And forget the “Batman” qualifier. IMO Jim Aparo was the best artist ever. B & B was my second favorite series growing up – my favorite during those long periods of time when Aquaman didn’t have his own series.

Thanks for the smile, sir.

Well, it was definitely in a BRAVE & BOLD. I leave it as an exercise to determine which one.

Johnny Bacardi
I did #80 a couple of years ago… I bought many, many issues of B&B from the early 70′s till the early 80′s, even had a letter or two printed in the letters pages. #80 was one of my favorite issues in the whole run.

Nice. I’ll edit that into the Neal Adams entry. (In at # 4, findable through tags.)

I know you had at least two letters printed (I was excited to find ‘em) – and I kind of thought you had three. I’ll probably reprint one of ‘em at some point.

There was a B&B where Bob Haney had Batman (not Bruce Wayne or in disguise) flying on a commercial airliner (not the Batplane or Whirly Bat) to some adventure or another (I think it was a team up with the Flash)

# 132. Batman and Richard Dragon. (I don’t have the Flash team-up in # 125, but I’ve read it recently and I don’t remember the scene.

http://www.daveexmachina.com/gfx/bmdtd.jpg

The only difference is that one caption was placed into a different panel.

Reprints:

There are Black and White Showcase Volumes covering about 2/3rds of this run. They’re Showcase Presents Batman: The Brave and the Bold Volumes 2 and 3.

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=388_389_6232&products_id=47478

(Volume one has the nice Neal Adams run, but the rest isn’t very good.)

As far as I know, exactly ONE issue of the Haney/Aparo run has been reprinted in color. The Atom team-up in # 115, in the “Strange Deaths of the Batman” TPB.

Here’s the (uncomplimentary) CBR review here.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?id=677&page=user_review

There are nice (but pricey, PRICEY) hardbacks of the Neal Adams Brave and the Bold:

http://cgi.ebay.com/DC-Archives-volume-1-Batman-illustrated-by-Neal-Adams_W0QQitemZ310166772879QQcmdZViewItem

And the first few pre-Batman Haney Brave and the Bold stories (With art by Alex Toth, Ramona Fradon, Bruno Preminani and some NICE work from Golden Age Green Lantern artist Howard Purcell)

http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/graphic_novels/?gn=2843

The writing here is really, REALLY silly, though.

I’d LOVE (and maybe even pay hardback prices for) a color reprint of the best of the Haney/Aparo Brave and the Bold, but I doubt it’s gonna happen in the near future.

Ebay or Lone Star Comics
have Back Issues decently cheap.

Batman’s original thoughts were: “What am I doing here? Can’t remember…must have hit my head. But I feel exposed…naked…like a bat who’s wandered far from his cave. Must return to the shadows…where I belong!”

Alas, it began tailing off in quality around #120, and I gave it up around #135. In other words, the first 20 or so issues are the heart of the run.

See all the covers here:

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/brave-and-the-bold/3

I have very fond memories of this run from the very first bunch of comics I got for Christmas way beack when. One of those was Brave and Bold #114, the 100-pager with Aquaman, and it just stood out from all of the others. One of the first comics I remember picking up off the rack was #133 with Deadman. Then, I also remember getting #155 with Green Lantern at another convenience store. All of these had that intense Aparo art, which just made you believe that it would take Batman to solve the problem at hand. The stories then were just interesting enough to hook me in, but in that cool way where you as a kid were being let into a more adult story without what all of the adult themes really meant. Re-reading those stories many years after, I still enjoyed them just as much. As others have said, it might very well be the best Batman ever, with so many of my favourite characteristics: globe-trotting adventures, detective work, and early Aparo art.

I have yet to read the entire run, but have read about half of the bunch since those early years when I was first exposed to them. I have all but 5 of Batman’s appearances in Brave and the Bold and plan to read each one of those when I can sit down comfortably and savour them. I love Aparo’s Batman so much that I got an original page from #191 that has the death of Penguin, the Joker wiping a tear from his eye and Batman walking away with a billowing cape.

Thanks for this countdown, Mark.

Seriously now: I guess you felt that the criticisms of the Haney/Aparo run had been done to the death and need not be repeated here. Fair. But it makes this review sound more like a fanboy blog.

As I mentioned previously, I did see many of these comics (both in English and Spanish) and even back then with my limited knowledge of DC comics I still could tell something was just WRONG about the Haney stories. STILL, I liked them. As you said, you never knew exactly what to expect from B&B, and even if it felt like I was watching a parody of Batman sometimes, it was entertaining. And Aparo’s art style could make even the silliest story work. No, I would not have made #1 in my own list, but it would be at the top.

98) Batman (not Bruce Wayne) is some civilian’s oldest and dearest friend and godfather of his son. When the friend dies, Batman (not Bruce Wayne) gets all huggy with the kid and (after some Bob Haney happens, i.e. he original kid turns out to be the evil twin and a demonic overlord who has to be defeated, but there’s a heretofore unknown good twin) promises to take care of him forever, albeit at a distance; and

145) when interrogating a prisoner who’s under hypnotic influence and convinced that a voodoo lord’s spell will kill him if he talks, Batman first tries to go the dark-and-scary-bat-avenger route, to convince the prisoner that he’s way scarier than the voodoo lord… and when the man’s mind is about to break, Batman realizes that *he’s supposed to protect people, not scare them the hell to death*, and so he instead switches to balancing the voodoo lord’s power of suggestion of scary spells with his own power of suggestion that he’s Batman and can therefore *protect* the guy.

Normal and well-adjusted indeed. I think that at any time in the last 20+ years you could publish B&B 145 and have it seem like a contemporary piece of critical commentary on Batman comics– even though it came out years before Miller ever touched the character!

Damn, Batman, you are the man, aren’t ya?