics where I got significant savings by pre-ordering the new trade in advance. Now that's for just getting a new trade. What about other physical comics and trades, order trades? I will go ahead and talk about them both from physical perspectives as well as the digital version.
Now, as I've stated in a previous podcast I really prefer trades for reading comics, but occasionally I get individual Issues. And there are reasons why I will get the individual Issues, uncollected stories is one reason. Sometimes they're not collected just because the series wasn't viewed as popular enough, or just the company made a decision. I have, for example, Issues 72 to 100 of Spider Girl because they stopped doing trades for her comics with Issue Seventy-Two and I wanted to read the whole series. So, I have all Twenty-Eight of those physical Issues. Sometimes a company's license has expired – you'll see this particularly with a lot of the old Marvel trades where you'll see, for example, that they skip where they're collecting all the Issues of Marvel Team Up or Marvel Two and One, the team up books with Spider Man and The Thing, respectively. You'll see some Issue numbers not included, and the reason is Marvel often teamed its license properties with its in-house superheroes in order to boost sales for both. But when a license expires they can't reprint the book, so thus there was an Issue of Marvel Two and One which featured The Thing teaming up with Doc Savage, as well as the Spider Man comic featuring the same. And those books were not collected; however, you can still buy used copies of the Issues offline.
Another example are Pinky and Brain comics or the comic series for the movie Condorman. These were all obscure things I could not get in a trade and so I went hunting for the actual paper existing comics. I will say on uncollected stories, it's probably a good idea to be 100% sure that they're not – or as sure as you can be – that they are not going to be issued as a trade. There have been some cases where I have been like, I'm getting these because I want to read them and they came out as a trade anyway.

Adam Graham discusses how to Amazon Pre-order, Comixology sales, eBay, and more to get the best possible deals on your comic book purchases.

Transcript Follows:

Find out how to get the best price on your comic book purchases, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

Back in Episode Nineteen we discussed ways where you could read comic books for free, but for many people they want to own them, they want to actually buy and own their comics, and so we’re going to talk about how to get bargains on comic books and on trades. We’ll start with the obvious in regards to newer trades or trades that are coming out, is to pre-order the books on Amazon if you know for example that you’re going to want to read a book that comes out at the end of the year. Pre-order it now. You won’t get charged by Amazon until it’s time for it actually to be purchased. But Amazon’s got a pre-order guarantee which means that if the price goes down between now and when you actually have the book shipped out to you, you will get charged the lowest price and that can be a really nice benefit. I ordered Volume Five of the Silver Surfer – it was, I think, more than a year before publication and the publication date got changed and they added two more Issues to wrap it up, so I put in my request on a six-Issue trade, it became an eight-Issue trade, but before it became an eight-Issue trade the price dropped from nineteen dollars to ten dollars so I only ended up paying ten dollars for a brand new trade. And I had similar experiences ordering some of the Titan Doctor Who comics where I got significant savings by pre-ordering the new trade in advance. Now that’s for just getting a new trade. What about other physical comics and trades, order trades? I will go ahead and talk about them both from physical perspectives as well as the digital version.

Now, as I’ve stated in a previous podcast I really prefer trades for reading comics, but occasionally I get individual Issues. And there are reasons why I will get the individual Issues, uncollected stories is one reason. Sometimes they’re not collected just because the series wasn’t viewed as popular enough, or just the company made a decision. I have, for example, Issues 72 to 100 of Spider Girl because they stopped doing trades for her comics with Issue Seventy-Two and I wanted to read the whole series. So, I have all Twenty-Eight of those physical Issues. Sometimes a company’s license has expired – you’ll see this particularly with a lot of the old Marvel trades where you’ll see, for example, that they skip where they’re collecting all the Issues of Marvel Team Up or Marvel Two and One, the team up books with Spider Man and The Thing, respectively. You’ll see some Issue numbers not included, and the reason is Marvel often teamed its license properties with its in-house superheroes in order to boost sales for both. But when a license expires they can’t reprint the book, so thus there was an Issue of Marvel Two and One which featured The Thing teaming up with Doc Savage, as well as the Spider Man comic featuring the same. And those books were not collected; however, you can still buy used copies of the Issues offline.

Another example are Pinky and Brain comics or the comic series for the movie Condorman. These were all obscure things I could not get in a trade and so I went hunting for the actual paper existing comics. I will say on uncollected stories, it’s probably a good idea to be 100% sure that they’re not – or as sure as you can be – that they are not going to be issued as a trade. There have been some cases where I have been like, I’m getting these because I want to read them and they came out as a trade anyway....

After defeating the arch-villain Lady Shiva, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) faces her biggest challenge-actually having her own adventures in the midst of numerous crossovers.
Affiliate link included.
Transcript below:

Batgirl takes an Issue off to recover from death, then she gets involved in a lot of crossover events, and finally she gets to battle Batgirl? We'll talk all about it as we review Batgirl Volume Three: Point Blank, straight ahead.
Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
OK, probably the first thing I should make clear is we're not actually talking about the Barbara Gordon Batgirl in today's program…talking about the Cassandra Cain Batgirl who was active from 2000 – 2006 and then again in 2008 for a mini series, but she was actually the first Batgirl to have her own title. Barbara Gordon's Batgirl previously only had strips in other magazines such as Detective Comics or Batman Family.
Cassandra Cain was the daughter of David Cain as well as anti-heroine Lady Shiva. She was raised to be a killing machine by her father, and is traumatized by the memory of the one man she remembers killing when she was eight years old. The way he taught her and raised her was that she did not actually learn any language – she learned to read body movements which made her very effective as a fighter. However, she did learn to talk in the early Issues of Batgirl which caused her fighting skills to falter. She then made a deal with her mother, Lady Shiva; Lady Shiva promising to restore her powers and abilities as a super martial artist in exchange for fighting her a year later in a fight to the death. And Cassandra agreed to this, and in the battle to the death with Lady Shiva, Lady Shiva killed her but then brought her back to life and then Cassandra ends up defeating her. And I guess you would have to call that a draw overall, and that's where Point Blank comes in. It collects Issues Twenty-Six through Thirty-Seven, and follows immediately on the end of her battle with her mother.
Issue Twenty-Six actually finds her out of action because she is recovering from being temporarily dead and is out like a light, but Barbara Gordon who is Oracle at this point sends Stephanie Brown who is known as Spoiler out to investigate a bit of an aftermath of that fight. And Stephanie goes out and does the investigation shadowed by her imagination's take on Batgirl. So, Batgirl is in this as a phantasm of Stephanie's imagination. This Issue is a bit weird, it's OK, it's really weird you have a Batgirl-like episode where she appears just like that as well as for a couple brief moments as she is recovering. After that we get into in Issue Twenty-Seven, the book does something and this is probably one of the chief challenges with this book, is that in the Batman Family books there was an event going on – actually a couple of events that came right one after another. One is collected in Bruce Wayne: Murderer? and then also Bruce Wayne:Fugitive, about Bruce Wayne being framed for murder and the Bat Family trying to work this out. And there are three Issues of Batgirl in this book that actually tie into those two events. I personally am not a big fan of including event-tying comics in the book because they tend to take you out of the story and out of the character's world, and I would just rather you've put those in the Events Book. But they didn't in this case and it turned out not to be so bad, they are at least mixed.
Issue Twenty-Seven ties in and it has her, when learning about Bruce Wayne being suspected of murder, she does something nobody else does and digs up the body of the victim and makes a discovery when she examines the corpse. And it shows her kind of unique take as well as some of her g...

After defeating the arch-villain Lady Shiva, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) faces her biggest challenge-actually having her own adventures in the midst of numerous crossovers.

Affiliate link included.

Transcript below:

Batgirl takes an Issue off to recover from death, then she gets involved in a lot of crossover events, and finally she gets to battle Batgirl? We’ll talk all about it as we review Batgirl Volume Three: Point Blank, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

OK, probably the first thing I should make clear is we’re not actually talking about the Barbara Gordon Batgirl in today’s program…talking about the Cassandra Cain Batgirl who was active from 2000 – 2006 and then again in 2008 for a mini series, but she was actually the first Batgirl to have her own title. Barbara Gordon’s Batgirl previously only had strips in other magazines such as Detective Comics or Batman Family.

Cassandra Cain was the daughter of David Cain as well as anti-heroine Lady Shiva. She was raised to be a killing machine by her father, and is traumatized by the memory of the one man she remembers killing when she was eight years old. The way he taught her and raised her was that she did not actually learn any language – she learned to read body movements which made her very effective as a fighter. However, she did learn to talk in the early Issues of Batgirl which caused her fighting skills to falter. She then made a deal with her mother, Lady Shiva; Lady Shiva promising to restore her powers and abilities as a super martial artist in exchange for fighting her a year later in a fight to the death. And Cassandra agreed to this, and in the battle to the death with Lady Shiva, Lady Shiva killed her but then brought her back to life and then Cassandra ends up defeating her. And I guess you would have to call that a draw overall, and that’s where Point Blank comes in. It collects Issues Twenty-Six through Thirty-Seven, and follows immediately on the end of her battle with her mother.

Issue Twenty-Six actually finds her out of action because she is recovering from being temporarily dead and is out like a light, but Barbara Gordon who is Oracle at this point sends Stephanie Brown who is known as Spoiler out to investigate a bit of an aftermath of that fight. And Stephanie goes out and does the investigation shadowed by her imagination’s take on Batgirl. So, Batgirl is in this as a phantasm of Stephanie’s imagination. This Issue is a bit weird, it’s OK, it’s really weird you have a Batgirl-like episode where she appears just like that as well as for a couple brief moments as she is recovering. After that we get into in Issue Twenty-Seven, the book does something and this is probably one of the chief challenges with this book, is that in the Batman Family books there was an event going on – actually a couple of events that came right one after another. One is collected in Bruce Wayne: Murderer? and then also Bruce Wayne:Fugitive, about Bruce Wayne being framed for murder and the Bat Family trying to work this out. And there are three Issues of Batgirl in this book that actually tie into those two events. I personally am not a big fan of including event-tying comics in the book because they tend to take you out of the story and out of the character’s world, and I would just rather you’ve put those in the Events Book. But they didn’t in this case and it turned out not to be so bad, they are at least mixed.

Issue Twenty-Seven ties in and it has her, when learning about Bruce Wayne being suspected of murder, she does something nobody else does and digs up the body of the victim and makes a discovery when she examines the corpse. And it shows her kind of unique take as well as some of her g...

The Eleventh Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling go on three random adventures.
Affiliate link included.
Transcript below:

More adventures with the Doctor, Alice and the Sapling in Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: A Sapling Roots straight ahead.
Well it's time to review another Doctor Who book, and I promise we're not going to make the next two episodes Doctor Who reviews as well. I didn't realize I'd recorded three straight reviews until I was thinking about it more carefully. This book collects Issues Three point Five to Three point Eight, or the Eleventh Doctor comic series. Issue Five is ‘Time of the Ood and it involves the Ood from the TV Series. The story on this, and this is somewhat important – probably more important than it should be, is that the Tenth Doctor met the Ood onboard a platform that was possibly in a blackhole. Ood were a servile race though they didn't do anything to free them because he was dealing with a demonic bane who was taking them over. However, the Doctor did help free the Ood in Planet of the Ood in Season Four, and the Ood Song was released throughout the solar system calling for the Ood to return home. However, in Time of the Ood they find seventeen Ood enslaved at a place called The Devil's Eye which is a resort and because of its unique position these Ood cannot hear the Ood Song calling them home.
A villain of the piece is Jonni Halliburton, formerly a member of the Friend of the Ood who were seeking to free the Ood. However, she took the view that the Oods who were on the planet who were being docile…seemingly happy slaves were making a mockery of everything she and her fellow activists had stood for. It's an interesting idea that someone can be an activist and can actually become more concerned with their cause and the people they say they're trying to help. But even with that interesting idea this story has way too much continuity in it, which is unusual for the Eleventh Doctor series. And it's not particularly quite a bit of continuity for just a one-Issue story.
The next story is ‘The Memory Feast' and it finds the Doctor, Alice and the Sapling landing on a mysterious ship that is known as a Memory Ark, and they stumble through odd landscapes, many of which are drawn from the Doctor's or Alice's memories. This story I found to be just a little bit confusing and busy. The art was pretty good but it was really hard to follow what's going on. It was a one and a half Issue story and it feels like it wasn't long enough to explain all the concepts. It's not bad but like I said, a bit busy. The final story is ‘Fooled' which has the Doctor, Alice and the Sapling heading to a fair – looks a bit like a renaissance fair was what we called it in the States – and the three of them are having a good time just on holiday. However, people around them start losing memories of key events, and the Sapling starts gaining them. What's going on and why is the Sapling leeching these memories? This is probably the best story in the book. It's a single-Issue tale but it has its…a good concept, it's heart, and also has a character moment for the Sapling.
‘Something Borrowed' is a short that was printed along with The Memory Feast. It has the Doctor going on a spaceship to get something that he had loaned to Drax – a character that he's only ever met in his Fourth incarnation. So, this is something that he's been wanting returned for seven lifetimes, which turns out to be somewhat anticlimactic and silly, but not silly enough to really actually be funny. Overall I was somewhat underwhelmed by this. This is not by any means a horrible book. There are some good moments and some good art, but more than anything else it felt like this book was kind of marking time until ...

The Eleventh Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling go on three random adventures.

Affiliate link included.

Transcript below:

More adventures with the Doctor, Alice and the Sapling in Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: A Sapling Roots straight ahead.

Well it’s time to review another Doctor Who book, and I promise we’re not going to make the next two episodes Doctor Who reviews as well. I didn’t realize I’d recorded three straight reviews until I was thinking about it more carefully. This book collects Issues Three point Five to Three point Eight, or the Eleventh Doctor comic series. Issue Five is ‘Time of the Ood and it involves the Ood from the TV Series. The story on this, and this is somewhat important – probably more important than it should be, is that the Tenth Doctor met the Ood onboard a platform that was possibly in a blackhole. Ood were a servile race though they didn’t do anything to free them because he was dealing with a demonic bane who was taking them over. However, the Doctor did help free the Ood in Planet of the Ood in Season Four, and the Ood Song was released throughout the solar system calling for the Ood to return home. However, in Time of the Ood they find seventeen Ood enslaved at a place called The Devil’s Eye which is a resort and because of its unique position these Ood cannot hear the Ood Song calling them home.

A villain of the piece is Jonni Halliburton, formerly a member of the Friend of the Ood who were seeking to free the Ood. However, she took the view that the Oods who were on the planet who were being docile…seemingly happy slaves were making a mockery of everything she and her fellow activists had stood for. It’s an interesting idea that someone can be an activist and can actually become more concerned with their cause and the people they say they’re trying to help. But even with that interesting idea this story has way too much continuity in it, which is unusual for the Eleventh Doctor series. And it’s not particularly quite a bit of continuity for just a one-Issue story.

The next story is ‘The Memory Feast’ and it finds the Doctor, Alice and the Sapling landing on a mysterious ship that is known as a Memory Ark, and they stumble through odd landscapes, many of which are drawn from the Doctor’s or Alice’s memories. This story I found to be just a little bit confusing and busy. The art was pretty good but it was really hard to follow what’s going on. It was a one and a half Issue story and it feels like it wasn’t long enough to explain all the concepts. It’s not bad but like I said, a bit busy. The final story is ‘Fooled’ which has the Doctor, Alice and the Sapling heading to a fair – looks a bit like a renaissance fair was what we called it in the States – and the three of them are having a good time just on holiday. However, people around them start losing memories of key events, and the Sapling starts gaining them. What’s going on and why is the Sapling leeching these memories? This is probably the best story in the book. It’s a single-Issue tale but it has its…a good concept, it’s heart, and also has a character moment for the Sapling.

‘Something Borrowed’ is a short that was printed along with The Memory Feast. It has the Doctor going on a spaceship to get something that he had loaned to Drax – a character that he’s only ever met in his Fourth incarnation. So, this is something that he’s been wanting returned for seven lifetimes, which turns out to be somewhat anticlimactic and silly, but not silly enough to really actually be funny. Overall I was somewhat underwhelmed by this. This is not by any means a horrible book. There are some good moments and some good art, but more than anything else it felt like this book was kind of marking time ...

More Batman and the Brave and the Bold team-ups as Batman teams up with the Joker, and later joins forces with the Metal Men to stop radical Native Americans from taking the Constitution and Declaration of Independence hostage.
Affiliate link included.
Transcript below:

Get ready for the ultimate Batman team up. It's Batman and the Joker! We'll tell you all about it next as we conclude our look at Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo Volume One straight ahead.
Welcome the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
In the previous episode, we took a look at those Jim Aparo stories that appeared in Issues Ninety-Eight, 100 to 102, and 104 to 108. Now we turn to those that were between 109 and 122, and again I'm only focusing on those that I think are interesting. ‘Death has the Last Laugh' is probably one of the more intriguing titles. The front cover advertises it as the strangest team up in history, Batman and the Joker with Batman protecting the Joker from the police. That doesn't actually happen in the story, but it draws you in. Actually, when the story opens Batman is at the scene of what appears to be the Joker's latest crime, killing an entire family and leaving each one holding a Joker Card. And this leads to Batman proclaiming, "By God, Joker, you've done your last criminal act! I swear, this time, to hunt you down and destroy you like the mad dog you are!" I love how Aparo sets that apart – the frame is separate from the opening spread, and it has Batman on a red background which reinforces the anger.
Now when he is leaving the crime scene Gordon reminds Batman that he can't actually kill the Joker legally. Batman says, "I'm making no promises. You'd better catch the Joker before I do – if you want him alive." That' not something we're used to Batman saying but Batman is truly ticked off and he doesn't actually end up killing the Joker in the comic. It's a human moment and it works. However, evidence begins to emerge that maybe the Joker didn't commit the crime, and it appears that someone else has framed the Joker, and the Joker doesn't like it one bit and we get the setup for a team up between Batman and the Joker. I won't say how it plays out but it is a brilliant story with some great twist and it also highlights the importance of Batman's relationship with Commissioner Gordon.
Issue 112 is ‘The Impossible Escape' and it features Mr. Miracle, and Batman in a case that requires going into an old Egyptian temple. There are some good twists and what's really interesting about it is they're pretty much apart and interacting until the final few pages. Issue 113 is ‘The Fifty Story Killer' where a new regime comes into City Hall and Gordon is forced to retire and Batman is sympathetic as you would always expect Batman to be. But his thought bubbles shows his thoughts, "Poor Gordon is getting too old. They did him a favor retiring him before he becomes decrepit. Hope someone does that for me when my time comes." And immediately he's informed that he is being retired as the city's defender and being replaced by the Metal Men. Batman continues to fight but is given a cease and desist order. I guess that's a downside of the whole Deputized Agent of the Law thing that Batman had going on in the 1970s. So, Batman is forced into retirement until the Metal Men run into something they can't handle, which not surprisingly doesn't take long. I'm not a huge fan of the Metal Men, and this story doesn't really do enough to justify some of its silly terms.
‘The Last Jet to Gotham' is a fascinating story because a jet carrying a key witness g...

More Batman and the Brave and the Bold team-ups as Batman teams up with the Joker, and later joins forces with the Metal Men to stop radical Native Americans from taking the Constitution and Declaration of Independence hostage.

Affiliate link included.

Transcript below:

Get ready for the ultimate Batman team up. It’s Batman and the Joker! We’ll tell you all about it next as we conclude our look at Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo Volume One straight ahead.

Welcome the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

In the previous episode, we took a look at those Jim Aparo stories that appeared in Issues Ninety-Eight, 100 to 102, and 104 to 108. Now we turn to those that were between 109 and 122, and again I’m only focusing on those that I think are interesting. ‘Death has the Last Laugh’ is probably one of the more intriguing titles. The front cover advertises it as the strangest team up in history, Batman and the Joker with Batman protecting the Joker from the police. That doesn’t actually happen in the story, but it draws you in. Actually, when the story opens Batman is at the scene of what appears to be the Joker’s latest crime, killing an entire family and leaving each one holding a Joker Card. And this leads to Batman proclaiming, “By God, Joker, you’ve done your last criminal act! I swear, this time, to hunt you down and destroy you like the mad dog you are!” I love how Aparo sets that apart – the frame is separate from the opening spread, and it has Batman on a red background which reinforces the anger.

Now when he is leaving the crime scene Gordon reminds Batman that he can’t actually kill the Joker legally. Batman says, “I’m making no promises. You’d better catch the Joker before I do – if you want him alive.” That’ not something we’re used to Batman saying but Batman is truly ticked off and he doesn’t actually end up killing the Joker in the comic. It’s a human moment and it works. However, evidence begins to emerge that maybe the Joker didn’t commit the crime, and it appears that someone else has framed the Joker, and the Joker doesn’t like it one bit and we get the setup for a team up between Batman and the Joker. I won’t say how it plays out but it is a brilliant story with some great twist and it also highlights the importance of Batman’s relationship with Commissioner Gordon.

Issue 112 is ‘The Impossible Escape’ and it features Mr. Miracle, and Batman in a case that requires going into an old Egyptian temple. There are some good twists and what’s really interesting about it is they’re pretty much apart and interacting until the final few pages. Issue 113 is ‘The Fifty Story Killer’ where a new regime comes into City Hall and Gordon is forced to retire and Batman is sympathetic as you would always expect Batman to be. But his thought bubbles shows his thoughts, “Poor Gordon is getting too old. They did him a favor retiring him before he becomes decrepit. Hope someone does that for me when my time comes.” And immediately he’s informed that he is being retired as the city’s defender and being replaced by the Metal Men. Batman continues to fight but is given a cease and desist order. I guess that’s a downside of the whole Deputized Agent of the Law thing that Batman had going on in the 1970s. So, Batman is forced into retirement until the Metal Men run into something they can’t handle, which not surprisingly doesn’t take long. I’m not a huge fan of the Metal Men, and this story doesn’t really do enough to justify some of its silly terms.

‘The Last Jet to Gotham’ is a fascinating story because a jet carrying a key wit...