With the Thing in the lead 1-0, it's time for Round 2!In the black corner... weighing in at 25 pages and starring Batman and Eclipso, written by Bob Haney and drawn by Win Mortimer, Brave and the Bold #64, Batman versus Eclipso!
And in the orange corner... weighing in at 19 pages and starring both the Thing and Iron Man, written by Mike Friedrich and drawn by Jim Starlin and Joe Sinnott, Marvel Feature #12, The Bite of the Blood Brothers!
Ready? DING DING DING!
The Stars
Batman by Bob Haney. Oh boy. It's a whole other character. Still lonely because Robin is out with the Titans, he's a hip, swinging cat with the soul of a lover. I don't know whether to make him score or lose points because of lingo like this:
That, by the way, is Marcia, a girl who's stolen Batman's heart and to whom he plans to reveal his secret identity... when he's ready to pop the question! Catwoman? Hiss. Vicki Vale? Vapid. Wonder Woman? This ain't Justice League Unlimited, bub. Marcia? Never heard of her, but she sounds like the woman for him! But you wouldn't have believed it from the way they met. Apparently drunk, she climbs atop a bridge and causes a ruckus. Batman has to teach her a stiff lesson:
That sets her straight, she tries to help out with the crime-fighting, but Bats frowns on that. A woman's place is in the home, not on the streets. It's love, and then she mysteriously leaves him, and then she's back, and she turns out to be a villain, which sends him into the depths of emo.
But he forgives her, don't worry. It's so crazy, it kinda works. Add some points for the many death-defying escapes, including one where he uses suction cups on his fingers, and where he dresses up as Cobra Commander to get into the villains' hideout, and you get +8 bat-points.The Thing is played much straighter, with lots of his usual moaning, knocking heads and shouting of "It's clobberin' time". A couple of good wrestling moves, some trademark Starlin awkward poses, nothing much to report. Oh yeah, a mountain falls on him and after a second, he busts out of it like nothing happened. Don't know about you, but I loves me a mountain that falls on a battle.
+5 points
The Guests
Batman and... Eclipso? But he's a villain! Yes... and no. His alter ego, Dr. Bruce Gordon, is a good guy and ultimately responsible for banishing Eclipso away before jumping onto a trampoline. You don't see much of him, but his mixing of Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon's names makes him a natural guest star. I'm guessing this is where the whole idea came from. +3 bat-points
The Thing is matched up with Iron Man, whose gotten some rather bad press lately. In fact, I'm going to say that Iron Man is Marvel's answer to Green Lantern. In the 80s, they made Tony Stark an alcoholic. Later, they retconned a DUI into Hal Jordan's origin story. GL went nuts with bringing order to a chaotic universe and turned against his fellow Green Lanterns. Just this year, Iron Man went nuts with registering every superhuman and turned against his fellow Avengers. Now both characters are ruined and I can't read even their earlier stories without interpreting their every word and action as those of a real jerk. 1970s Iron Man, a jerk?
Yep. Thanks for stopping to pick up a friend in distress. Maybe a friend you could use against the enemies you're trailing? Sheesh. Maybe he'd had a nip before take-off. Certainly explains why he later doesn't look where he's going and slams into Ben.
Had this been anybody but the Thing, they would be dead right now. Is it possible to lose your battle armor license? Tony doesn't fare too well, I'm afraid. Tries his hand at a fastball special, swinging Ben at an enemy, and yes, the mountain fall on him too. Enough to score +4 points.
The Villains
Batman squares off against three foes, really. One is the unseen organization called Cyclops. Everybody seems to be really afraid of the giant eyeball in their conference room, but no Cyclops personnel ever shows up. We'll see if Haney makes good on that promise later. Then, there's Eclipso, the demon side of Bruce Gordon. Despite getting cover credit, he's not very interesting, usually just standing around looking like Two-Face and shooting black light at people without any discernable effect. The real villain of the piece is the Queen Bee, a character totally unrelated to the Justice League villain. In fact, she's really Batman's true love, Marcia, who is using costumed B-Men who shoot daggers from their guns and are perpetrating a crime wave on Gotham City. Using her feminine wiles, she frames Batman to keep him out of the way, although she says she's being blackmailed by Cyclops into doing all this. Oh Batman, you're so naive to believe her! +6 bat-points
Though Thanos and Death are in the background looking at the action in the Cosmic Cube (just what I'd use the universe's second most powerful artifact to do), the real antagonists here are the Blood Brothers. These brutish twins are trying to kill the heroes on Thanos' behest. They're good at fighting, gloating and being really creepy once they're down.
And if being violent twin monsters wasn't enough to warrant their code name, the powers that be decided to add a little something:
They're GALACTIC VAMPIRES!!! Wow, thematic overkill. When they fail, Thanos pulls a Darkseid and seemingly destroys them (they return later). +5 pointsOdds vs. Ends
From Brave and the Bold:
In the opening scene, a goon attacks Martia... with a bow and arrow! Why? Silent but deadly? Guns fall out of fashion?
+2 bat-points
When I started reading this thing, between the surreal appearance of the bowman and Batman feeling up Marcia's beautiful torso, I thought for sure this was going to be revealed as a dream sequence. It was all too real. This is the first time Bob Haney has literally BLOWN MY MIND. +3 bat-points
Batman vs. Eclipso has an interesting thematic thruline. Eclipso is both the good guy and the bad guy, but so is everyone else. Marcia becomes a crime-fighter and later a villain. Batman is on the run from the cops and later disguises himself as the Cyclops leader. +3 bat-points
Bob Haney uses some really weird narration. For example, he ends a chapter on: "'Blue Blazes', as Metamorpho would say!" Between this, the Titans reference and the wildly mischaracterized Batman, it reinforces the idea that Haney only ever read his own comics. -1 bat-point
The villains' secret HQ is an ordinary building, but check it out with x-ray vision:
It's really well stocked! How they get those tanks and copters out of their is the real secret. +1 bat-point
From Marvel Feature:
The story seems like a follow-up to both Marvel Feature #11 and Iron Man #55. By itself, it's just a big and unsatisfying brawl. The characters all meet, they all fight, and at the end, Thanos zaps the Brothers out of existence. Blah. -3 points
Starlin's art is still inconsistent, with his brutes looking short rather than stocky, and the Brothers' guns looking different from frame to frame. -1 point
Farewells and Scoring
Because Eclipso's a bad guy and Bruce Gordon is completely ignored, Batman can't have his usual Friendly Farewell. But wait! He does!
As for the Thing's Unfriendly Farewell, we have this:
Sorry Benji, you're too heavy and my batteries have been drained. I bet the guy doesn't lend anyone his cell phone either. How crappy is that? +3 points
And the winner is... Eclipso over Iron Man, 26 to 13. Ouch! That armor could just not take being exposed to black light. Not unlike a geek in a white t-shirt. So it's all tied up folks, but still plenty of rounds to go!
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