Back-Issue Spotlight: Detective Comics#853 (Vol.1)

TGIT!!

Not to mention for those of you out there keeping score, this is my 700th post.

Yeah, I know. 700.
It really doesn't feel like that many though.

Be that as it may, I've decided to close out the week with Back Issue Spotlight and not So, Who Would Win? as I usually do.

Besides, that rat bastard King of Thessly beat me to it this week, and actaully features a line-up Id have probably gotten to myself at some point.

So check it out and let us know who you think wins out when The Demon battles The Gargoyle:
http://littlethingsincomics.blogspot.com/2015/04/thedemonetrigan-vs-thegargoyle.html#more
I'm gonna' so get you for that King. I keeed man. I keeeed LOL.

Anyhoo, onto today's random back issue pick that is also from the month of April, as will the rest of my picks for Back Issue Spotlight this month.

The reason why I picked this particular issue will become very apparent after I reveal the title and title character:

Detective Comics#853(Vol.1) (April '09) "What Ever Happened To The Caped Crusader?" Part 2 By Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert


I'll be perfectly honest.
I have hard time explaining just how much Batman, and the character of Batman, resonates with me so. Why I perk up everytime I hear the intro theme to Batman:TAS. Why the Pointy Ears and Pointy Cape visually arrest my eyes. Why Batman really does make you at times want to be the best you you can be. Just like he did for himself.

Neil Gaiman wrote to the readers his version of Alan Moore's same lover letter to the fans about Superman, in the famous "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Steel?"
Gaiman breaks it down to its simpiliest and most purest magical form, why Batman and the character of Batman endures agelessly beyond time. Because he's Batman. More now and forever, a myth, more than a man.

And that's how he always wanted it as Gaiman takes the readers on a magical mystery tour through the caped crusader's past and Rogue's Gallery.

The issue starts off with both friend and foe alike, eulgizing Batman at multiple funeral services throughout different time periods.

What's so interesting about these possible death scenarios, is that they'd all make for a fun read as its own story somewhere.

Batman, being Batman, decides to rationlize this whole acid flashback through memory lane, as a form of NDE, or Near Death Experience.

And he's talking to his dead mother. Just so you know.....

 Batman indeed does not go quietly into that goodnight, nor would he, had his "mother" not shown up to help guide him to the eventual acceptance of his own death.

This is an entire process that take him from the very beginning.....

                                                         ....To the beginning of the end.

But while men die, legends never do. And neither really does Batman.

And these final few parts tend to choke me up as a huge Batman fan.

It's the Goodnight Book, and this time it's about saying "goodnight" to Batman.

This is how I prefer to think how the Pre-NU52 Batman's story ended.

And everything goes on back in cycles again. An endless pardoxal loop.

Also, hope springs eternal and all that.

Artist Andy Kubert nailed the hell out of this with is pencils. He meticulously researched the fasion and styles of the various time periods he illustrates, and man does it show. Such detail, and presented in such a simultianous retro and modern tone.

I swear Kubert's grown to be the anti-Jim Lee. You want him to draw pretty much all the comics you read because he can actually draw and yet not always look the same.

This being part two, you're probably wondering where's part one then?

Easy, check out Batman#686 for part one. Same creative team, just a different title.

Hell, if you want, the whole thing's currently available in trades. Do yourself a favor and get it if you haven't already.

Hope you guys all have a good weekend. 

Take it easy.