A Midnight Mystery Monday with Alan Davis

As longtime followers of the blog know I'm a huge Alan Davis fan and one of my favourite series by him is EXCALIBUR which is both a blessing and a curse because while I have made quite a number of EXCALIBUR posts that is also my default setting so the occasional Alan Davis post that is not an EXCALIBUR post is far and low between. And yes, while doing the research for this post I came across a truckload of original Alan Davis EXCALIBUR artwork and I have re - stocked my archive in that regard.

Usually I don't reuse original artwork I have posted before but I went back and some of the artwork I used in the old posts is of far lower quality than what I would use now. Back then I didn't have the limits I have set for me Today but at the same time thanks to loosing all my old pictures plus having to work with a laptop and a program that is way different than what I am used to I can never be quite sure if the new stuff is up to my old standards. So I have decided to ignore most of the material from my old posts and kind of start at zero. That doesn't mean that you will see only old stuff in my new EXCALIBUR posts - thankfully I found a lot of material I didn't have access to previously - but there will be some things that my older readers will be familiar with. Another thing where I am never quite sure if the new pictures I post are as good as in my old posts are the coloured pages that go with the original art pages.

With EXCALIBUR thankfully a big chunk of the issues have been released in the form of Marvel's Epic Collections so there are scans of a decent quality available and I downsized some which I hope will work out in the end. But for the latter part of Alan Davis EXCALIBUR issues there were only scans in low quality available but what is important is the original artwork. Now the same goes for the DC Comics art in this post and we start off with Alan Davis issues of DETECTIVE COMICS which thankfully were reprinted in the LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT : ALAN DAVIS hardcover so I found decent scans. A few of them have a low quality but for the most part they are all right. By the way, if you take a closer look you see the lines that were used to letter the speech balloons by hand.

DETECTIVE COMICS 571 is a peculiar issue because the readers didn't know how prophetic the end of the story would turn out to be as Jason Todd met a similar fate just one year later with the difference that it would be the Joker instead of the Scarecrow who orchestrated Robin's demise. By the way, since we are already on the subject I have to mention the Mandela Effect connected to the A Death In The Family storyline which is that the Joker beat Robin to death with a crowbar.

Because while the clown prince of crime did beat Jason Todd within an inch of his life with a crowbar he was still alive when the Joker left and it was the bomb that the Joker left behind that ultimately killed Robin.

Another fantastic Batman book by Alan Davis was the graphic novel BATMAN : FULL CIRCLE which was a sequel to BATMAN : YEAR TWO but while the artwork by Alan Davis and the inks by Mark Farmer were short of mind blowing the colouring was suboptimal to say it in a diplomatic manner. Which is the reason why I could not find any decent scans of it.

The third and last Batman related series I must mention is BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS and regular blog visitors already know that it is one of my all time favourite comicbook series especially the parts illustrated by the late great Jim Aparo. Maybe it is just nostalgia but to this day the story where Batman tells his Justice League pals to stick it where the sun don't shine and goes to form his own hero club is one of my favourites.

And while the issues by Jim Aparo are my favourites - since he is also my number one Batman artist of all times - the issues by Alan Davis are a close second. Especially the later issues since he was still finding his own style at the beginning. For those who don't know how Alan Davis ended up drawing BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS I already mentioned it a few times but here is the short version. Back in the 80s DC Comics started experimenting with better paper - to bring these issues into comicbook shops - the so - called " Baxter paper "which they used on their six best selling titles : NEW TEEN TITANS , LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES , INFINITY INC, VIGILANTE, THE OMEGA MEN and also BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS.

Of course the better paper quality also meant a bigger price tag but to try and keep old readers aboard ( my how the times have changed ) the book was split in two with the cheaper version being sold at newsstands while they more expensive version was delivered to comic book shops.

In the case of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS the book changed its title to just THE OUTSIDERS that was still drawn by Jim Aparo and being printed on better paper quality going directly to the comicbook shops while the newly created title ADVENTURES OF THE OUTSIDERS being printed on the cheaper paper and being distributed to the newsstands all over America.

Nowadays DC Comics would have two books about the same super team happening at the same time but back then they didn't want to confuse the readers so in THE OUTSIDERS they made a jump ahead in the story that was drawn by Jim Aparo while ADVENTURES OF THE OUTSIDERS was drawn by Alan Davis and continued the story already in progress. Man, I used to have most of those issues by Jim Aparo - which were not easy to find let me tell you that - while I read most of the Alan Davis stories in the spanish version. Of course there were some issues that appeared in Ehapa Verlag's BATMAN TASCHENBUCH or the BATMAN SONDERHEFT but luckily the first part of this series was recently reprinted in hardcover.

So far only three have come out and I had them all but then had to sell them before coming to Spain where I bought them a second time. At first I was a bit bummed out that I had bought all three volumes because the most important stuff by Jim Aparo is in the first one so the other two are basically the bonus material but now that I can't buy any new comics I am glad I got the volumes with the Alan Davis issues. The collection stops right after Batman leaves the team which is where Alan Davis picks up speed and I don't know if DC will ever continue the series because there is still a lot of material that has not been reprinted which includes a lot of THE OUTSIDERS issues by Jim Aparo. You might think that by this time they would make all material by this seminal artist available for fans.

batarang