Batman: Strange Apparitions by Steve Englehart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects stories from eight issues of Detective Comics where Marvel Writer Steve Engelhart took over the writing of Detective Comics as well as two issues written by Len Wein.

Overall, the stories are pretty solid. The lead off villain, Doctor Phosphorous is well-written. Two stories, one involving Hugo Strange learning Batman's secret identity and another involving the Joker poisoning the water to give fish his face and then trying to copyright fish were later adapted for the great Batman: The Animated Series. There's also a very solid Penguin story in here.

The individual stories work great, but I have some more mixed feelings on the overall plot arc involving Bruce Wayne's relationship with Silver St. Cloud as well as Rupert Thorn's efforts to drive Batman out of Gotham. Both feel very rushed towards their resolution due to Engelhart's planned retirement from comics (which turned out to be temporary), but there's just too much going on for him to have actually done everything he'd started justice.

Still, this is a nice collection of stories from an era that aren't really collected anywhere else, so it's definitely a worthwhile read.



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