Thursday, July 8, 2010

Batman Odyssey; Neal Adams

Originally I was going to write a blog entry this morning about Batman Odyssey along with my entry on the excellent Scarlet (entry below this one), but wisely decided that they both deserved their own spotlight. Neal Adams, with his hyper realistic style, was the artist in the early 1970's who brought the Batman character out of the campy phase of the Adam West television Batman show of the 1960s. When Neal Adams draws a comic, you're pretty much guaranteed a great visual sequential eyefest, but as he is also writing Batman Odyssey, I was a little concerned that his Batman would be dated and not resonate with today's comic readers. I'm happy to report that not only is Batman Odyssey not dated, it would be the best superhero comic of the week if Scarlet hadn't been released the same day (actually Scarlet doesn't even count as a superhero comic because she doesn't have super powers, so...).

Batman Odysessy (which is a six issue mini series) isn't in regular continuity, rather it is a Batman year one type of story and should appeal to anyone just looking for a great Batman (and Robin) comic book that isn't reliant on several different titles to get a complete story. I'm always happy when artistic giants of yesteryear (especially those who haven't done much in the way of comic book work in years) are still capable of producing a work like Batman Odyssey that is sure to create a new legion of Neal Adams fans.

No comments: