Teen Titans Oct. 100-Page Spectacular!

...and SPECTACULAR it is, Friends! I was over at the Fantasy Shop on my Tuesday off and couldn't resist picking this one up- I have a pile of graphic novels I'm working on, but this looked like a lot of fun and I wasn't disappointed. It was a corny, campy, all-star retro romp through the DC Universe- the kind of book I was craving  :D

This one-shot presentation starts off with a bang, finding the Teen Titans in a cosmic crisis involving the abduction of Presisdent JFK by the Illustrians, kidnapped to lead them in battle against the misunderstood Violators, also inhabiting the double-sun planet of Illustro. Robin cooks up a plan to shake the brainwashed President out of his trance induced to fill the need for a leader to the Illustrians, and save the oppressed Violators. The way Bob Hanley tied up the ending with a  historic twist involving the assassination of JFK & the Cuban Missile Crisis was just great!

The short Doom Patrol Vs. Teen Titans was a campy conflict between Robin & the Teen Titans crashing Bruce Wayne's bachelor penthouse for a  party, much to the dismay of members of Doom Patrol rooming just below in Rita's (Elasti-Girl) apartment, in town for a crime fighter's conference. Things get rowdy when Supergirl shows up with some more members of the Junior Justice League, and Aqualad's bath overflows due to tampering by Mon-El's enemies, undetected in their Phantom Zone state of invisibility.

Bruce Wayne shows up unexpectedly to find the uninvited crowd leaving his wrecked penthouse! The innuendos & character references to the DC Universe of yesteryear make this a great little "what-if"...

In another tale from this spectacular one-shot, Batman & Robin's brawl with the Riddler & subsequent rehabilitation of his pretty, young protégé results in a falling out with Commissioner Gordon, the murder of Dick Grayson's aunt, a team up with Batman & the Riddler, and Robin's suicide... but not all is as it may seem!  Jay Stephens' simple pencilling is well done throughout this whole book, and here in Batman A-Go-Go he pays tribute to the character actors, sets, & props from the 60's Batman TV show with pleasing results. The coloring and simple, retro-graphic style remind me a lot of the art in both Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier and David Mazzacchelli's Batman: Year One  (story by Frank Miller).

An Hour With Hourman, Fourth World Wager, & Comic Book Clubhouse, round out the special with more Golden/Silver Age DC characters than I've ever seen in one comic book issue- I'd recommend you pick one up! In an era of comics that sometimes takes itself too seriously, I often just want to read something fun, and this book served that purpose.

Speaking of fun comics, check out MarvelGenesis.Com, a blog that looks at the Marvel Comics of the early 1960s, of particular interest to me as I've been reading some of that material in the past year, most recently some of the early Avengers stuff. GREAT blog!! Also see the tireless postings of SteveDoesComics blog if you are into comics nostalgia- really good!