People make quite a deal of the work of Alan Moore, an eccentric comic book writer who has produced intriguing and bizarre work. But if you are part of my generation, the weirdness of Moore and his ability to blend genres had all been done before in the bristling pages of The Brave and the Bold under the skillful hand of the zany Bob Haney! Haney's The Brave and the Bold comic book starred Batman, who at a particular moment was a superstar for DC, but really Haney created his own universe inside a comic book which didn't hesitate to have the Darknight Detective hang and bang with the likes of the quirky Metal Men, the daffy Plastic Man and the spooky Spectre. The "new" Green Arrow even debuted in the blessed pages of The Brave and the Bold.
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| (Unpublished Neal Adams cover for The Brave and the Bold #85) |
Others showed up but eventually a reader could detect that Haney had his favorites such as Sgt.Rock, the Black Canary, Deadman, and especially Wildcat. Was this comic book set on Earth-2? It was hard to tell as the guest-stars appeared as they did usually without mention of such continuity niceties. As a reader I didn't give a wet sock, because Haney partnered with artists like the Ross Andru and Mike Esposito team, Mike Sekowsky, and Bob Brown fashioned one-off stories that struck chords in the imagination. The great Neal Adams came of age in the pages of The Brave and the Bold and his status as one of the premiere Bat-artists rests to no small extent on what he produced. Nick Cardy joined forces with Haney as the book neared its hundredth issue, but more on that tomorrow as we get a glimpse of volume two.
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