Just finished the first Thrillkiller mini-series. It’s a really interesting experiment, but it manages not to be either 60s enough or Batman enough to justify itself.
The problem is that you’re not really taking a different tack when you do a Batman story like this. Bruce Wyane’s parents have to die, Robin has to be an angry young man and Gotham has to be a corrupt urban jungle.
It feels like a warm-up for Howard Chaykin’s much more nuanced American Century series. What that did perfectly and is missing here is the idea that 50s and 60s society may have looked wholesome and spotless, but was just a facade for all sorts of turbulence and oppression.
Thrillkiller takes a valiant swing at the same here, with a few references to the poor treatment of women and homosexuals in 1961, but like the impressive art by Dan Brereton, it comes off as just a little stiff and un-natural.
Injustice: Gods Among Us #5
Everyone should write Harley this well.
World’s Finest Comics #20, Winter 1946, cover by Jack Burnley and Charles Paris
Way to trigger Dick Grayson, Superjag.
I love how some of these are thought out, the others are just BECAUSE REASONS.
The Two-Face one is basically “eh, effort”.
I do like the Huntress origin, though. :)
the-thought-emporium-imperial:
I JUST REMEMBERED I HAD THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE PAGE TOO.
THAT MAKES THIS DOUBLE FUN!
I believe this is from “Jolly Ol’ St. Nicholas” from The Batman Adventures Holiday Special.
Another in a long line of amazingly terrible hypnosis-themed villains of the Silver Age, Spellbinder isn’t just a bad guy who robs Gotham City. He’s a bad guy who robs using the power of Op Art.
While his costume may, to the un-trained eye, seem like it was stitched together carelessly from old clown rags, it’s actually a meticulously constructed piece of equipment that tricks even the Caped Crusader’s mind into believing he’s fighting for his life on a clock face or trying to keep balance on top of a speeding passenger train.
Until he gets socked in the face.
Dark Claw Adventures was definitely my favorite part of the Amalgam Universe experiment.
Really digging The Riddler’s modern costume from Young Justice, which seems to be a slightly modified take on the Arkham series design. Better than the classic bowler-topped one from Batman: The Animated Series and way, way better than the spandex number from The New Batman Adventures.
