Because it was fun and not at all rape-y, and thus verboten at current-day DC.

I propose that all of the fun comics sneaking out the door at Marvel are taking place on Earth-Haney, or the Marvel equivalent thereof.

But I have to say that Bob Haney was never a favorite of mine. My POV is that most of the stuff he is remembered for has more to do with the artists he was paired with (a young Neal Adams and Nick Cardy on Brave and the Bold for exemple) than the impact his stories made on the medium. His stories were never as exciting or original as Arnold Drake’s or the whole Julius Schwarts stable of great writers (Gardner Fox, John Broome, Otto Binder…).

I bought and read the 6 issues reprint series BEST OF BRAVE AND THE BOLD that came out in the 80′s. It had most of the Neal Adams work on Brave and the Bold. Most stories were written by Bob Haney and I didn’t enjoyed them very much. They were some great pairing of characters (Batman and Creeper, Batman and Green Arrow, etc.) but the stories were bland. I prefered by far the late Golden Age stories of adventure heroes by Joe Kubert and Russ Heath (Golden Gladiator, Silent Knight, Robin Hood, Viking Prince) that were the back up/fillers in that reprint series.

Bring on the Kanigher!

Hey, I’m a comics fan, not a farggin’ Rockefeller!

Great choice, by the way. I like Metamorpho and the Unknown Solider, but I LOVE team-up books. And the Haney/Aparo Brave and Bolds are unquestionably the gold standard.

By the way, is #124 in that Brave & Bold Showcase you mentioned? If it is, that might be a good reason to pick it up, looks promising.

The very first DC comic I owned–bought at an Avondale in St. Catharines, Ontario when I was six years old in case anyone was wondering– is Brave and the Bold 125, a Batman/Flash team-up. The second comic I owned–bought in a pack of three, admittedly, but it was the one that made the most impact on me– was World’s Finest 225 (which actually came out a year before B&B 125, but through the vagaries of repackaging I didn’t get until much later). The cover can be seen here:

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=27719&zoom=4

And as a child, it didn’t matter that Haney actually wholesale ripped off the story from Children of the Damned– the fact is the story scared the shit out of me right from the get go. Something about the image of Batman being ripped apart by kids just did it to me.
I read a lot of Brave and Bold and World’s Finest as a kid and I loved it– Super sons and all.

The thing is Haney could write outside his own continuity when given the chance. His Kamandi team-up is remarkably consistent with the Kirby series as I remember it. But on the flipside, several characters had its own B&B continuity that had nothing to do with the rest of the DC universe. The Plastic Man that appeared in his B&B stories lived only in the continuity Haney wrote, for example. And the Super sons pale in comparison for canon-busting mind blowing thing that is Bruce Wayne’s brother.

But the thing I love most about Haney is his dialogue. I love how he always called the guest star in B&B (either by Batman himself or in the caption boxes) some pet name that any other sane person would consider insulting. Hawkman was Featherhead. Martian Manhunter was, I swear I’m not making this up, Greenskin. It wasn’t limited to Superheroes. He’d call firemen ‘smoke eaters’ and Uncle Sam ‘Mister Whiskers’.

As a teenager, I wrote off Bob Haney as a loopy loon who used hackneyed plots he ripped off so many movies and TV show and I fear I missed the point. Because now, I read his stories and I find them funny and supremely entertaining. And subversively demented in a way I just couldn’t appreciate as a youngster.

Here’s a look at one of my favorite Haney stories.

Man, if that’s not a testament to mad skills, I don’t know what is.

Bob Haney was totally awesome/gonzo/whatthefuck/AWESOME. Those stories have an infectious energy to them, which just permeates from the page.

And that story with the Atom is genius.