u/male_specimen

This volume is written by Bob Haney - or should I say Bob Zany, heh. Because this is the Haneyverse, a world where anything can happen! In the first couple of stories, his style threw me for a loop. But once I tuned into his particular frequency, I had a ton of fun with this volume. 

We get a good chunk of Batman team-ups from 1973 to 1976 here, as well as a couple stories from Super-Team Family. Heroes from all corners of the DC-verse is represented here: Plastic Man, Metal Men, Metamorpho, Man-Bat, Sgt. Rock, the Demon, and.. Kamandi? You’ll have to find out for yourself how that’s possible lol.

Things move at a breakneck speed here. This is the opposite of decompressed storytelling. I’m amazed how much action they manage to cram into 20 pages, all one-and-done stories.

Haney has a reputation for playing very fast and loose with DC continuity. But I don’t really care about that - just give me a good story, that’s much more important. And these are great stories, though they sometimes strain credibility. Like the time the Atom goes into a comatose Batman’s brain, and makes him move and knock out opponents by stepping on different parts of Batman’s brain.. Good lord, give me some of what Haney was smoking.

The artwork by Aparo is always solid, fluid and dynamic. The visual action manages to match Haney’s ADHD storytelling, no mean feat.

Be warned: This is 70s DC storytelling, some might prefer a more modern Batman. But if you’re into that, this volume is crazy fun. A very strong four stars out of five.

Here’s a list of DC omnis using the Norbrite stock paper, also called period-appropriate paper. They’ve been using this paper for most of their classic omni reprints lately. A lot of people like this paper, but it does makes for a thicker omni (pic 2) so you better have some shelf space ready :)

The recent reprints of New Teen Titans (pic 3) and Wonder Woman by Perez vol 2 however, does not use this paper but a thinner white paper. They used this thin paper for their classic reprints in 2025 before they switched to Norbrite earlier this year, for example the 2025 edition of House of Mystery Bronze Age 1 (pic 4).

Since the question comes up from time to time. (MOS = Man of Steel hardcovers)

I went into this volume with medium expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised. This is a very interesting bit of comics history.

This volume starts out with a few mid- to late silver age stories, some of which are team-ups with Jimmy Olsen. I had no idea these two sidekicks used to team up - and even had their own headquarters, the “Eyrie”! The stories have the usual silver age-y silly and contrived plots but I had fun with them.

The interesting part though, is the period from about ’68 to ’72, with Robin off for college. That was a tumultuous time in America, and it seeped into comics too, most famously with O’Neill and Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow run. But other DC comics raised societal issues as well, and so here we get Robin up against warring political factions of the college campus, crooked elections for the school administration, and visiting hippie communes. What a fascinating snapshot of the time period!

The stories themselves are decent enough (many of them by Mike Friedrich), but I find the real joy lies in how these comics reflected their times, and the interesting political questions raised. At one point for example Robin confronts some religious fanatics (“jesus freaks” lol) which leads to some interesting points on the (non-violent) teachings of Jesus versus some of the methods used by some of his more zealous followers… Wasn’t expecting that in my four-color reading.

I‘m rating this volume 4 stars out of 5 (Goodreads scale). While these are decent stories in and of themselves, I particularly recommend it for folks interested in comics history, and history in general.

What a beauty!