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The ’80s Revisited? – Batman #428 "Faux-simile" Edition

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Walt

batman0428fauximileA Death in the Family

Writer: Jim Starlin
Penciler: Jim Aparo
Inker: Mike DeCarlo
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Asst Editor: Dan Raspler
Editor: Denny O’Neil
Cover Art: Mike Mignola
Cover Price: $4.99

Batman arrives back at the warehouse just after it’s exploded. Searching the wreckage, he finds Sheila just before she dies. And then…Robin. But he’s ALIVE! Kid in the hospital, the rest of the issue plays out much as it originally did—Bruce returns to the US, sees to it that Sheila is buried properly, goes after the Joker, is confronted by Superman, and learns of the Joker’s new “promotion” that keeps him from touching the murderer if he wants to avoid an international incident.

Well, that was NOT what I expected. I’ll have to dig out my copy of the original issue, and/or the older TPB to check page-by-page…but I’m pretty sure the only REAL differences were text boxes and "that" panel–"He’s alive!" vs. head bowed in grief.

As I went through this faux-simile, though, it hit me as a great example of how different a story can be/go with just a few word changes…and how much we may or may not "read between the lines" or insert our own feelings, etc.

The Joker goes on about stuff having left the kid for dead…NOTHING about that had to change. But reading a few words about Jason being ALIVE lets one consider how "foolish" the Joker was to not confirm his kill, and/or build up feelings of "oh, he’s gonna be in for a shock when Batman catches up to him!" or whatever.

I think of the ’80s animated GI Joe movie where they apparently had intended to kill off Duke; but after Transformers and the actual death of Optimus Prime they backtracked a bit. As I’m recalling it offhand, there’s some dialogue about Duke pulling through, or is going to pull through, or whatever…but you still don’t see the guy on-screen again. They easily could have referenced his NOT having pulled through, but due to action there’s no time to get a funeral on-screen, or logically they just wouldn’t get TO it yet (if all the action is same-day, for example).

I’d also forgotten how many pages we had leading up to Batman FINDING Jason, and the way ads spaced things out for the pages, drawing along some drama as Batman goes through the warehouse wreckage.

I said this was NOT what I expected–I suppose I EXPECTED a lot more change to the issue and more of a visual difference…that there’d be at least several PAGES of different art to the story.

Having Jason be "in a coma" obviously tracks with his being ALIVE, and accounting for the horrific injuries from the explosion. AND accounts for him not being in #429…dead or in the hospital in a coma, he wouldn’t be physically capable of anything "on-panel" of story significance, and the point of the story is NOT hospital drama of Bruce lingering by the bed listening to machines, etc…so in "classic" "compressed" style, we’d get the focus on Batman, Superman, Joker, etc in #429 and would just have to "know" that the kid’s alive in the hospital but no longer pertinent to the story at hand (Joker as ambassador targeting the UN).

This issue has one of THE MOST iconic (to me) covers in comics; one I was very aware of long before I ever got to own a copy myself…probably from the back cover of an early TPB edition of the entire story (from a local library, back in the day). It’s by Mike Mignola…likely better known nowadays for Hellboy. I often forget that he DID do stuff for DC back then…This cover definitely works for conveying something from the issue–namely that we have a badly-injured-from-an-exploding-warehouse-Robin; and yet the blood spatter was Comics Code Authority-approved.

The interior art being Jim Aparo is fantastic, especially compared to what I think of nowadays. Aparo and John Byrne and Norm Breyfogle (and it’s waned on me over the years, Jim Lee) are probably my favorite Bat-artists. Visually this issue is up there with the heart of Knightfall, such as Batman #497 (the Batcave slugfest between Bane and Batman).

This thing was $4.99 ($7.99 cover price on the foil variant!). I’m not quite sure why the extra dollar on a standard-length issue (Batman #405 facsimile—Year One part 2—came out the same day with the same number of story pages for $3.99). But I suppose it’s technically a “new” issue for not being a 100%-straight-reprint, so they snuck the extra dollar into the price. I’ve quit buying Batman in part for the price increase…and at the least, the price increase has "kept" me away from buying the title for the current issues. Considering the importance of this issue in pre-2004 Bat-history and it commanding higher prices as a back issue, I can be a LOT more "forgiving" of the $5 price; and it’s much more palatable somehow. (Even though the ads technically become “story pages” since they’re not putting NEW ads in with stuff…seems “off” having 428 & 405 together with the difference in pricing!)

For me personally, I enjoyed this issue/experience, seeing how the issue could have been different all those years ago, getting the thoughts/examples in my face of how different "tweaks" can impact a story.

If you’re not all that familiar (or at all) with A Death in the Family and/or prefer much more recent Batman to ’80s/’90s Batman, this may not be "worth it" to you.

But if you’re like me, this is well worth the pickup.

Some comparisons:

428_01_orig

First from the original take in #428.

428_01_faux

And then here’s the “new”/alternate from the faux-simile.

428_02_orig

The infamous full-page image…

428_02_faux

But it’s smaller for the alternate take, making room for several additional panels (since the kid’s survived and that has to be explained, vs. just the grave moment)

428_02_bat_ann_25

And since they’d included it in the TPB I was referencing, here’s the page that we were given in Batman Annual #25, without the extra words.

428_03_orig

Context, conveying a lot in just a few words…

428_03_faux

A slight change of wording omits Jason, since the alternate take is that he actually survived.

428_04_orig

Original panel…

428_04_faux

Slightly re-worded without Jason.

428_05_orig

The original version, mother and son side-by-side.

428_05_faux

Alternatively, a single coffin and simply no extra reference to Jason.

428_06_orig

A poignant moment with Alfred after the funeral…

428_06_faux

Orrrr Dick checks in with Bruce in the hospital after the funeral of Jason’s mother.

And then looking into #429, we have a few panels that would take very little alteration of words to account for Jason living.

429_01

“Injured” vs. “Killed,” perhaps.

429_02

Make past tense present tense, and the Joker “did that to” rather than “murdered"?

429_03

“Hurt” instead of “murdered”…

429_04

“in a coma” instead of “dead”…

429_05

“nearly killed”…

Now, even having this alternate take…with DC releasing the 4-issue Year One issues weekly, it seems like other 4-parter classics like Death in the Family, Year Two, and so on would be ripe for facsimiles. Even The Dark Knight [Returns]. If they can do Vengeance of Bane as a “regular” (if extra-pages) facsimile instead of squarebound, why not those?

Time will tell, but such reprints would get ME buying Batman for the duration…

batman0428fauximile_blogtrailer

Filed under: 2023 Posts, 2023 Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Death in the Family and A Lonely Place of Dying

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Walt

I finally "pulled the trigger" recenty on several Batman volumes I’ve been planning on ordering. Over the last couple years, I’ve been gradually "upgrading" to newer editions of stuff I’d had, as these newer ones are far more comprehensive than the half-hearted volumes that were originally put out…or just simply have more content per volume, look better, etc.

batman_books_tall1

The one I was most looking forward to was Batman: A Death in the Family. This is one of the stories of my youth, and while I don’t truly "get" the merging of A Lonely Place of Dying into this, noticing that Batman Annual #25 was (supposedly) included definitely had my interest.

death_in_the_family_current_cover

I do like the minimal cover. It’s simple, but very, very telling…the image is haunting, shows the violence of Robin’s death, and is such an iconic image, filled with layer and meaning to me.

death_in_the_family_current_back

The back cover is less to my liking. It fits with contemporary volumes, of course, but I liked the back of the original edition better…or at least, the original’s inclusion of the original cover images.

whats_included1

According to the (back) cover of the book itself, the volume contains 10 issues. The 4-issue A Death in the Family story, the 3 Batman and 2 The New Titans issues that make up A Death in the Family, and the Batman Annual. "and also includes the 2006 follow-up story from BATMAN ANNUAL #25" .

whats_included2

The indicia also would support that, citing the individual issues, with no wording such as "material from" or "excerpted from" or anything indicating truncation or abridgement.

whats_included3

The volume’s table of contents begins to paint a different picture. It’s been nearly a decade since I actually read the annual, so I’ll be darned if I could remember the title of the story. But given the whole Superboy Prime and "punching reality" and all that, causing stuff to change, it would not be inappropriate for that issue’s title to BE "Alternate Ending." The pattern the table of contents uses lists the issues’ contents as their chapter of each story and the original issue numbers. The issues are included in full, no abridgement/etc.

But if one pays attention to the page numbers and the BIOGRAPHIES section below…notice the Annual is 270…but then the biographies are the VERY NEXT PAGE.

hes_alive_batman_annual_25

The sole inclusion from Batman Annual #25 is one. single. PAGE. And it’s not even reprinted as a page the way the entirety of the rest of the volume reprints the pages, this is intended to show AS a page from something else.

As a single page, this SHOULD HAVE been included between A Death in the Family and A Lonely Place of Dying. Given the Annual itself came 17-some years later, it would make perfect sense for it to be reprinted after both original stories. It seemed like a BONUS inclusion to the volume, to give us the original story, the followup, and then the revision, the revisitation that bridges the original stuff and contemporary stuff with Red Hood and such.

This is absolutely misleading, and had I known, if it had registered that the only difference was that this volume is 2-in-1 without the actual Annual in full, I definitely would NOT have bothered with this! I already have the original individual volumes, neither of which contains the Annual that was published those 17ish years after, and I’d thus prefer those.

current_and_older_edition

The art itself is basically the same on this new edition, it’s the words/fonts on the cover that is different. The art is centered on the new one and basically in full, while it’s off to the side on the original, wrapping slightly to the back. The original edition maintains the logo from the comics the story appeared in, as well as the story logo of A Death in the Family from those issues.

death_in_the_family_old_back

Personally, my ideal back cover is a mix of the original and the current…I would include the original cover images, but use the current text describing the story(ies) contained.

My original edition is the sixth printing or so, and quite beat up from numerous re-reads and being with me for over 20 years. Ditto for the Lonely Place of Dying volume.

older_death_in_family_lonely_place_of_dying

Here are the two original editions. They show their age, and are far from anything resembling pristine condition, as they are two of the oldest volumes in my entire collection. That can also be seen below with the prices of both books…

pricing_old_dif

I think the first printing of A Death in the Family may have had a $3.95 cover price, but I’m not certain. Obviously the sixth printing has the $4.95 cover price. Which, with at least a couple of the issues being oversized/extra-length is not bad at all.

pricing_old_lpod

A Lonely Place of Dying was 3.95. That’s five issues, including two issues that I believe were "Direct Market only" for basically $4. The cost of one single issue of what seems to be the majority of what both DC and Marvel put out these days heading into 2016. Granted, a quarter-century or so gap in time, but still…

lonely_place_of_dying_back_cover_text

Above: the back-cover text from A Lonely Place of Dying.

Given the gap between the two stories–Batman #s 430-439–and having Batman: Year Three (which I do not believe has ever been reprinted/collected) as well as The Many Deaths of the Batman (which was reprinted ages ago into a skinny, tiny little volume), I would think a much larger volume would be called for. Tim Drake is technically, officially introduced in Year Three, and that story also involves and has ramifications for Dick Grayson, then-Nightwing, who also played a major role in A Lonely Place of Dying. At minimum, I would expect Year Three to be included, as it also addresses Batman’s deterioration after the loss of Jason, which makes Tim’s arrival all the more poignant and sets things up FOR the latter story.

For that matter, in "losing" A Lonely Place of Dying as a title/book being folded into other stuff, I would think it’d fit quite well in a Robin volume…perhaps as the first few issues of the volume, then the story from Detective Comics where Tim’s mom died, and the (I believe) 3-parter from Batman that led into the first Robin mini-series. That’d make a handsome 12-issue volume; include the Robin mini and it’d be a strong 17 issues. That’d leave Robin II and Robin III to fill a respectable 10-issue volume, before picking up with the ongoing Robin series from 1993-on.

While this post is all over the place…ultimately, if you do NOT already have both A Death in the Family and A Lonely Place of Dying, I would definitely recommend this volume. Just be aware that it does not ACTUALLY contain the Annual that it misleadingly suggests it contains.

The content–the stories themselves–are very much worth it, and two very key stories in the 76+ year history of the Batman (and Robin)!

Filed under: 2015 Non-Review posts, 2015 posts | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Weekend Acquisitions – Fabrikations and Books

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Walt

Over the weekend, I finally picked up the two Fabrikations figures I’ve been seeing around but hadn’t actually pulled the trigger on buying. As I’m realizing I have less and less interest in the "standard size" Pops, and do not care for the bobblehead nature of the Marvel and Star Wars Pops, these NOT being bobbleheads combined with their larger size make them all the more appealing.

fabrikations_and_books_memorial_day_weekend

I also finally got I Was the Cat, which I’ve been "interested in" since last August. Found the Bone "tribute edition" hardcover at a Half-Price Books; Amulet at Barnes & Noble, and the Batman comic at a different Half-Price Books.

comics_graphic_novels_memorial_day_weekend

Quite an expensive "haul," but definitely some cool stuff. I was fairly certain I already have this one issue of the four-part Death in the Family story, but this one is in better condition…and I honestly couldn’t remember 100% if it was the first issue or this one that I already had. For $4 (the price of a contemporary single-issue), I figured it was worth buying.

Thankfully, the weekend trip that resulted in finding all this stuff is a rare happening!

Filed under: 2015 Non-Review posts, 2015 posts | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

75 Cents Very Well Spent

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Walt

This week is definitely one of THE best I’ve had in the way of 25-cent books!

I scored a copy of Dark Horse Comics Presents #8–the first appearance of X–as well as one of the four A Death in the Family Batman issues (#429).

And the REALLY special treat of the week–X-O Manowar (original series) #1 that the comic shop owner tucked in with my weekly pulls, and sold to me for 25 cents as it’s not in mint condition (“just” a ‘reading copy’).

75centswellspent20140226

I also snagged a number of other 25-cent books…Predator/Magnus and Magnus/Nexus, a couple issues of Valiant’s Original Turok and Original Solar; the first seven issues of Robinson‘s Starman (#s 0-6), a couple bronze-age Lois Lane issues, and a handful of Detective Comics ones I’ve kept an eye out for.

And for a “mere” $4, I picked up the “RRP” variant of Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men #1…the greenish background with the whole TEAM shown, that has been a rather “iconic” image for the book, despite the STANDARD cover having been Wolverine’s claws. While I don’t much like buying recent back issues and certainly not for $1 above cover price…my logic on this is that it’s the cover I’d prefer, it’s the one I associate with the series, and $4 is the same as “just” any other Marvel these days, so might as well.

Filed under: NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »