If you were to describe the cover of BATMAN #244 (DC Comics, Cover Date: September, 1972) to someone who's never seen it, based strictly on what it looks like...
...You could honestly say "A unconscious Batman lies out in the desert, stripped of his costume - but still wearing his mask" and that "still wearing his mask" part would have it sound ridiculous! I daresay it would conjure up images of "Batman surfing, costumed in full cape and cowl".
So much so that when I created a synopsis for this cover at GCD, I played it safe by simply writing: "Batman is left for dead in the desert by Ra's Al Ghul".
Not that I don't LOVE "Surfing Batman and Joker" (I do!), but this amazing cover image by the great Neal Adams is ANYTHING BUT THAT!
So, awesome is this cover, that I would put it in my Top Three - and would be hard pressed to name the other two... even in a Blog series like this that features covers that I like!
I didn't have this issue at a teen-reader. I had made the conscious (albeit reluctant) choice to give up comic books earlier in the year... because, in those less-enlightened days, you just couldn't get girls if you were still reading comics! ANY type of comics, not just "kids' comics"!
I still remember the day that fateful decision was made...I remember a lot of things, don't I? I had a girl over the house, and had carelessly left THIS COMIC out where it could be plainly seen!
With retroactive apologies to both Cecil Beard and Jack Manning, who produced a typically good story for the time (with an unexpectedly oddball ending, I might add), I awkwardly went through an almost sit-com-y series of moves to distract "Doreen" (There, I said her name - hope she never reads this!) from seeing this book containing their work!
I was successful in keeping both my reputation and relationship intact, but I solemnly vowed to never go through this again - so good bye, old friends... your sacrifice was for the greater good!
Comics were easier to give up than I thought, thanks in large part to the Hanna-Barbera license going to Charlton in 1970, and the slow, inexorable decline that had begun infecting Gold Key since 1969.
Where old favorites once looked like this...
...Sadly, they now looked like THIS!
THESE THINGS or GIRLS? Can ya BLAME ME?
Batman had NOT gone into such decline by 1972, quite to the contrary, producing such fine issues as these during the previous year...
Is that a "Legendary Super-Pickax" (Hi, Sergio!), or are you just "glad to see Batman"?
...But, with my typically bad timing, Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams were literally revolutionizing Batman at the time, and would come up with their best work in introducing Ra's Al Ghul...
...And I JUST MISSED IT!
Comics would start inching their way back into my life in 1980-1981, and would come full-roaring back before the end of the decade! We were on our way toward a new world where guys no longer felt self-conscious about reading comics. Heck, gals were now reading them too! Vive La (lack of) Difference!
If only this had happened sooner, when I could have kept buying them new at 15-35 cents each, instead of retroactively chasing those ghosts at dealer prices! (Groan!)
So there you have Cover Number Five: BATMAN #244 in all its (as the post title says) "Desert Awesomeness"! A cover so nice I bought it twice! My original mid-80s purchase...
...And another one to be autographed (on separate occasions - close to the turn of the century) by writer Denny O' Neil, artist Neal Adams, and interior story inker (later editor) Dick Giordano!
Denny O' Neil and Dick Giordano
Neal Adams
...Where will we go for Number SIX? Come back and find out!
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