Statistically speaking...

Flippin’ heck! The Comic Book Club has now been going for more than 5 years.

The very first meet-up, at the Castle pub in Bradford-on-Avon, was way back in May 2015. As the founder of the CBC, Kelv picked the book for our inaugural session - Tom Scioli’s Transformers vs GI Joe. It was a bit rubbish but we all loved hanging out in the pub, waxing lyrical about comics.

Thus the CBC was born!

Since then we’ve read more than 50 comic books and covered a diverse range of genres from hard sci-fi, through whimsical fantasy, grotesque horror and sophisticated literary adaptations.

Over the 5 years there’s been a 30% chance Kelv will pick a book featuring Batman. However, looking at 2020 alone that figure rises to 100%! Kelv likes Batman a lot.

Meetups and membership

Since May 2015 the CBC has met 54 times across 4 different venues, both real and virtual.

As a rule, we try and meet once a month but tend to take a bit of a summer break as schedules become too crammed for us all to be able to agree a date. Being a grown up is hard work.

The original 4 members - Kelv, Tom, Jake & Dan - also comprise 100% of the current club membership. We have achieved precisely 0% growth over the 5 year period. I suspect this is to do with the fact that we’ve made absolutely no effort to expand beyond the original quartet. Small is beautiful and all that!

Our scoring scale

We score books from 1 - 5. A score of 1 is truly dire and a score of 5 is the best thing ever. We never, ever waver from this robust scoring system. Well, apart from one time…

Dan refused to give an actual score to Daniel Clowes’ Patience as he hated it so very much.

The books

Tom, Jake & Dan have read all 54 books, Kelv has read 39.

We have full scores for 51 of these books. Those without scores are all Jake’s - he’s lost one of his notebooks with scores. Personally, I suspect a cover-up…

The ‘lost’ Jake books are:

  • Tokyo Days/Bangkok Nights (2015)
  • Isaac the Pirate (2018)
  • Sabrina (2018)

With this in mind all stats in this post are based solely on the scores we have available. The missing books have been given 0 (0%) for the sake of completeness. If we locate the scores for the missing books we’ll update the post with the revised figures. The 0’s for 3 of Jake’s books does mean that some of his average scores are slightly lower than they might actually be.

Author’s note: I’m not a statistician or a mathematician. Don’t expect deep, meaningful insight from these figures or assume they are entirely correct!

If you want the raw data then please feel free to Download the CSV and assemble some figures of your own.

The average score, across all 54 books, is 58.58% (10.9 out of the maximum score of 20).

In general we’re a kind, loving bunch who try our best to find the positives in everything we read. 76% of the time we score books at 50% (10 out of 20) or higher.

That’s 41 books out of 54 with a positive score. Go nice guys!

The scores on the doors

The average point score for each CBC member is calculated by dividing the total of all scores given to them by the total number of books they have picked or read.

Kelvin has picked 10, Tom 14 while Jake and Dan have both picked 15.

Individual stats

Kelvin (Picked 10 books)

Reviewing:

  • His own books - 32pts/10 = 3.2pts
  • Tom’s books - 29pts/9 = 3.2pts
  • Jake’s books - 26pts/8 = 3.3pts
  • Dan’s books - 33pts/10 = 3.3pts

Tom (Picked 14 books)

Reviewing:

  • His own books - 52pts/14 = 3.7pts
  • Kelv’s books - 35pts/10 = 3.5pts
  • Jake’s books - 41pts/15 = 2.7pts
  • Dan’s books - 42pts/15 = 2.8pts

Jake (Picked 15 books)

Reviewing:

  • His own books - 38pts/15 = 2.5pts
  • Kelv’s books - 26pts/8 = 3.3pts
  • Tom’s books - 45pts/14 = 3.2pts
  • Dan’s books - 44pts/15 = 2.9pts

Dan (Picked 15 books)

Reviewing:

  • His own books - 42pts/15 = 2.8pts
  • Kelv’s books - 26pts/10 = 2.6pts
  • Tom’s books - 42pts/14 = 3pts
  • Jake’s books - 26pts/15 = 1.7pts

So what can we take from those numbers?

Average point scores

  1. Kelv (3.3pts)
  2. Tom (3.2pts)
  3. Jake (3pts)
  4. Dan (2.6pts)

Kelv’s the most positive reviewer of the bunch, handing out 3pt+ average scores to everyone!

Tom is also a generous marker and he’s particularly fond of his own picks, scoring them an average of 3.7pts out of 5. Tom also scores Kelv over the 3pt threshold but his average scores for Jake and Dan dip down into the 2’s.

Jake and Dan are a bit more circumspect on the subject of self-worth, scoring their own books an average of 2.5pts and 2.8pts respectively.

Inter-club wrangling

Dan and Jake consistently review each other’s books badly, whereas Tom and Kelv score each other fairly well across the board.

Dan dislikes pretty much everything, including books he picked himself. He only gave his choices an average of 2.8pts over the years. He wasn’t massively kinder to most of the other CBC members although Tom is Dan’s ‘favourite’ scraping a 3pt average.

Kelv likes everyone’s stuff, Tom likes Kelv’s stuff, Jake likes Kelv and Tom’s stuff. If given the option no-one would choose to read any of Dan’s books :-)

High fives?

Tom’s top of the fivers list having given top marks 6 times out of 54 books. That’s an 11% chance of high praise from him.

Jake and Dan have both issued 3 ‘5-star’ reviews. Kelv has given 2.

——-

The best of the bunch

The top two books are pretty clear cut - Daniel Warren’s amazing Extremity garnered a 93% approval and the Encyclopaedia of Early Earth was close behind on 90%. Two very different books but both utterly deserving of their high scores.

5 books, all scoring 80%, are in joint third. There are 7 books with 75% at joint 4th and 3 more on 73% that make up the joint 5th spot.

  1. 93% - Extremity (Tom)
  2. 90% - Encyclopaedic of Early Earth (Jake)
  3. 80% - Metabarons(Dan), Yotsuba (Kelv), The Shadow Hero (Kelv), Beasts of Burden (Dan), Batman Universe (Kelv)
  4. 75% - The Auteur (Dan), The Private Eye (Tom), Resident Alien (Dan), Kaijumax (Dan), Black Hammer (Tom), Silver Surfer Black (Tom), The Witches (Jake)
  5. 73% - Rock Candy Mountain (Tom), SnagglePuss (Tom), Bone (Dan)

If you haven’t read any of these then we’d heartily encourage you to do so. We may not have all agreed on their brilliance but you can be certain that at least 3 of us thought they rocked.

Who picked the most ‘good’ books in the top 5?

  1. Tom & Dan (6)
  2. Kelv (3)
  3. Jake (2)

The worst offenders

The worst book we’ve read was Aleister & Adolf with an awful score of 30% (6 out of 20). It was one of Dan’s. It’s safe to say we all thought that was utter pants!

The remaining duffers are pretty evenly spread between CBC members. The second worst reviewed book was one of Jake’s - Square Eyes with a measly 33%. After that we have one of Kelv’s bat-picks - Batman: the doom that came to Gotham. That made a paltry 35%.

Holy batshite Batman!

Other books that we’d recommend you give a big fat miss to are:

  • 40% - Asterix: The chieftains daughter (Jake), Doomsday Clock Vol 1 (Dan), 4 kids walk into a bank (Tom), Mister X (Dan), Transformers vs GI Joe (Kelv)
  • 45% - Everything (Tom), The adventures of John Blake (Jake)

Overall, Dan and Jake have had the most ‘bad’ books, both picking 3 that scored less than 50%. Kelv and Tom fare slightly better having only chosen 2 books we all thought were rubbish.

Congrats on having semblance of good taste lads!

Batman Universe

My second Batbook pick in a row! Something that I’d spotted shining on the shelves, surrounded by the darkness of a billion Metal spin offs. In this dire world we’re living in today, another lighter Batman book was very welcome.

“Whoo! Another Batman!” - Dan

I didn’t read Bendis’s Superman run. But it’s maybe that I just find Superman super boring. Nothing in there seemed intriguing. And ok, maybe I’m super biased too, but Bendis’s take on Batman seemed different to usual.

As I’ve pretty much unplugged myself from fandom, as I find so much of it a toxic swamp soup of fascists, bigots, misogynists and racists, I don’t keep up with what’s what. So I had no idea about this book. Neither did Dan and Jake.

I’d flicked through some when I was in the shop, and I’d also seen this wonderful interaction between Green Lantern and Bats.

Batman and Green Lantern talking about dinosaurs

This scene alone grabbed me. It’s typical Bendis dialogue. A touch of humour that’s slightly self deprecating (with regard to everyone else around Batman that is). A clear Bendis hallmark, but for some of us we were uncertain on what Bendis’s writing style meant. Dan said he of course knew his name, everyone who reads comics does. But he had zero idea what his voice was. For me, it was the expanded narrative he utilised often in the Avengers books and Daredevil. For Tom and Jake it was Powers with Michael Avon Oeming, which I’d never read.

But it pretty much didn’t matter which Brian Michael Bendis this was, as he allowed the characters to just sing in a lighthearted story we all found joy in. This was intended as a short run that allowed Bendis to explore the DC Universe without a Crisis Inducing Summer Crossover Event.

Batman’s encounters feel more like casual introduction than any kind of dramatic incident. Like when Batman and Green Arrow bump into each other while chasing the Riddler individually. So they team up. Later Batman wakes up to Watchtower medical bay with Hal Jordan and Cyborg present. So he teams up with Green Lantern. I loved this Brave and Bold vibe. And you really feel that Bendis is giving each of them a real sense of love and respect. There’s no smug, “look at me and how clever I am at coming up with something original and groundbreaking on this character that no one else has done before”. There’s just pure love and reverence.

Cover image for 100 Page Giant Batman #6

The original concept was for a small number of 100 Giant Specials, and Jake thought perhaps once collected into a single volume it lost some of the magic of reading in instalments.

The narrative isn’t entirely seamless, as we skip from one episode to the next. The story itself being bright and breezy, is maybe a touch too light as no one was blown over. But then again, that was the point. If it had been heavier, we might not have loved it as much.

Punch Riddler

There was no death of a long-standing character of huge heft to make you feel mildly traumatised, and for some tiny little minds to threaten to murder the creators (these aren’t fans, these are maladjusted people). No ridiculous and unnecessary ret-conning. The one thing that did change, which we dubbed No More Batman, was resolved satisfactorily.

We thought about RIP Batman, and the Infinite Crisis Omega Beam “demise” of Batman then returning from being lost in time (didn’t Captain America do that too?). Those were a little drawn out. This entire book was just short and sweet.

I’m also in danger of drawing out this write up. I’ll let Dan summarise, as he does it so well and also because I was so surprised and so pleased that he liked this book:

“Best Batman thing I have read for a while. Thoroughly enjoyed it.” - Dan

The scores

…and why it wasn’t a perfect score:

Dan

“4/5 Batarangs (1 point docked for the dust cover)

Jake

“4/5 Batarangs (because of the stubble!)”

Tom

“4/5 Batarangs (the Bat wings and harness being too convenient)”

Kelv

4/5 Batarangs (-1 for the paper quality)

Issue 4 cover

Bonus material

I tend just edit our notes near verbatim, as I like capturing our chat. I did a proper write-up this time, but as a nod to the “special edition” or collections of series that include the script, sketches, alternate covers and pinups I have decided to include my “behind the scenes notes”.

Dan

Whoo! Another Batman! Never heard of it. Batman’s not something Dan keeps up with. Read Last Night On Earth Snyder/Capullo. Didn’t really like their run nor Tom King’s.

Really struck: oh it’s Bendis. Of course I know that name but couldn’t put in my head what kind of writer he is. What’s his tone.

No idea what to expect tonally.

Powers

Mystery

Opened it up, a genuine surprise. See from cover and reviews, thought had an idea.

I THINK I REALLY RATHER LIKED IT!

Mike Mignola and Starlin’s Cosmic Odyssey

Prestige series after DKR

Stick Batman in a thing where he’s way out of his depth - cosmically. Man with nice toys and martial arts, nice planes and cars against gods and space aliens.

Bendis throughotu the entire thing was just respect, no character no moatter how daft or stupid not treated as not even straight just ast they are. City of apes -> pushed to the other extreme of super serious dark and miserable. This is waht they are bingo run with it.

Not massive fan of the more cosmic of elements these thigns either Marvel or DC really weird stuff

When someone doesn’t deliver and scale it to a weird level of misery

No smugness, how clever I am

No talking down

Playful

Rollicks along

Didn’t understand half of it - not massively concerned

A thing happened and an egg, genuinely laughed a couple of times. I like the writing. the sparring bakc and ofrth between Alfred and Batman - the comms chat

Green ARrow and Lantern being in it

Apart from the end I had no idea what was going on and it suddenlty stopped but ok

Jonah Hex one of faves, re-reading Lansdale from early 90s

Delighted to see him chucked in there as well

Art - yeah, it’s like Frank Quitely and Darwyn Cooke had a bastard child. REally lovely, bit chunkier than Quitely but bendy charactureness without being stupid. Cooke’s pinup style

Genuinely don’t have any apart from lack of DCU and Batman knowledge might have helped with understanding of what’s going on (oh dust jackets are shit - French Folds! that’s the way forward)

A funny little mini series that maybe 20 years ago not dark and horrible enough for me or miserable enough not Batman

Look at it now THANK GOD something else

Not super twee like Batman 66

Best Batman thing I have read for a while. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

4/5 batarangs (1 point docked for the dust cover)

Jake

REally interesting about voice - not knowing what it was

REad quite a lot of his stuff

Wouldn’t have known - humour

Nothing approaching this

Spider-Man

Kinda “Marvel”

Doing his version of this thing - Silver Age DC lovely appreciation without being too pastiche

Kinda Morrison but not so deep and more straight and honour moments of the 60s Batman and revelling

Batman time travelling - went on and on

For that really liked it, a lot of fun

Deliberately non sensical

McGuffin - egg and a ring inside it, there’s a lot of descriuption of what’s going on with ins and outs

Green Lanters and White Lanters - lost from time to time

100 Page Giants of 4 episodes consumed separately

Probably how you’d have read it in the 60s - a homage to that?

The voice and jokiness struggled to start with, like funny Batman but wondered he’s the straight man and has Robin, but he’s giving as he can straight but witty and cutting at the same time, slight departure for the character but read it again and appreciated bit more and aligned with the Silver Age thign

Like Green Arrow nice excahnge on the roof and he’s gone mad, GA if he beat him - Batman: of course I feel shame. Nice to see that

Felt like Morrison’s Dick Grayson Batman

Not always a fan of too many superheroes particularly Batman suspend disbelief what’s the point of having Batman in it at all

Drip fed - not JL or Legion and then one smash up and then disappear

Characterised nicely

Great grandaughter

Alfred bits good - touching: parting message in Crime Alley

Looked super nice, spot on

Story didn’t matter did it at the end of the day?

Stubble though - disappeared in the end? Weird. Stubble for crisis but this didn’t warrant it

4/5 (because of the stubble!)

Tom

Knew this book was out. When it came out was going to subtly poke me to read it. History was 80 Page Giants was going to be mostly reprints, but Bendis was coming onto Superman monthly. Want to do this? Then swap Tom King (Superman in Space?). Listened to Bendis on Word Balloon - heard quite a bit about this. Excuse not just break into Batman without a big run, excuse to explore what part of the DCU gently. Turned out exceptionally well, flavour of the weirdness. Read a lot of Bendis - POWERS

Personally think sounds just like Bendis - with the speech bubbles broken up

Bendis fan going back, not everything: some of the Avengers then fell off

Single character, his Ultimate Spider-Man, Mile Morales, frothiness. Fits that tone well.

Used to his touch of humour. What I’d hoped from a Bendis Batman book.

OK Computer - made me think “OK Google” very these days there’s a smart computer in your pocket

VR moment

Not a whole lot of depth but that’s fine

Right at the end got a bit Infinity Gauntlet - geting all the powers and snapping finger, Wanda “No more mutants” - then “I’m Batman”

Jonah Hex logo - there are two! Two letterers? One each?

Absolutely loved the artwork. He’s an animator, Paul Hope and Frank Quitely

Becky Cloonan - similar eyes on her men

Great really really good book pleased we got to read it

Nice joke with the Hawkpeople - what are you an 8? Bat style wings

Nice bit with Nightwing on the cross-section

4/5 batarangs (the Bat wings and harness being too convenient)

Me

I love dinosaurs

4/5 -1 for the paper quality

Once and Future

King Arthur’s been done to death.

Reinventions, reinterpretations and reworkings of Arthur’s legend are everywhere in modern fiction. Yet the timeless popularity of this story doesn’t stop authors continuing to put their own ‘unique’ spin on things, mixing up classic tropes with fresh new ideas.

The latest creative team to take a bash at breathing life into Arthur’s withered corpse are writer Kieron Gillen, creator of Wicked & Divine and artist Dan Mora.

Their take? It’s 2020. Art’s been dead for a fair while. What’d happen if someone brought him back to save England once again? Seems like a pretty nifty idea. Let’s see how it plays out…

The Gillen effect

Although the general industry reponse to Once & Future has been positive it seems that we all approached the book with a little trepidation.

Why? Well, Mr Gillen is a pretty ‘Marmite’ writer and we all harboured rather strong opinions on his style and approach. What Gillen would we get in Once & Future - The smug, pop-culture machine-gun of The Wicked & The Divine or the sharp, witty creator of Star Wars’ Dr Aphra?

Evisceration! That's what you need!

Thankfully, for me at least, it appears the worst of Gillen’s sensibilities have been toned down, making Once & Future probably the most accessible work he’s produced so far.

Thank heavens for that.

“Gillen’s writing is far less obnoxious in this” - Tom

Pendragon meets the X-Men

Most of us had less baggage when it came to the artist on Once & Future, Dan Mora. He’s a talented, dynamic artist with a style hewn directly from mainstream Marvel superhero books. He draws clean lines, with a hint of manga in his pointy, expressive faces. There’s no doubt this guy can draw.

“Utterly mainstream. I like that!” - Kelv

Although the art is of a consistently high quality I can’t help but feel it was a case of “the wrong man in the wrong place”. Everything was too clean, too smooth, too polished for me. I missed the scruff and dirt of a more expressive artist.

The other guys could see my point but they were more admiring of Mora’s art than I. Kelv loved it, Jake called it “perfect” and Tom was also highly complimentary of Mora’s work.

Colour me impressed

Mora’s crisp line work is supported by a really rather glorious colour palette by Tamra Bonvillain. Both Tom and Kelv were reminded of Dave Higgin’s original colour palette for The Killing Joke (before Bolland re-coloured it all - BOOOOO!) - earthy browns, greens and greys are shot through with neon greens, blues and pinks and some genuinely lovely, subtle lighting effects. It’s wonderful work and lifts the art to another level altogether.

Once and Future only has eyes for grandma

Tell me a (new) story

And the story itself? Thankfully it’s not just another re-telling of the grail story, and for that I am eternally grateful.

It’s a face-paced, thoroughly modern chase set in and around a (fairly recognisable) Bath, Bristol and the South West of the UK. It’s stuffed to the gills with zombies, mythical creatures, secret societies and gun-toting grandparents with arms caches buried in the woods.

Curiously it doesn’t feel very… British though. Both Gillen’s writing and Mora’s art conspire to smooth everything out, stylise it and ‘Americanise’ the whole thing. It’s a rollicking, easy-to-follow tale that could also work as a pitch for a Brit-themed ‘ArthurWorld’ theme park.

“If you were American you’d love this” - Jake

Anyway, It’s definitely on the light and frothy side of things, giving a pulpy twist to the old Arthurian story beats.

Duncan the dull protaganist with a bright future

The protagonist, Duncan, is a pretty bland lead. He’s a somewhat bizarre mix of rugby-player build and geeky glasses. I assume this was to give him a Clark Kent level of dorkiness. It’s not a massive surprise when ol’ Dunc turns out to be a bit more than he initially seems.

It’s Duncan’s hardcore gran, Bridgette, who proves to be one of the more interesting characters in Once & Future. She’s sarcastic, caustic and a dab hand with a surprisingly wide variety of weaponry. The book is always more interesting when Bridgette is around.

Hail to the king

And Arthur? It seems that resurrection hasn’t done him any favours as he’s returned as an ultra-nationalistic zombie/vampire blend with a cool line in spiky headware. Art’s seriously limited perspective on what makes a ‘genuine Briton’ is something that Gillen leverages with aplomb. Of particular note is the sequence where Arthur realises that modern Britain isn’t quite as ‘pure’ of bloodline as he might’ve hoped.

Not to your taste Art?

Women’s rights

Aside from Bridgette, the other women in Once & Future are really rather disappointing. Duncans super-smart botched date, Rose, is utterly wasted, relegated to the role of decorative candelabra and sidelined by a telling off from Bridgette that amounts to ‘This is really important. Just do it and don’t argue’. We also also get yet another flavour of the sexy fascist which, while fitting nicely with the pulp feel, just feels a bit lazy.

Unfavourable comparisons

The biggest problem for me, and it is a problem for a number of reasons, is that while reading Once & Future I couldn’t let go of the feeling that I’d read something similar, and much better, very recently.

Injection - by Ellis, Shalvey & Bellaire - covers a lot of similar ground to Once & Future but eclipses it with such a sense of foreboding and dread it’s hard not to just dismiss Once & Future as populist fluff. Jake picked up on the Injection thing too, while Tom noted some parallels with Matt Wagner’s Mage, which we read a while back.

In summary

If you like your Brit-Myth action spliced with some superhero whizz bang styling then you can’t go far wrong with Once & Future. I just wish it was a bit… dirtier.

  • Kelv & Tom - 4 stars
  • Dan & Jake - 3 stars
EVERYTHING

Welcome to the 80s, where everything is cool.

The prevalence of retro culture in modern entertainment has gotten a bit much of late. Yes, we enjoyed Stranger Things, yes we approve of the upped mean tempo in popular music thanks to the return of the synthesiser. But it’s getting to the point where any time someone is looking for a different angle on things they reach for the box marked nostalgia. I suppose part of this is the age of creators, I feel like we are all turning into our parents who disapproved of the music we were listening to and said “no you really should listen to this it’s much better”. I’m going to stop using the ‘we’ here and admit to being guilty of attempting to break my children into the movies I saw and loved as a child; it was my father who lent me his vinyl copies of The Doors, The Yardbirds and Television. All of which is my way of saying EVERYTHING just wasn’t original enough to fly with this group.

Stay Still

I wanted to bring something from Karen Berger’s new imprint to the group. She left DC’s Vertigo Comics some seven years ago and that line is now dead, as creator owned mature reader titles are not what new corporate owners AT&T want, even if there is still a market for them. Now she has Berger Books out of Dark Horse, for whom EVERYTHING is writer Christopher Cantwell’s second series following 2018’s She Could Fly. The fact he was here collaborating with artist I.N.J. Culbard is what mainly got my attention; Culbard is a mainstay in 2000AD, where he featured in half of 2019’s progs thanks to Brink, his SF strip with writer Dan Abnett. Culbard’s sparse style appeals to me greatly. His characters are expressive and slick and his clear storytelling always leads the reader along nicely.

Shirley

EVERYTHING then, (finally) is the story of a new shopping mall opening in a small American town, and although this seems to many a good thing, it turns out there are shady/mysterious/insert adjective here goings on and the staff may or may not be robots! I think I can say this in a review as the cover has manager Shirly with lasers coming out of her eye. I mean, it’s right there isn’t it? Actually, the cover is pretty nice. Said laser is a spot varnish and the cover also has French Folds so it feels like a premium edition. Dan and Jake missed the feel of the book though as they went with digital editions, but were glad to have done so as this saved them £££ on a title they really didn’t click with! Kelvin’s girlfriend Laura said it was a page turner but he has now completely forgotten he read it at all, which is never good!

Everything everywhere

I think I’d return to the series to see where it went (I was annoyed actually that I’d missed this was only part one of the story) but it didn’t set the world on fire for originality. I’m hoping my meh-ness with all things retro doesn’t spoil the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984!

-Tom ⭐⭐⭐

I wish someone else was drawing this as I might enjoy it more, although it still thinks it’s cleverer than it is
-Dan

I’m struggling to know what to say. I’m trying to get a handle: it’s not great at all?
-Jake ⭐⭐

Give you none of the chills found in Twin Peaks and I don’t actually care what happens next.
-Kelvin ⭐⭐⭐

Batman '66 Volume 1

POW!

So there’s one good thing from us all being under lockdown and unable to get to the pub. I’m actually able to make these meetups remotely via the magic of Houseparty!

And as I made it to the Dalston Monsterzz get together, the gang suggested I made the next pick. I’m very happy to say that I had a book on my shelf waiting for its moment!

Apologies that the quotes below aren’t grammatically great. This writeup is comprised of my notes on people’s thoughts as they spoke.

Hope

Jake

I love Batman from the 60s! I can watch film over and over again. It’s perfect in its way, wondered what the point of it would be… new ideas… but in the end it was alright…? Bazooka Joe bubble gum, with the comic inside of the wrapper! Read it, chew the gum, wrap it up and bin it. Reasonably decent approximation, dialogue spot on, look was quite nice although it varied.

Bazooka Joe

Got to London bit and I kinda think I’ve got this now… 80 issues of this???

Who would carry on buying this?

Why?

Nothing wrong with it, nothing terrible, kind of a useless thing. Comfort reading novelisations of Doctor Who. Same creators doing it. But never read others doing it because it tips into fanfic.

These kind of read that way…

So difficult to finish, not hard to read… It was alright and yet not alright at the same time

⭐️⭐️

Dan

(I wouldn’t have bought it!)

Pretty much similar lines to Jake - why? All the way through…

Most definitely not for me… So full of nostalgia and a weird thing to make a homage to something that already seemed pastiche. A piece of art without a particular audience. But didn’t have any trouble reading it. Blitzed through it! No thinking about it. Nothing complicated, or fear that I’d be lost in it. Apart from the London 2-parter, it’s just little episodes that go along and nothing to it.

But also wondered why you’d even buy it? GMTV went on strike, before school there was an episode of Batman on. A very particular time for me. A very specific feeling

Some of the art, and some of it is quite nice. Ty Templeton is a lot clearer and cleaner and professionally done (they’re all professionals). Liked Joe Quinones’ art. Thought it was Fraser Irving, who I like. I like London (DO YOU?!?). Yeah I like it but I just don’t want to go there…

There are moments that are lovely and fun.

I didn’t want to burn it or frustrated. Didn’t feel bored. Barely remember anything about it or anything of value or import. Aside from the best bit of art being Allred’s recreation of Cesar Romero’s moustache which freaked me out as a child. It did really take me back.

(Jake adds that Harley Quinn’s recreation was extra creepy).

Red Hood

Maybe there’s an undercurrent of subversive messaging that I didn’t notice. Not to demean anything it’s hard to do comics, but it feels like this is not quite got a handle on it. Maybe it’s too challenging. It would have been too weird to make it too creepy but it would have been fascinating.

I’d also ask why people bought Batman Damned? But these are two completely different ends of the spectrum, although both follow.

Like something made of Bakelite. You tap it and it’s hollow. The Batphone!

I don’t have you Kelv for making me read it ✌️

⭐️⭐️

Tom

I’m pleased to say I did enjoy it more than you two. Seemed the perfect thing for Kelv to whip off the shelf and say “This is what we’re going to read!”

When it arrived I felt I didn’t like it - the matt cover is too dull but then the pages are gloss and more vibrant. I thought Jeff Parker had done a fantastic job of capturing the voice. The commentator and the actors, that it reads so smoothly. I’ve never read much Jeff Parker before, but he’s done anything that feels vaguely out of time. Atlas for Marvel and he wrote Johnny Quest. Felt like I’d slipped on a cosy pair of slippers. It was a pleasure to read.

It was created to be digital, so every panel is half a page. There’s always a middle break, which probably helps with the reading of it. A fixed tier system that helps with the flow, so I was just whizzing through it. Kind of reminded me that this isn’t the Batman that the current readings know of today. Reminded me of 90s Batman - not the dark stuff, but the period where drawn Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan on Detective. No crazy shadows, but a bit more daylight.

Meow

When I went to write something about it yesterday, I couldn’t remember it of course! Artwork a mixed bag… Quinones I don’t mind but it does it look like Fraser Irvings where the colours hold the shading. Can work in different styles so clearly went for this - a thick outline and shaded flesh tones.

From my point of view I felt it was a great success! Thinking of it on a monthly basis for 99 cents, in cheap bite sized chunks you’d probably be happy to buy it like that and keep going like that. Nice covers by Allred of course. Good casting! Jonathan Case was very good as well.

I don’t like the presentation and I did enjoy it a lot. I’d probably read this than modern Batman!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Me

I very much needed a really bright, breezy easy read that was nothing more than colourful and kitsch fun. There was no real jeopardy in these stories. The voices were all accurate and lit up my imagination. The sequences were more action packed than 1966 TV budgets and special effects could ever conjure.

Good heavens

OK I agree with the others that it’s a difficult proposition, and I’d never made the investment into this title before. I only got the hardcover from the cheap bins at London’s MCM Comic Con last October! It’d been sat on my shelf for months since, until it was my turn to pick.

What Jake said about being reminded of Bazooka Joe is cool, because it perfectly captures the essence of bubble gum fun.

It’s right this isn’t deeply engaging, dramatic and intense. I needed the escapism that didn’t add to my already deeply unsettled emotions today. Holy Heartwarming Fun!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

(And I have to say I’m tempted by the nearly 1000 page Omnibus collection…)

Omnibus