One Perfect Moment: The Riddler

[goggle_kid]

One page from 1989's Secret Origins special.

Comments

[ghosty732]

I wish that characters like Egg Head would make their way into the comics somehow.

And I find myself personally more nostalgic towards The Animated Series, because that's what I grew up on. It was the perfect balance of dark and fun. I think that's why I'm often attracted to Paul Dini's Detective Comics work, because it almost read like the show in print.

[goggle_kid]

We did get a King Tut in Batman Confidential a couple of years ago. Sadly they decided to make him SERIOUS BUSINESS!

[icon_uk]

Yeah, it was a good story, and the art was Garcia-Lopez so it looked stunning, but it had so little to do with King Tut that it seemed deeply pointless

Now THIS is the Batman episode I wanted to see, King Tut and Catwoman (Who Tut believes is Bast of course... with Victor Buono lavishing over the top compliments every other breath and Julie Newmar drinking them all in, and planning her doublecross)

[psychopathicus_rex]

Still, at least the character is in continuity now, and once characters are in continuity, elements of them can be added or dropped as necessary. It's not inconceivable that we could get a Buono-type Tut at some point, and in the meantime, at least we got a good story out of it.

[http://www.google.com/profiles/NielJacoby]

Egg head was in the comics version of Brave and the Bold.

[goggle_kid]

A number of bad guys from the 60s show have popped up in The Brave and the Bold TV show. Watch carefully during the "Drives Us Bats" song from the Music Meister episode. You can see King Tut, Egg Head, and Louie the Lilac.

[jlroberson]

>>And I find myself personally more nostalgic towards The Animated Series, because that's what I grew up on. It was the perfect balance of dark and fun

I would agree. As opposed to the Adam West show, which is a combination of "we can't be bothered" and "snicker snicker chortle BATMAN?"

[goggle_kid]

Actually the Adam West show was a pretty accurate representation of the Batman comics of it's era. Look at some Bat-books from the early 60s. He was fighting guys dressed up as pencils for crying out loud.

It wasn't until after the backlash to the show that Batman really became *serious business.*

And yes I know the Golden Age Batman stories were originally dark and gritty but to be honest they had already started to lighten those up fairly early into the character's run.

[jlroberson]

Not as soon as people think; it's just how they choose to reprint stuff that gives that impression. The story I was mentioning was from around 1943.

And I agree it reflected the Batman of that time, but I do not care for the Batman of that time, even when Grant Morrison tries to sell me on it. BTW, I'm not ignoring the Silver Age. I'm very familiar with it as my lifetime overlaps with it a bit. It's just that I don't LIKE the Silver Age, generally. I view it as a time when comics were lobotomized. The period between the last EC comic and the first underground is a sad one to me.

[goggle_kid]

Frankly I'm sort of the same way with most of the Golden Age books I've read. A lot of stuff from that period frankly feels boring and badly drawn. I'll admit to not being an expert on that period but frankly the only Golden Age stuff I've really liked was some of the crazier Captain Marvel and Plastic Man stories. All of the Batman stories, at least pre Robin just seems to be a poor man's Shadow.

I think the Silver Age books retain a lot more charm in part due to the art from guys like Carmine Infantino.

[jlroberson]

I would agree regarding the Golden Age, if you leave out Quality, EC, Eisner, whomever Matt Baker(Fox?) worked for, and a number of others, basically everyone but DC. Except? Jerry Robinson on Batman.

I'm not even speaking of the quality of the stories, just saying that the Joker being a killer, and darkness in Batman, was its character for at least the first 5 years of existence. It was really post-war that it started slowly changing into an odd imitation of Superman.

I don't care for Infantino myself--not saying he's crap, but he's not my taste--but I see your point. I would, myself, go with Kirby and Ditko. DC was, apart from the occasional great thing like DOOM PATROL, a pretty stiff and moribund thing in the 60s compared to Marvel, and positively undead compared to the underground. It was not a place of artistic innovation at the time, though you had a lot of professional craftsmanship.(Nick Cardy for instance)

Partly because DC for a long time, notoriously, did not put its best artists on its best sellers.

[filkertom]

I think a lot of that was due to the perception of where the market was. Stan Lee was very well aware that the young adult market was untapped, and he wrote to get their attention. Mort Weisinger, on the other hand, considered his primary customers to be the kids that had always been the base, which is why we had so many giant apes, dress-up Jimmy Olsen shticks, and a gurrrrl who kept trying to figure out Superman's big secret. It wasn't until Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams broke through with Green Lantern/Green Arrow that DC started to figure out what Lee had known for years.

[jlroberson]

And for a while DC controlled most distribution and limited Marvel's titles(which was why Marvel characters had to bunk up in the same books like STRANGE TALES).

[psychopathicus_rex]

Each to their own, of course, but personally, I'm a big fan of the Golden Age. I think the main thing is that there was just so much stuff coming out at the time, and a lot of it was being rushed into production much much faster than in later years. So while, yes, there were certainly a fair amount of lousy writers and artists putting stuff out back then, there were also some really terrific ones, and a lot of wild and crazy stuff that is little-known today, but still out there. There's a sense of unrestrained possibility there, even in the sub-par stuff, that you just don't really see much of anymore.