After sitting down and thinking about what book to cover next on my blog, it seemed like quite a while since I covered a DC book. Looking back, it has been, and to be specific, it was all the way back on November 11th! Since then, I’ve acquired a few more DC books, this awesome issue of The Brave and the Bold being one of them!

The creative team on this one (and many awesome DC books from the Bronze Age) is fantastic, but we’ll get to them later. For now, I’ll just say that this crazy (or zany) story has Batman investigating a murder at an equestrian event. The murder makes the newspaper, and Dr. Kirk Langstrom sees it. He realizes a reward of one-hundred thousand dollars could benefit him quite a bit, so he ingests his formula, and the Man-Bat is back! This one has it all, a Great White Shark (remember, it’s 1975) restless natives, real bats, and a second Man-Bat…?

As usual, this book is super entertaining for me. Mostly because I enjoy Bob “Zany” Haney (writer) and Jim Aparo (interior and cover art, Tatjana Wood colors). These two creators are probably my favorite team from DC comics. The stories are always solid and borderline on the bizarre, which suits my tastes perfectly. From an artistic standpoint, I can’t get over how much Aparo reminds me of my favorite artist, Gene Colan. He’s the perfect artist for Batman, Phantom Stranger, The Spectre, etc. His moody pencils create an atmosphere I don’t see consistently from any other artist from this era in DC books (not even Neal Adams).