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DC Comics Presents: Batman # 1

By Koppy McFad
July 25, 2004 - 15:15

A tribute issue to comics legend Julius Schwartz, this book has two stories based on an old-Schwartz-inspired comic book cover of the 1960s: namely Batman so engrossed in watching his own show on TV that he refuses to go out and fight crime. Johns, Infantino and Giella present a story where an actor playing Batman on television becomes the main suspect in the murder of an actor playing Robin. While it starts out well, the story eventually dissolves into a rather unconvincing "twist" ending that really comes from an old episode of the Batman animated TV show. Infantino and Giella meanwhile turn in a merely adequate product that lacks the dynamism and originality of their earlier works. There are some entertaining facets in this story but they owe more to Adam West and Burt Ward than to Julius Schwartz.

The second story by Wein and Kuhn has Batman and Robin discovering that someone is filming their encounters with various Bat-villains and then putting it on TV. There are parts of the story which are overdone and which do stretch credibility but on the whole, it seems more true to the short, self-contained, highly-original stories of the Schwartz-edited books than the first story. The art, while different from what you would normally see on Schwartz's tenure, is a nice mix between dark moodiness and Silver-age whimsy.

Last Updated: November 29, 2025 - 16:51