Comic Review #4: Brave and the Bold #118 (1975)

 I love Team Up comics. They don't really do them as much nowadays because I guess everyone's teaming up for some END THE OF THE UNIVERSE FOREVER AND EVER EVENT every two months it doesn't really seem the same you know. Still I love them. Marvel Team Up, Marvel Two In One, DC Comics Presents and THE BEST OF THEM ALL, Brave and the Bold. I will end up looking at a issue of each of these and see how it's all done and you might as well start with the best. Which is Bob Haney and Jim Aparo on Brave and the Bold.

Bob Haney was a madman. No idea was too strange/weird/silly/insane for him. Nothing would stop him from teaming Batman up with Sgt Rock despite the fact that I'm pretty sure Sgt. Rock was supposed to die on the last day of World War II. If Bob Haney wanted Batman to team up with Sgt. Rock, BOB HANEY DID IT. He just wanted to tell wild and wacky comic book stories and didn't give a dingle dang about continuity. Of course all the big nerds at DC Comics cared about continuity so they put ALL of his stories on Earth-B for Bob Haney. You never knew what was gonna happen in a Bob Haney story. I'm glad that Superhero comics had a man like Bob Haney.

That brings us to Brave and the Bold #175 "May the Best Man WIN....DIE" I don't know how to do an X over win in the blog here so you'll just have to take that. It's the best I can do. This issue came out in April of 1975. Anyway This issue has Batman teaming up with Wildcat to fight the Joker. It has Batman and Jim Gordon trying to get Mike Dubcek to rat out on the Joker, putting him in solitary confinement and all that. It seems to be finally working because of a letter sent to the Joker pretty much says so. The Joker not wanting to end up in prison again decides to poison Dubcek when he is let out to fight a charity boxing match with Ted "Wildcat" Grant. Wildcat wins but Dubcek has now infected all 600 convicts in the prison. Batman and Wildcat must team up not only to save the convicts (Batman even goes and says that they needed to be saved). 

Some team of scientists are working on a vaccine with the help of a lovely little pooch named Spot. Spot is captured by the Joker and runs off. Spot has his own adventure aside Batman and Wildcat. Chasing another Dog, jumping onto a damn garbage scowl, meeting a homeless man who wants to use him to make tons of money before jumping back into a dogcatchers truck. The dogcatcher apparently doesn't know who the Joker is and just gives him the dog. I guess he doesn't watch the News AT ALL. The Joker then breaks into the secret radio frequency Batman has and tells them to meet at some Boxing Arena for a fight between him and Wildcat. They fight to save Spot with these giant ass old timey roman gloves that look like they hurt like a motherfucker. Of course The Joker also infected those gloves with the poison but Batman would have still fought even if he knew that because he's Batman and no one dies under his watch, damnit. Spot bites Joker and he tells his henchmen to kill him while gloating over Batman. Batman then tells Joker that Spot had the posion in him and Joker freaks out and runs off. 

I love this story. It's over the top and insane and an incredible amount of fun to read. It also has beautiful art from Jim Aparo, that man knew how to draw Superheroes. Quite possibly my favorite artist. I loved the way he draws the Joker with that big hideous grin on his face. I love the way he draws Spot as over the top cute. I wonder if Jim Aparo ever went "YOU WANT ME TO DRAW WHAT?" to Bob, or was he like "Yeah okay the thug is gonna kill the ridiculously cute little puppy dog, Alright Bob... talk to you next month". These are the questions I talk about.

Bob Haney stopped writing Brave and the Bold monthly sometime in the late 1970s. It was then taken up by guys like Mike W. Barr and Dennis O'Neil and anyone who had time to write a script. I definetly enjoy a lot of stories they did in the later half of the books run, but it was missing something. Not just Bob's wacky stories but it's good to have a team that is there each month in and out so you know "Yeah I love me some Gerry Conway so I'll keep picking this up" or "John Buscema kicks ass at drawing shit, so I will be getting this!" Maybe that was a reason that it ended in 1983 and was replaced by Batman and the Outsiders (they first appeared in a backup comic in Brave and the Bold #200) 

FINAL VERDICT: I had a great time revisiting this comic. I am definetly going to revisit some more Brave and the Bolds along with Marvel Team Ups and Two in Ones and DC Comics Presents and all that kinda good stuff. Not only are they usually fun to read but they are usually fun to talk about too. I don't know if the next review will be of one of those titles but it will be of a Marvel comic (then I plan to talk about some indie stuff and comic strip compilations books so look out for that!)