The Girl Who Broke The Bat

This weekend Bedrock City Comics had a back issue sale - 50% off all back issues. Kris and I decided to make a day of it and visited three of BRC’s four locations. Kris found a bunch of stuff to fill in holes all over his collection. I found a couple of random things of interest, but mainly was picking up back issues of Batgirl to get my Cassandra Cain fix on. My interest is purely literary, but sometimes people get concerned.

Some of the things I picked up this weekend included four of the five issues of a Legends of the Dark Knight story arc called Prey. Prey is the first appearance of Hugo Strange in the modern day Batman continuity and is actually the story of how Strange figures out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. He does this in the fourth issue of the story arc, which is the one I couldn’t find - probably why I couldn’t find it - so I’m not sure how Strange makes the connection, but it leads to a great finale in issue five. I’ve never read any of Doug Moench’s work before, but he was a pretty prolific writer in the 80s and 90s with a huge run on Batman. His writing is very tight and does a fantastic job of setting the tone of this story. Strange is creepy beyond belief and his obsession with Batman is very unnerving. Reading this really makes me want to re-read Batman and the Monster Men, which while written after Prey takes place in continuity before it and showcases Strange’s first encounter with Batman, to see how the obsession started.

I also picked up a run on JSA Classified that was its One Year Later story discussing the Fall & Rise of Vandal Savage. Vandal Savage is dying and sets out to destroy his old enemy Green Lantern as his final act on Earth. The story has several flashbacks of Savage remembering stories of his immortal past. While the connection to JSA and Green Lantern was kind of weak, the scenes with Vandal Savage were excellent. I’ve always enjoyed reading Savage as a character and this story didn’t disappoint. Scandal Savage’s brief cameo was awesome and much enjoyed.

I’ve got a while to go to work through all of the Batgirl issues that I picked up, but I’ll report back later about what it’s like.