Signed Copies of The DC Encyclopedia by Nick Jones (and a Trip Down Mixmag Memory Lane)

Yesterday on my way up to the annual London Book Fair I popped into the Forbidden Planet megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue to sign copies of my new book The DC Encyclopedia (cowritten with Melanie Scott, Matt Manning, Dan Brooks and Scott Beatty, and coedited by Martin Eden, my old friend and former Titan colleague who I got to hang out with at the fair, along with another old mate, Forbidden Planet's Rob Pontefract). Here I am looking rather proud posing with the signed copies:

Unless there's been a sudden rush of sales overnight there should still be copies available in store, so if you fancy a signed one, you know where to go (and thank you to the lovely staff at Forbidden Planet for looking after me). 

And if you're in that vicinity and happen to be passing Waterstones in Piccadilly, you may also find some books signed by me in that fine establishment, as on my way past I signed copies of The DC Encyclopedia, DC Cinematic Universe and Marvel Arms and Armour (and thanks to the Waterstones staff too):

One other thing: as usual on my way down the Hammersmith Road en route to Kensington Olympia, where the London Book Fair is held (until next year, when it'll be moving to the Excel centre), I glanced up wistfully at a nondescript corner building on the North End Road, just opposite Olympia. In fact this time I even took a picture:

It's an unremarkable building to most folk, but I still remember walking up its stairs over 30 years ago to the offices above what was back then a Chinese herbalist's and meeting Mixmag's editor and deputy editor, David Davies and the late, much-missed Dom Phillips, for the first time (if I recall correctly they were sending me off to interview D:Ream). I spent a few years thereafter in and out of that building writing for and editing various sections of Mixmag (before we all moved to Brook Mews North near Lancaster Gate) and can still vividly recall being hunched over an old floppy disk Mac, bashing away at the keyboard while music blared out of the windows and various degrees of chaos erupted all around me. There really should be a blue plaque on the place.

(Mostly) 80s Comics Cavalcade: Brighton Comic Mart Bargain Bonanza

Back in July, over successive days one weekend, there were two distinct but related comic marts, both titled Comics And Beer, in two different Brighton pubs. One was in a couple of smallish rooms upstairs at the Haus on the Hill and consisted of boxes and piles of organiser The Reaper's (no, me either) own wares; the other was in a bigger area at the back of the North Laine Brewhouse and consisted of The Reaper's wares plus a selection of other dealers. I went to both and ended up with a sizeable pile of comics, most of them hailing from the 1980s, most for either 20p or 50p each. It was brilliant. Here's what I got.

A load of '80s indie comics: Mike Grell's Starslayer (Pacific Comics/First Comics, 1982 onwards), including the second issue, which features the first appearance of Dave Stevens' the Rocketeer (in a back-up strip); Mark Evanier's DNAgents (Eclipse Comics, 1983 on); Mike Grell's Jon Sable (First, 1983); Neal Adams' Ms. Mystic (Pacific, 1982); Bill Willingham's Elementals (Comico, 1985); and Mike Baron's Badger, including the Hexbreaker graphic novel (First, 1988).

Some Marvel and Epic stuff: Simon Furman and Bryan Hitch's Death's Head #1 (1988); Alan Davis's ClanDestine #1 (1994); and Steve Englehart and Steve Leialoha's Coyote #1–5 (plus #14).

A run of Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen's Omega Men (DC Comics, 1983 on), missing #1 (which I'd bought not long before anyway for 50p in Dave's Comics' bargain dump bins) and #3 (first appearance of Lobo, so no wonder I couldn't find it in the 20p boxes).

Some random DCs: Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway's All-Star Squadron #1 and 13 (1981 on); Legion of Super-Heroes #259 (in which Superboy buggers off and lets the Legion have their own title at last) and 282 (1980/1981); Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's Night Force #1 (1982); DC Comics Presents #36 (1981); Justice League of America Annual #1 (1983); Superman Special #1 (1983); and the New Teen Titans Drug Awareness Special (1983).

A bunch of Baxter-paper DCs: Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland's Camelot 3000 (1982–1985); J. M. DeMatteis and Paris Cullins' Forever People (1988); and a few issues of Vigilante (1983 on).

More Baxter DCs, plus a couple of 1990s DCs: Pete Milligan, Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon's Skreemer (1989); Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor Von Eeden's Thriller (1983–1984 – I'd previously bagged #1 in Dave's dump bins); Don McGregor and Gene Colan's Nathaniel Dusk (1984–1985); Mark Waid and Howard Porter's Underworld Unleashed #1 (1995); and Batman: KnightGallery (1995), an Elseworlds one-shot by Doug Moench and lots of different artists.

A couple of Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo New 52 Batmans I was missing, and a run of Tom King et al Rebirth Batmans, mainly the rather nice Tim Sale cover variants.

And lastly, a run of #1–20 of Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas and Michael Bair's Young All-Stars (1987 on).

One of the dealers at the Sunday mart was the aforementioned Dave's Comics, whose bargain bins frequently produce fine 50p wares. Some of those I showcased in my previous 80s Comics Cavalcade post, but more recently I bagged the above. I was particularly pleased with the Mark Evanier/Steve Rude Mister Miracle Special (DC, 1987) and the complete Peacemaker miniseries (DC, 1988) by Paul Kupperberg and Tod Smith.

So those were my Bighton comic mart (and shop) bargains. Hmm. I should probably post something about some of my '80s comics eBay wins at some point as well, shouldn't I? Justice League of America and All-Star Squadron anyone...?

80s Comics Cavalcade Back Issue Bonanza: Captain America, New Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes and More

I've documented most of the early–mid 1980s Gerry Conway/Doug Moench/Don Newton/Gene Colan et al Batman and Detective Comics, er, comics I've collected – in fact have pretty much finished collecting; just the elusive (and pricey) Batman #386 from Moench's run left to secure – since the start of the year, but I've been picking up lots of other 1980s comics besides – not to mention turning up ones I'd forgotten I even had...

Somewhere, sometime – no idea where or when but it must have been a good few years before this latest collecting frenzy – I'd somehow conspired to collect (or rather re-collect; I originally had them back in the 1980s) a good number of J. M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck's Captain America comics (plus the preceding short stint by Roger Stern and John Byrne). With my fervour for '80s comics reinflamed this year, it seemed the right time to collect the post-Zeck DeMatteis Caps as well, which I duly did at a London comic mart, with a couple of stray issues from Dave's Comics in Brighton.

To those I added a run of late-1980s Mark Gruenwald/Kieron Dwyer Caps, which I came across at the Lewes Book Fair. I've not read those ones before, so I'm interested to find out what they're like.

Something I have read before, in large part, is George Perez and Marv Wolfman's New Teen Titans, and again in Brighton, in the basement of the ramshackle, aptly-named Raining Books (previously Rainbow Books) on Trafalgar Street I found a stack of cheap copies from early in the run. Courtesy of Dave's Comics I filled in some gaps, and then on eBay I secured a run of issues #3–15...

...plus key issues DC Comics Presents #26 – which has a 16-page New Teen Titans insert, the first appearance of the team – and Tales of the Teen Titans #44, which is the first appearance of former Robin, Dick Grayson, as Nightwing (long one of my favourite comics characters).

Then in Scorch Comics in Eastbourne, for just a tenner, I scored the first issue of the series:

(plus some Mike W. Barr/Alan Davis Detectives, and a couple of post-Moench Batman issues), meaning I now have a near-complete run of #1–50 (missing just #2, the pricey first appearance of Deathstroke).

Once again from Dave's in Brighton, I bought a run of Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen's Legion of Super-Heroes – some from the 50p dump bins, some from the general back issue bins – including the celebrated "Great Darkness Saga" – plus most of the Legends-tie-in Cosmic Boy miniseries...

...the sole remaining issue of which I subsequently picked up in 30th Century Comics in Putney, along with the first four Legion Annuals. While I was there, I also bought the issues I was missing from Steve Engelhart and Joe Staton's Millennium miniseries, some of which I'd already found in those aforementioned Dave's Comics 50p dump bins....

....alongside all manner of other 50p comics: Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor Von Eeden's Thriller #1; Cary Bates, Gene Colan and Klaus Janson's Silverblade #1...

...all four issues of Max Collins and Terry Beatty's Wild Dog miniseries; the first three issues of Jim Starlin and Berni Brighton's The Weird miniseries...

Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen's Omega Men #1; Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo's Outsiders #1; Gerard Jones and Mike Parobeck's El Diablo #1; plus a late-1990s JLA in Crisis Secret Files and Origins.

Further afield, in the Cartoon Shop in Basildon, I came across a cheap set of the first 13 issues of Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway's Infinity, Inc...

...which was handy, because I've also been collecting the "Ultra War" storyline from Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway's All-Star Squadron, which features the first appearance of Infinity, Inc.

And, inevitably, there have been more issues of Batman and Detective, too – from Mega City Comics (Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola's Gotham by Gaslight, the first Elseworlds title), 30th Century Comics (Batman #307, the first appearance of Lucius Fox), Gosh! Comics (Detective #575, the first part of "Batman: Year Two", which completes my run of Barr/Davis Detectives), Dave's Comics, and Scorch Comics (where I also scored DC's two-issue Christmas with the Super-Heroes, the second issue of which features stories by Paul Chadwick, Eric Shanower and Colleen Doran) – not least, and returning to my earlier comment about turning up comics I'd forgotten I had, these:

Batman #408–410 by Max Allan Collins, Chris Warner, Ross Andru and Dave Cockrum (in which, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, Jason Todd, the second Robin, is reimagined as a juvenile delinquent rather than a circus acrobat – comics, eh?), which I came across in the loft whilst hunting for something else, and which I have no idea where (or when) they came from. A turn up for the (comic) books indeed.

80s Comics Cavalcade: Collecting Conway and Moench Batman and Detective Back Issues

So much for maintaining my blogging momentum this year: this is the first post I've managed since I declared my intention to blog more frequently two bloody months ago. I've been pecking away at a prospective post about Batman comics, but it just wasn't coming together, so rather than persist in fruitlessly puffing at the flickering flame of what I laughingly call my muse, I thought I'd simply post a bunch of pictures of the early–mid-1980s Batman and Detective Comics I've been collecting since the start of the year, and write whatever comes into my head about them.

Comprising consecutive runs by writers Gerry Conway (Detective #497–526/Batman #337–359, 1980–83) and Doug Moench (Batman #360–400/Detective #527–566, 1983–86), a lot of these issues I had and read as a kid, around the age of twelve or thirteen or so, but subsequently flogged (probably to long-lost London back issue specialists LTS/Paradise Alley to fund the purchase of import electro and hip hop 12"s from long-lost London record shop Groove Records).

Boasting terrific art by Don Newton, Gene Colan and others (with some fab Jim Aparo covers thrown in for good measure), this era of Batman is notable for the way Batman and Detective became increasingly interlinked, with stories weaving back and forth between the two titles so that they effectively became one fortnightly series. It also marked the arrival of a more sophisticated style of storytelling, with more defined characterisation and multiple ongoing subplots which would simmer away until exploding into lead stories – all of which the Gotham Calling blog has identified as the 'Marvelization' of Batman.

That's besides more prosaic – but of course of vital interest to superhero comics collectors – fictional events as the debuts of Jason Todd (although I haven't yet got my hands on the issue with his first appearance in it; I'm still missing the odd issue here and there), Killer Croc and Nocturna (all characters I have a lot of time for), the return of Bruce Wayne/Batman to Wayne Manor (after an extended stint living in the penthouse of – and Caped Crusadering out of a Batcave beneath – the Wayne Foundation building), and Batman briefly becoming a vampire!

I've been picking up issues of Batman and Detective in a handful of comic shops – my local, Dave's in Brighton, as well as Uncanny Comics in Worthing and 30th Century Comics in Putney – plus on a visit to the bimonthly London Comic Mart at the Royal National Hotel near Russell Square, which I hadn't been to in over a decade (the comic mart I mean; I've been to a fair number of book fairs at the same venue in the interim).

Somewhere else I found myself for the first time in probably a dozen years was Mega City Comics in Camden. I made the journey there on the off chance, not really expecting to find anything, only to discover that they'd just got in a collection of precisely the era of Batman and Detective I was after – the sort of serendipitous occurrence that us collectors can usually only dream of, even in the internet age.

Speaking of which, I've been picking up issues on eBay as well – a run of ten Detectives from one seller, half a dozen Detectives from another, random issues of Batman and Detective here and there.

Although this is all ostensibly an exercise in nostalgia, I am intrigued to find out if these stories are as good, as contemporary-seeming, as I half-remember and half-suspect (I've only read/re-read up to the end of 1981 so far, so the best stuff is yet to come). Certainly Gene Colan's appositely shadowy and swirling art is as excellent and evocative as I remember, and Don Newton's is even better than I recall, owing an obvious debt to Bernie Wrightson and Neal Adams but still distinctive and aesthetically inviting.

And then there are all the additional pleasures of reading these stories in their original floppy format (rather than in collections or online): comics adverts for Hostess Twinkies (and Fruit Pies and Cupcakes) and Bubble Yum; other adverts for plastic toy soldiers and Sea-Monkeys and bodybuilding courses and magic tricks and pranks and Grit newspaper and the Olympic Sales Club ("Prizes for cash") and NBC's Super Star Saturday cartoon marathons (oh how I wished we had those in the UK back then) and comic book back issues; letters pages; a very modern (employing narrative captions rather than thought bubbles) Conway-written Robin back-up strip circa 1981; house ads for other DC comics; and from 1983 onwards, DC Managing Editor Dick Giordano's Meanwhile... columns.

Collecting – or in many cases re-collecting – these comics has been a lot of fun, and reading them has been just as enjoyable so far. And hopefully, when I get a little further along in my reading, I'll find time to write about them again.

80s Comics Cavalcade: Detective Comics #526; the Best Batman Comic Ever?

In my previous 80s Comics Cavalcade post I mentioned how Doug Moench and Gene Colan's 1983–84 stint on Detective Comics and Batman made a big impression on 13–14 year-old me. But what I didn't mention was that it was probably the issue just preceding Moench's run that made the biggest impression of all: Detective Comics #526, written by Gerry Conway, art by Don Newton and Alfred Alcala.

I would have been on the cusp of 13 when this issue was published in 1983; cover-dated May, it was published in the US on 24 February, so I reckon it would have made its way over to British newsagents by early March – newsagents being where I bought the majority of my American comics at that point (I wouldn't find my way to any of London's comic shops for another year or so). I even know which newsagent I bought it in: a corner shop (long since converted to residential use) opposite Beckenham Rec on Croydon Road, south London, which I'd walk the 20 minutes to from my house at least once a week to see what new American comics might have arrived.

So vivid is my memory of buying this issue that I can pretty much picture it on the right-hand side of the bottom shelf, where the US comics were kept, its gold-stamped cover calling to me... although the copy seen here isn't actually the one I bought back then: my original copy is long gone, sold, I expect, to central London back-issue specialists LTS/Paradise Alley off Denmark Street, where a lot of my comics ended up (flogged off to feed a subsequent habit: the acquisition of import electro/hip hop 12"s from Groove Records on Greek Street). This particular copy is a more recent purchase, nabbed by chance on a flying visit to Uncanny Comics in Worthing.

Reading it again over 35 years on from first exposure, I experienced a rush of nostalgia, pages and panels so familiar to me that I can only conclude that teenage me must have read and reread the comic countless times. It's easy to see why. A 68-page square-bound anniversary issue, boasting a 56-page story (plus ads, plus a celebratory Bob Kane pin-up page), Detective #526 features all of Batman's recurring villains teaming up to take him down – an obvious conceit on reflection but one which I'd not come across before (and have rarely seen since).

But I was most struck by how the smaller character moments have stayed with me all these years: the way Conway and co. deftly demonstrate Two-Face's mercurial nature by having him let Talia al Ghul escape after his scarred coin lands good side up; Vicki Vale, working late, having to forcefully fend off the unwanted amorous advances of a sleazy colleague; Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) revealing to a shocked Dick Grayson that she's worked out that he and Bruce Wayne are Batman and Robin; various bizarre villains (some of whom I would have recognised at the time, others I wouldn't; this wouldn't have been the first Batman comic I read, but it was an early one) unused to working together, blundering into one another and taking each other off the field.

I also see things now I didn't see then, notably Conway's refreshing characterisation of Batman as a relatively balanced individual; a crime-fighter more than a crusader; an adventurer rather than an avenger: a Batman who quips, as opposed to a Batman Who Laughs. As Batman, Talia and Catwoman race to their cars, Conway's narration notes: "Three grins light three grim faces. This is what they love: in a way, it's what they live for. The chase. The hunt. The thrill of facing the unknown."

Such is the nature of nostalgia that we believe the things we loved as kids – comics, books, TV shows, films, toys – were better than the things that came later, irrespective of whether they were or not, and no doubt that's the case here too. Even so, reading Detective #526 again at this remove, I think there's more going on here. I've read a lot of brilliant Batman stories over the years – The Dark Knight Returns, Year One, too many others to name – but I struggle to think of a single issue – as in a stand-alone, effectively done-in-one instalment – as good as this one. The best Batman comic ever? That's a bold (maybe even a brave and a bold) claim. But Detective Comics #526 is hard to beat.