MattBrady
05-09-2008, 11:37 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Flashback/Adventure461.jpg" border="0" align="right"><i>by Matt Brady</I>
Batman will die.
A hero’s secret identity will be magically erased from the minds of all that knew it.
No – the name of the feature is “Flashback,” so we’re not talking about the upcoming <b>Batman R.I.P.</b> or last fall/winter’s <b>One More Day</b>. We’re talking about the <I>first</I> time Batman died. Well, <i>a</i> Batman, anyway. But let’s start with the present and move to the past.
The concept of “Earth-2” has been coming up more and more in DC comics, specifically in the neighborhood of <b>Justice Society of America</b>, whose Annual, later this year, bears the title, “Return to Earth-2.” But from the glimpses we’ve seen of the post-<b>52</b> Earth-2, there’s no Batman on it. Where is he?
Dead.
Cast your mind back, back through the mists to 1978-1979, no, not back to the then-recently revived <b>All-Star Comics</b> - that was cancelled by then. Look instead to <b>Adventure Comics #461-#463</b> where the Justice Society was one of a handful of strips running in the double-sized series. The Society, while experiencing something of a revival, was far from the heights of its original popularity, and nowhere near as popular as it is now. <b>All-Star Comics</b> was given second life in 1976 by avowed Golden Age fans Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz, with art by the likes of Joe Staton, Keith Giffen. Ric Estrada and the legendary Wally Wood. Knowing that the Golden Age characters needed some hook to entice modern readers, the creators during this period introduced Power Girl (Earth-2’s answer to Supergirl) and the Helena Wayne Huntress (daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle).
<i>An aside –the “younger” heroes, i.e., Robin, Power Girl and Star-Spangled Kid formed the “Super Squad,” a hipper version of the group when compared to the “parental” JSA. This, of course, would be echoed again with the JSA in the formation of <b>Infinity Inc.</b> 1984.</I>
Anyway - as mentioned, <b>All-Star</b> had folded – part of the legendary “DC Implosion,” but like a handful of other characters who saw their respective series end, the Justice Society lived on as a feature in <b>Adventure Comics</b> by Levitz and Staton.
Let that sink in for a moment.
A major, iconic (albeit Earth-2 version, but hey, when Earth-2 Superman got married, he got his own issue of <b>Action Comics</b> - #484) character’s death handled as a strip in a mid-selling anthology title, and told not as a special issue, but spread across three issues. Okay, to DC’s credit, the story <i>was</i> the first Justice Society story in <b>Adventure</b>, but still…
Cue today’s editors and marketing staffs at Marvel and DC to cry, “Oh, the humanity! The lost hype! The lost mainstream media stories! The lost sales!”
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Flashback/Adventure462.jpg" border="0" align="left">Think that’s bad compared to how things are handled now? Just wait until we get to the <i>how</I> part of Batman dying.
As for the story itself – eerily, it’s a primer on the future in many ways. It’s title: “Only Legends Live Forever.” DC’s first tagline for this summer’s <b>Final Crisis</b>? “Heroes Die. Legends Live Forever.”
In the story, Bruce Wayne has retired from being Batman and is now the Gotham City Police Commissioner. His wife, Selina Kyle, was killed a year earlier, and his daughter, Helena, has recently taken up the identity of The Huntress – something Bruce has yet to clue in on. The story’s main threat shows itself early – escaped murderer Bill Jensen. What, you’ve never heard of Bill Jensen? Don’t worry, no one else had either.
Jensen climbs to the top of Gotham’s Twin Trade Towers, and demands Commissioner Wayne come to him. The Society (well, Power Girl, Green Lantern, Robin, Huntress and the Flash) show up and try to stop him. Thing is, Jensen is channeling some unknown power that stops them all, from the weakest (looking at you Huntress) to the strongest (Power Girl). With the Society defeated (and Jensen threatening to level the towers), Wayne shows up, is as confused as everyone else as to Jensen’s beef and his claim that Wayne framed him to bolster his reputation so he could be named Commissioner. Oh – and the best part about Jensen’s powers? He woke up with them one morning in prison.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Flashback/Adventure463.jpg" border="0" align="right">As Jensen is about the deliver the killing blow to Wayne, Dr. Fate appears, stops him, and then is felled by Jensen’s power. Wayne, still confused about who the guy is, why he believes he framed him, and where he got his powers, heads down to the City Museum to grab a Batman costume and then take Jensen on as the Caped Crusader. Batman’s masked is ripped during the battle, Jensen realizes Wayne and Batman are one in the same, and Jensen’s hate consumes him, “with a fire not seen on this earth since creation…and the Batman dies with him!” – taking up maybe a fifth of the final panel in that part of the story.
The funeral. As a result of Batman dying as Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and Helena’s secrets were easily figured out (although this much was unstated by the story in a direct manner that today’s readers have come to expect), and the two are now operating without masks. Then, on a hunt for the real source of Bill Jensen’s power, Dr. Fate leads the Society to Frederic Vaux, the conduit, who is seeking to destroy all the heroes (Jensen was just the first tool he was using) as a way to gain power from the lords of chaos. As part of his plan, Vaux casts a spell so that all the people of earth will forget that the heroes ever even existed.
Of course, the Society stops him, but as Dr. Fate reveals – the fabric of reality is weak due to Vaux’s spell. He can repair it, but does so with one caveat – in doing so, he erases the knowledge from the public that Bruce Wayne and Batman were the same man, giving Grayson and Wayne back their secret identities, and literally putting masks back on their faces.
So – got that? Major hero killed – barely a panel-long death scene in an anthology. Hero-killer? The terrifying Bill Jensen. Reason for death? Er…part of some larger scheme…or…something. Identity revealed – magic invoked, identity forgotten. Yikes. To say that comics were a different business in 1979? Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement.
All told though, and possibly a <I>tad</I> romanticized, as I still have these issues picked up from the stands of the Ellwood City Newsstand, back in the day, “Only Legends Live Forever” is a hoot – big and loud, kinda, but not quite making sense, something actually <i>happens</I>, and in the end, at least I look back on the story and think it was big, corny fun. A throwback to when comic books weren’t necessarily “Comic Books,” deaths weren’t “events,” and by god, a kid would most likely roll the thing up and stick it in their back pocket so they could ride their bike some from the store with two hands, the way their mother told them to.
It’s definitely a type of story we’ll never see again in comics, either in content or execution.
Oh – want one more nugget from this era of <b>Adventure Comics</b>? Prince Gavyn, the Starman of space, debuted just four issues later, in <b>Adventure #467</b>. He’s gone on to bigger things.
<I>Where can you find “Only Legends Live Forever?” The back issue bins are a safe bet – the story was originally in <b>Adventure Comics #461-#463</b>, and the issues can probably be found on the cheap (and will smell like old people feet) – although you might find one or two mustache-twirling retailers advertising them as “the first” <b>Batman R.I.P.</b>, and subsequently jacking the price. The story, along with the some of the revival issues of <b>All-Star</b> can also be found in the <b>Justice Society volume 2</b> trade, with the earlier issues of the <b>All-Star</b> restart in volume 1.
And yes, in that cover to #463 above, Wonder Woman is fighting off bees. My God. Bees.</i>
Batman will die.
A hero’s secret identity will be magically erased from the minds of all that knew it.
No – the name of the feature is “Flashback,” so we’re not talking about the upcoming <b>Batman R.I.P.</b> or last fall/winter’s <b>One More Day</b>. We’re talking about the <I>first</I> time Batman died. Well, <i>a</i> Batman, anyway. But let’s start with the present and move to the past.
The concept of “Earth-2” has been coming up more and more in DC comics, specifically in the neighborhood of <b>Justice Society of America</b>, whose Annual, later this year, bears the title, “Return to Earth-2.” But from the glimpses we’ve seen of the post-<b>52</b> Earth-2, there’s no Batman on it. Where is he?
Dead.
Cast your mind back, back through the mists to 1978-1979, no, not back to the then-recently revived <b>All-Star Comics</b> - that was cancelled by then. Look instead to <b>Adventure Comics #461-#463</b> where the Justice Society was one of a handful of strips running in the double-sized series. The Society, while experiencing something of a revival, was far from the heights of its original popularity, and nowhere near as popular as it is now. <b>All-Star Comics</b> was given second life in 1976 by avowed Golden Age fans Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz, with art by the likes of Joe Staton, Keith Giffen. Ric Estrada and the legendary Wally Wood. Knowing that the Golden Age characters needed some hook to entice modern readers, the creators during this period introduced Power Girl (Earth-2’s answer to Supergirl) and the Helena Wayne Huntress (daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle).
<i>An aside –the “younger” heroes, i.e., Robin, Power Girl and Star-Spangled Kid formed the “Super Squad,” a hipper version of the group when compared to the “parental” JSA. This, of course, would be echoed again with the JSA in the formation of <b>Infinity Inc.</b> 1984.</I>
Anyway - as mentioned, <b>All-Star</b> had folded – part of the legendary “DC Implosion,” but like a handful of other characters who saw their respective series end, the Justice Society lived on as a feature in <b>Adventure Comics</b> by Levitz and Staton.
Let that sink in for a moment.
A major, iconic (albeit Earth-2 version, but hey, when Earth-2 Superman got married, he got his own issue of <b>Action Comics</b> - #484) character’s death handled as a strip in a mid-selling anthology title, and told not as a special issue, but spread across three issues. Okay, to DC’s credit, the story <i>was</i> the first Justice Society story in <b>Adventure</b>, but still…
Cue today’s editors and marketing staffs at Marvel and DC to cry, “Oh, the humanity! The lost hype! The lost mainstream media stories! The lost sales!”
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Flashback/Adventure462.jpg" border="0" align="left">Think that’s bad compared to how things are handled now? Just wait until we get to the <i>how</I> part of Batman dying.
As for the story itself – eerily, it’s a primer on the future in many ways. It’s title: “Only Legends Live Forever.” DC’s first tagline for this summer’s <b>Final Crisis</b>? “Heroes Die. Legends Live Forever.”
In the story, Bruce Wayne has retired from being Batman and is now the Gotham City Police Commissioner. His wife, Selina Kyle, was killed a year earlier, and his daughter, Helena, has recently taken up the identity of The Huntress – something Bruce has yet to clue in on. The story’s main threat shows itself early – escaped murderer Bill Jensen. What, you’ve never heard of Bill Jensen? Don’t worry, no one else had either.
Jensen climbs to the top of Gotham’s Twin Trade Towers, and demands Commissioner Wayne come to him. The Society (well, Power Girl, Green Lantern, Robin, Huntress and the Flash) show up and try to stop him. Thing is, Jensen is channeling some unknown power that stops them all, from the weakest (looking at you Huntress) to the strongest (Power Girl). With the Society defeated (and Jensen threatening to level the towers), Wayne shows up, is as confused as everyone else as to Jensen’s beef and his claim that Wayne framed him to bolster his reputation so he could be named Commissioner. Oh – and the best part about Jensen’s powers? He woke up with them one morning in prison.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Flashback/Adventure463.jpg" border="0" align="right">As Jensen is about the deliver the killing blow to Wayne, Dr. Fate appears, stops him, and then is felled by Jensen’s power. Wayne, still confused about who the guy is, why he believes he framed him, and where he got his powers, heads down to the City Museum to grab a Batman costume and then take Jensen on as the Caped Crusader. Batman’s masked is ripped during the battle, Jensen realizes Wayne and Batman are one in the same, and Jensen’s hate consumes him, “with a fire not seen on this earth since creation…and the Batman dies with him!” – taking up maybe a fifth of the final panel in that part of the story.
The funeral. As a result of Batman dying as Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and Helena’s secrets were easily figured out (although this much was unstated by the story in a direct manner that today’s readers have come to expect), and the two are now operating without masks. Then, on a hunt for the real source of Bill Jensen’s power, Dr. Fate leads the Society to Frederic Vaux, the conduit, who is seeking to destroy all the heroes (Jensen was just the first tool he was using) as a way to gain power from the lords of chaos. As part of his plan, Vaux casts a spell so that all the people of earth will forget that the heroes ever even existed.
Of course, the Society stops him, but as Dr. Fate reveals – the fabric of reality is weak due to Vaux’s spell. He can repair it, but does so with one caveat – in doing so, he erases the knowledge from the public that Bruce Wayne and Batman were the same man, giving Grayson and Wayne back their secret identities, and literally putting masks back on their faces.
So – got that? Major hero killed – barely a panel-long death scene in an anthology. Hero-killer? The terrifying Bill Jensen. Reason for death? Er…part of some larger scheme…or…something. Identity revealed – magic invoked, identity forgotten. Yikes. To say that comics were a different business in 1979? Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement.
All told though, and possibly a <I>tad</I> romanticized, as I still have these issues picked up from the stands of the Ellwood City Newsstand, back in the day, “Only Legends Live Forever” is a hoot – big and loud, kinda, but not quite making sense, something actually <i>happens</I>, and in the end, at least I look back on the story and think it was big, corny fun. A throwback to when comic books weren’t necessarily “Comic Books,” deaths weren’t “events,” and by god, a kid would most likely roll the thing up and stick it in their back pocket so they could ride their bike some from the store with two hands, the way their mother told them to.
It’s definitely a type of story we’ll never see again in comics, either in content or execution.
Oh – want one more nugget from this era of <b>Adventure Comics</b>? Prince Gavyn, the Starman of space, debuted just four issues later, in <b>Adventure #467</b>. He’s gone on to bigger things.
<I>Where can you find “Only Legends Live Forever?” The back issue bins are a safe bet – the story was originally in <b>Adventure Comics #461-#463</b>, and the issues can probably be found on the cheap (and will smell like old people feet) – although you might find one or two mustache-twirling retailers advertising them as “the first” <b>Batman R.I.P.</b>, and subsequently jacking the price. The story, along with the some of the revival issues of <b>All-Star</b> can also be found in the <b>Justice Society volume 2</b> trade, with the earlier issues of the <b>All-Star</b> restart in volume 1.
And yes, in that cover to #463 above, Wonder Woman is fighting off bees. My God. Bees.</i>