It's a scorcher today!!

Yup, only three days till my screening of the summer's biggest movie, "The Dark Knight!" I can't wait - but the sad truth is that I am forced to (wait, that is!) Oh well, I will kill some time with a screening of "Hellboy 2" tomorrow. That's supposed to be very good.

Well, here is the comic that turned me from a "fan" to a "collector." After this issue, I deemed it UNACCEPTABLE to miss even a single issue of "Batman." Yup, you guessed it - it's DETECTIVE COMICS #529 from August 1983!!
This book had it all - wonderful artwork by Gentleman Gene Colan (still one of my top three pencilers), a story by one of my favorite Bat-writers of all time, Doug Moench, and best of all, it was the first part of a multi-part storyline. I got in on the ground floor.
Another part of the book that really caught my interest was this young kid, Jason Todd. You see, at some point in the 1980s, Dick Grayson, then the leader of the Teen Titans, quit being Robin. He was no longer living at Wayne Manor and was pretty much on his own in the world, so it didn't seem right for him to still be considered Batman's sidekick. They really didn't work together anymore. As a result, Dick became a new hero named Nightwing.

Anyway, it was quite apparent as I read this book that DC was grooming this new kid to take over as Robin. At this point, he wasn't a hero and Bruce Wayne was against the very idea, but it just seemed like it was going to happen. I didn't know Jason Todd's story or where he came from, but I sure wanted to know where he was going! It blew my mind that there just might be a new Robin! I have picked up a copy of both "Batman" and "Detective Comics" every month since that day, except for a brief period in time where the book was so bad under the guidance of Jim Starlin that I just couldn't handle it. Of course, I started up again when he left and then later got those books as back issues, so it ended up costing me extra money. Bad planning.

Another annoying thing from the time period I quit buying the book was that after 40 or 50 issues with Jason Todd as the new Robin, they started his story over from the beginning and made him a punk kid who grew up on the streets. He was busted trying to steal the wheels off the Batmobile and Batman ended up taking him in. It was so lame! Jason was always going against Batman's instructions and getting himself in trouble because he was such a hot head. When DC finally had the Joker kill him, I didn't even care. They had transformed him so much from the kid that originally drew me into the book that I was actually happy to see him go away.

I never understood why they changed him so much. It seemed ridiculous.

Next up, the issue with my first published "letter to the editor!" For now though, I must go swim!!