I just finished the Bat Lash Showcase volume. I've had a hankerin' to read these vintage DC western stories almost from the time I started reading comics. I saw the mysterious ad that announced the beginning of this series, but I'll confess that when I finally saw some issues the character there didn't seem much like the ad. He looked sleek, debonair, and handsome. And of course he was.
How else could he look rendered by Nick Cardy. I'm not sure how Sergio Aragones wrote these issues, but I'm guessing he wrote by drawing the panels which Cardy then rendered in detail over Aragones' roughs. I have no other notion save that the early stories don't really feel like raw Cardy to me.
The episodic nature of the series makes it a neat one-off charm. You can read any of the early issues of Bat Lash and not need another. That's true save for the final two issues of the first run which gives his "origin" and then follows up with another story tied to that first story. Otherwise, Bat Lash is a classic western type, the charming rogue who roams the West seeking gold and romance, if not true love.
He is a man rootless and at times bewilderingly callous to those around him. Just when you think his own personal interests will rule the day though he does something mildly heroic that keeps the hope alive that this rogue at heart might still be a good guy. He's not so much a "good guy" though in these stories as merely a "better guy" than most of the others. There are some selfless souls in these tales, and they offer an interesting counterpoint to Bat Lash's life choices.
By the end of the this jagged saga, it's clear that Bat Lash will never ever really be happy, but he will never be glum either. He lives in the moment, but that's almost to spare him from his past.
Good reading. Recommended.
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