NML Crossing, Episode 029 – Batman: Shadow of the Bat #79 (1998)
NML Crossing, Episode Twenty-Nine
Batman: Shadow of the Bat #79 (October, 1998)
“The Blank Generation, Part Two: A Favorable Wind”
Writer – Alan Grant
Pencils – Mark Buckingham
Inks – Wayne Faucher
Colors – Pam Rambo & Android Images
Letters – Bill Oakley
Edits – Gorfinkel & O’Neil
Cover Price: $1.99
Wrapping up our two-parter with a bang… well, a boom. The supervillain team-up didn’t go as smoothly as the Mad Hatter would’ve hoped… but, hope itself now (briefly) reigns among Bruce Wayne’s Junior-Entrepreneur Club!
But all ‘at is just preamble to the return of the raucous NMaiLbag!
NML Crossing on Youtube
Maybe it just speaks to the quality of the villains but this kind of fell flat for me. Maybe I was expecting too much from the first appearance of costumed villains post quake. It did feel like a one parter stretched into two parts.
The letters from people who had actually experienced the aftermath of earthquakes was interesting. I’ve never been through that kind of disaster and never really thought of how a story like this would be seen by someone who had lived this story. The hopefulness of people wanting to rebuild even after loosing everything in the Mexico City quake, hits home with the people of Gotham being excited by Bruce’s attempt to give them a hand in rebuilding Gotham.
As someone who did read all the Bat-books during this time, I don’t remember thinking about where this was going. It was just a change in the backdrop of where Batman’s adventures were taking place. Villains were still gonna villain and Batman was still gonna have to stop them. The post quake landscape just felt like the latest Bruce Wayne subplot happening around the rest of Batman’s story. It wasn’t until No Man’s Land proper that it felt like a major status quo change.
I was a traditionalist. Flap on the top, folded over and taped. But I did encounter a rather unique system at a shop in my local area. Back issues were bagged with the flap to the front with the price sticker sealing the bag instead of tape.
We have already established that my system was weird, but the #0 and #1,000,000 type issues were a hybrid in my storage system. The #0 issues were with the regular monthly series before the #1 issue, but the #1,000,000 issues were all together as one shots in a secluded part of my one shots box. The same went for Marvel’s #-1 “flashback” issues, and Amalgam issues. All together segregated from the alphabetical section in the one shots box.
But now I need to ask something else. What direction do you store your books in? By this I mean is #1 at the front of the box with #s 2, 3, 4 …….. behind it, or is #1 at the back of the box with #s 2, 3, 4 ……… in front of it. My #1 was always at the back of the box and my run moved forward in the box. It made it easier to put the newest issue at the front.