Podcast Plugtime – Magazines and Monsters: The Brave and the Bold #115

Posted on by martingray1

When is a team-up not a team-up? When one half of the team is doing all the work. In this case, handling the heavy lifting is the Atom who, in his other identity as Ray Palmer, is in Gotham Hospital one day when Batman arrives – on a stretcher. He is, to all intents and purposes, dead, his mission to save a young woman from evil hoods unfinished. But the Mighty Mite has a crazy plan that just might work.

Using the intimate knowledge of the brain that goes with being, er, a research physicist, he’s going to try steering the Catatonic Crusader through the streets of Gotham to apprehend the crooks and free the hostage heiress.

And after many twists and turns and much bashing of soft tissue, the quirky quest succeeds, Batman recovers and Ray returns to his lecture tour without telling his Justice League pal he’d given him a hand.

So far as we know the Atom never did mention this most subtle of team-ups to Batman. But readers of the infamous Identity Crisis maxi-series can likely assume he told his future wife, lady lawyer Jean Loring…

… but that’s a discussion for another day, it’s this issue of The Brave and the Bold Billy D and I are discussing on the latest episode of his podcast Magazines and Monsters. It’s The Brave and The Bob episode 79 because, yes, 1974’s ‘The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die’ springs, like the Atom from an elastic band, from the mind of prolific DC author Bob Haney. And you’ll note that the art and lettering is by frequent collaborator Jim Aparo at his best.

Join Billy and me for ‘Zany Haney’ Earth B shenanigans galore, you can find the show wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, for example, just click on this link.

And if you want to read the story along with us but don’t have the original 100-page super-spectacular in which it appeared, it’s in at least four English language collections, including Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Bronze Age Omnibus #2. If you’d like to read it without breaking your back, and have a subscription to DC Infinite, Bob Haney’s your uncle!

30 thoughts on “Podcast Plugtime – Magazines and Monsters: The Brave and the Bold #115”

  1. I enjoyed Haney’s Brave & Bold despite taking the rest of my comics seriously. This worked better than any synopsis can get across! My dream is to someday have a mini that happens on the Earth Haney’s stories took place on.

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    1. These days it would need to be an important part of Big Event, which really could support an ongoing at DC. A character much more popular than Wonder Woman would be needed. It’d probably have to be all Batman team ups. If you want a Haney feel, Allred would be a good choice for the writer or maybe even North.

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      1. Excellent suggestion. At one point I would have suggested Mark Russell, but he tends to shive social commentary into everything, which isn’t the spirit of Haney.

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      2. I actually meant that the series would have team-ups with those three characters in a randomized rotation.

        Superman and Red Tornado

        Batman and Vixen

        Wonder Woman and Black Lightning

        and the annuals could be Trinity books.

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      3. I personally find the Trinity an artificial construct not based on Wonder Woman’s actual importance to the DCU. You could basically excise her and little would change as opposed to Batman and Superman. Her merchandise and the fact she’s the least poor selling female character got her the spot and Supergirl is a Superman adjunct. If you went by importance or sales, the third leg of the Trinity would be Flash or Green Lantern.

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      4. How about the annuals feature different ‘Trinities’ from different genres – Swampy, Cynthia and Mr E, say, or Adam Strange, Captain Comet and Starfire?

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      5. I’d buy the regular issues, though I’d like the annuals to be more special than yet another meeting of the big three. Perhaps have them on the cover with their logos, then inside bring in three heroes who have never met and let them carry on the opening story.

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    2. The comic companies say they just don’t sell because they’re generally not plugged into the regular comic continuity… so why not try that, didn’t John Byrne’s Action Comics, while not going back and forth into Superman and Adventures of Superman, feel part of the ongoing Big Picture?

      Then again, I find it really hard to believe a team-up book starring, say, Batman every issue won’t sell as many copies as a Poison Ivy book.

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      1. ” Continuity “ has become an anchor around the necks of fans and comics companies alike.

        World’s Finest doesn’t actually fit into continuity and it’s great.

        it just needs a good set of writers and artists.

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      3. Wonder Woman’s importance is massive culturally. People know the name. The fact that fanboys refuse to make big hits of books about female characters has nothing to do with the character and everything to do with the misogyny and childishness of the fanboys.

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      4. At this point I have to like the creators to read a Wonder Woman book or read a review here or another blog whose taste I trust. There’s just been so much bad Wonder Woman stories in my 50+ years of comic reading. I’m not one of those fanboys, not that you implied that. I just want to make it clear my dislike of Wonder Woman has to do with drek and not committing to a direction. My three favorite heroes from the Big Two are Carol Danvers, Magik, and Power Girl.

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      5. Magic makes me sad, she was such a cute bairn and she had to go to a hell dimension, no wonder she’s so snarky.

        I’ve never loved Carol as much as I did when she was in her Cockrum outfit.

        And Power Girl, hurrah, when it’s classic, proper Peege.

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      6. I did love Cockrum’s every costume design but Carol was drawn with it as a thong almost as much as Wonder Woman was. Second costume (when the cut out went away) and the current looks suit her personality better.

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      8. I’m counting them getting rid of the cut out on Carol’s original costume as a second costume because it was no longer ridiculous and a failed attempt at pandering.

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  4. This was the first comic I ever sent a letter to. Well, a postcard anyway: I wrote to say I was very upset that the cover scene with Batman and the Atom never took place in the book. It’d be a few more years until I learned what “artistic license” was.

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    1. Oh, well done Joe! Did you get printed, either in full or in one of those Murray Boltinoff round-ups?

      As regards that cover image, it’s surprising that when they had such an unusual story gimmick, they didn’t put that front and centre. Maybe it would’ve made the Comics Code nervous.

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      1. Nah, never printed. I only ever had 2 letters printed, both in Marvel books years later. BatB was a great book back ion the day with Aparo art and tons of extra stories.

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      2. That’s a shame. Until email came along I never really bothered writing to the US comics, the big delay with them being available in the UK meant we had no chance of getting in the letter columns. Happily that did change in later years, and I got in the odd issue of the Flash, Amethyst and a few more.

        Mind, I did manage a couple of appearances in The Answer Man in the Seventies, the delay thing didn’t matter there.

        Oh, and much more recently I had a few letters in such Marvels as Hellcat and Nextwave… the latter somehow wound up in the trade.

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      3. It is really good.

        The visual style was off-putting to me, so I doubt that I would have watched unless it was “the Batman show that was on when my kids were little”. But it is an excellent survey course on the DC Universe.

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Published by martingray1

Journalist, comic reviewer, theatre critic, film lover, biscuit fan, cat indulger