Sunday 27 November 2011

This month in... 1983


Not done one of these in a while, so lets take alook shall we?
Afraid to say, beyond that fantastic cover, its a real bunch of piffle; a tale pitting the Bat against the Joker amongst Mayan pyramids that could've come straight from the 50's - especially as Joker uses that era's Joker Copter.
What makes it even more depressing is that we've got the fabulous team of Don Newton and Alfredo Acala drawing. They're of course reknowned for their brilliant, moody art and, with the jungle scenes here, they're sure in their element.
But, as usual for this time, the colouring is atrocious and does their work no favours whatsoever - would love to see the original B/W pages of their run on the title.
Only in one place does the colouring come anywhere near close to being ok:

But then that's offset by having to depict the Joker Copter:

The only other thing of note in this issue is Batman seeing Jason Todd as Robin for the first time. But, again, piffle:
The night before the events on the pyramid, the blond haired Jason,alone in Wayne Manor, stumbles across Dick Grayson's old Robin outfit. At the climax of the tale, all seems lost, when Jason swings in to save the day, the explanation of how a kid living alone stumbles across the costume then gets down to South America just in the nick of time is: "I found this spare costume in ROBIN'S CLOSET. Then i died my hair BLACK and... Well, I... I kinda found enough cash in your drawer to buy a ticket to SAN MATEO."
Dear oh dear.

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