DC's Hidden Blockbuster: Brave and the Bold

Tom King and Mitch Gerads stun with a "Batman/Joker: Year One", and you'll regret missing it.

Folks, I need you to know something, and I need you to know it today.

DC went and did a thing pretty close to what I’ve been advocating for, and anchored an anthology book with something insane.

The company is somewhat quietly dropping a Batman/Joker Year One story from Tom King and Mitch Gerads in the launch issue of Batman: Brave and the Bold. The title is on Final Order Cut-Off today, and I don’t think enough retailers are talking about what this book contains.

King and Gerads have been knocking things out of the park for years now. They kicked things off with the stellar Sheriff of Babylon - a story that took place from three different, but reasonable mindsets, set in the Middle East. It was an absolute stunner that featured one of my favourite single issues of that year, where two folks just sit and get progressively more drunk at the side of a pool. That might seem mundane, but I assure you, it is anything but. Just pure humanity on display for so many pages.

Afterwards, they tackled Mister Miracle, a book that has become a perennial seller in this industry, which is one hell of a feat considering the book is about Mister Miracle and his wife guy/sad dad anxiety.

The pair then brought in Evan “Doc” Shaner in to throuple-up on Strange Adventures, a book about Adam Strange and war crimes. It also hit far better than pretty much any other Adam Strange project has, and has become another evergreen product.

Now, after kicking off the One Bad Day series of comics with a Riddler tale, the pair are continuing their rock solid collaboration with a concept that would generate money on its own. Whatever juice they have to bring to lesser known characters and concepts is not required for this to become something retailers can easily put into the hands of readers. Batman/Joker: Year One sells itself.

I don’t want to spoil much about the story, but it is everything you’d want from the concept, and this team. The pair build up tension in a slow, methodical way while grounding that tension in ground level emotion. We’re not worried about a super-level event, we’re worried about the well being of a human. The story also gets a full 24 pages to play out, before the book goes into the other stories featured in this anthology.

I feel like DC is taking a risk putting a story of this marketability inside this anthology, though I will say it is a risk I am glad they are taking. Using a marquee creative team and story to help deliver a wider range of content to the masses is a great idea. In the rest of the book, you get a full length Stormwatch story from Ed Brisson and Jeff Stokes, a full length Superman tale from Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire) and Javier Rodríguez (from the mind melting recent Defenders run), and the return of the popular Batman: Black and White series with a story by Dan Mora.

This is prime content all around, delivered with an incredibly solid anchor that people will be clamouring to read. If the company can keep this up past the initial four part run that King and Gerads are launching the series with, we could be in for quite the treat each and every month, for a long time to come.

Thanks for reading. I promise I’ll get to the BookScan numbers soon enough, I just read the retailer preview of this issue, and absolutely had to let people know they had to order it.

Talk with you soon.

-B.