Hey everyone, I hope you're having a good week so far. As promised in my blog update post that I put out on Monday, I'm back for a comic book review. As you can see from the title of this review, I'm reviewing not one, but two issues today and will be focusing on the first two issues of The Batman Adventures that I ever got when I was a kid. So, let's get right into it.
Growing up in the 90s, Batman: The Animated Series was very popular with the kids in my class. However I wasn't allowed to watch it very often and so my first introduction to Batman was watching the reruns of the 1966 TV series, Batman: The Movie (1966), and Batman Returns. However I became familiar with BTAS because in 1993 my mom bought me The Batman Adventures #7. The Batman Adventures was a comic book that DC published as a tie-in to Batman: The Animated Series. While the show's creator, Bruce Timm, wasn't involved with the comic, the various artists the book had used the character models from the TV show to design the characters for the comic. As a result, the comic is basically the TV show in comic book form.
The Batman Adventures #7 was my very first Batman comic book ever. Though I remember seeing Batman on the subscription pages and a few advertisements in issues of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation that DC was publishing at the same time. So I knew he was a comic book character even though I saw him on TV and in movies first. Every issue of The Batman Adventures and later Batman & Robin Adventures that I got as a kid was bought for me by my mom at the hospital gift shop.
As a story, this issue isn't the best that I've read, but it also isn't really bad. Batman is after a criminal named the Mobster, who favours boxing matches. Meanwhile, Killer Croc is a wrestler who gets spooked because one of his opponents is known as the Masked Marauder and had beaten Croc before in an earlier match.
The thing that I like about this issue is that Batman isn't going up against one of his major villains. I mean yes, Killer Croc is in the issue, but Batman isn't after him. My one gripe about this issue, and the next one, is that Batman isn't in it enough. I don't know what it is about the 90s, but pretty much everyone who worked on a Batman project, be it movies, TV shows or comics, seemed to prefer to focus on the villains more than on Batman himself. I don't have a problem with it when it's an interesting character like Two-Face. Or even Mr. Freeze for that matter. But when it's a character like Killer Croc or the Joker or whoever, where the character isn't all that interesting, it doesn't work as well. At least not to me. I know there are some of you out there who just enjoy the villains way more than you enjoy Batman, which is fine, but for me, most of the villains aren't that interesting with Two-Face and Mr. Freeze being the exceptions.
I think that's all I have to say about this issue. It's time to move on to The Batman Adventures #8. So let's hop on over there and check it out.
This issue isn't the greatest either, but I do like that Batman is going around looking for the bank robber known as the Invisible Man. I won't spoil who the Invisible Man actually is though if you pay attention to the shadow on the cover, I'm pretty sure you can figure out who Batman is fighting.
My problem with this issue is that Summer Gleeson's love life takes up more pages than the Batman storyline. She's only in twenty episodes of the series and she's not really a major character and yet she got more "screentime" in this issue than the title character did. Yes, it's tied into the Batman plot via the villain, but this is The Batman Adventures not The Summer Gleeson Adventures, so I don't care about a minor character's story, which should be the subplot.
The artwork in both issues are pretty good though. Like I said earlier, the artwork matches up to the designs used for the TV show, which is good. Mike Parobeck and Rick Burchett are the artists for issue #7 as well as for issue #8 and they're consistently good though I also prefer Ty Templeton's work on this series as well.
Like with issue #7, I got this issue at the hospital gift shop after an appointment or scan or whatever I was there for at the time. I started getting issues of The Batman Adventures during a time where I'd be at CHEO all day because I had three or four appointments all in a row with a break in between. So either in between appointments or after my final appointment, we'd stop in at the gift shop and my mom would buy a comic or a Berenstain Bears book for me if I was good.
Aside from the problems I have with both issues, I like them. However, I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading them as there are better stories in this series and aside from the first three issues and the final three issues, this series consists of standalone issues so you don't need to have read all 36 issues to get anything out of it.
I think that's all I have to say about these two issues. I'll be back on Friday for my review of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Until then have a great evening and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.
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