I’ve put off plugging a pair of books for too long. Both are by fellas named Alan but
they have a deeper connection as well.
Alan Brennert has been a favorite author of mine since before I knew he wrote
prose. Of the literally thousands of Batman stories published by the character’s 50th anniversary in 1989, he’d written five, and DC selected two of them for The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. I was thrilled to share the news here in 2016 when a criminally overdue Tales of the Batman hardcover collecting his small yet absolutely stellar comics oeuvre spanning DC’s multiverse was announced.
Here to mark National Pancake Day is one of my favorite comic-book panels ever.
I really have nothing to add except that if I’d been able to bring myself to bastardize Mike Mignola’s work (beyond what I did to straighten and flatten the photo I took from my Hellboy Library Edition printing of the story) I would’ve probably included the Campbell’s soup can for emphasis because it looks much to my frustration like posting will continue to be all too infrequent.
As some unknown force runs like a cosmic Bill Dozier across the multiverse…
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Update: Grayscale for it all probably helps sell the newsprint throwback vibe but part of the point was to emphasize tension in the mashup. Not to mention that color makes the episode title’s font more recognizable.
I haven’t been able to read much long-form lately for a variety of reasons. As you’d expect, Brian Clopper’s 101 First Chapters is the perfect book in that regard.
I’ve known Brian casually for over 30 years as, to invoke Chris Staros’ phrase, a friend through comics — save the sizable gap between the days I could make it to conventions or at least hang out in various Internet forums and when I slowly reconnected with folks, if only by returning to online activity, having lost touch with so many for too great a stretch.
I’ll be sharing an overdue post on Star Trek here in the next few months, phasers crossed.
Meantime, I have this. I was moved to file it away three years ago while reading a
bunch of DC’s supernatural anthologies, and now I guess I know why.
My guess is that Chuck has strict instructions not to interrupt the “Barbers’ Picnic”.
Also, Barbers’ Picnic is my new band name and probably one of the activities in the parlor cabinet in the hotel on Widow’s Bay.
Did you think I’d segue from Peanuts’ currently syndicated repeats into talk of The Pitt instead?
