Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Review: Batman '66 #18

This issue has something different.  Two short stores.  The first story is written by Tom Peyer and is an effort drowned in the weaknesses of a typical season 2 episode. The Archer is back, to steal a computer, that he uses to form his own rival police force. The story is quite weak, featuring a weak villain, and weak artwork by Dave Bullock. This story earns a C-.

Next up is a Batgirl solo, written by Jeff Parker. The Bookworm makes an appropriate villain for librarian Barbara Gordon's alter ego.  Parker turned in an enjoyable script, and the archaic writings in the book the Bookworm is after is quite the in-joke. The only gripe about this story was, as with several other recent issues, treading too much into the supernatural, which does not suit the character of Batman in general, especially not the 66 version.  Bookworm uses the archaic spells in the book to transform his henchmen into giant silverfish to attack Batgirl. The art is by Richard Case, who does a great job, yet I can't help but wonder how Joelle Jones, who turned in some exceptional art for the Batgirl solo in issue 10, would have handled it. This story earns a B, averaging a C for the issue.

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