He was chemist Mark Desmond, whose acquisition of superhuman strength cost him his sanity and made him vulnerable to manipulation by his criminal brother Roland. The twist was that Blockbuster hated Batman, but loved Bruce Wayne, the man who’d saved his life as a child.
I appreciated the irony of the setup — Blockbuster being the one enemy whom Batman defeated not by donning his mask, but by taking it off.
By Batman 194, however, that gimmick had played itself out, and Blockbuster finally figured out that Bruce Wayne and the hated Batman were the same guy.
In the story penned by Fox, Blockbuster batters the Dynamic Duo senseless, but Batman is finally able to defeat the brute by disguising himself to resemble Solomon Grundy, Blockbuster’s fellow monster and friend.
“It was the cover that grabbed me in those ads, of course. That amazing Carmine Infantino-Murphy Anderson cover, with its impeccably rendered figures of Batman and Blockbuster, its dynamic action, and, most of all, its imaginative (and, for the time, daring) incorporation of the book’s title within the illustration,” recalled comics historian Alan Stewart, “My nine-year-old self had never seen anything like it. Unfortunately, the interior artwork — credited to Bob Kane,’ as were all Batman stories of that era that weren’t drawn by Infantino — wasn’t up to the standards set by the cover. At all.”
Actually, the disappointing interior art was by Chic Stone and Sheldon Moldoff. Many readers shared Stewart’s chagrin at finding Infantino covers wrapped around non-Infantino interiors.
“I can’t think of another comic book that I considered as huge of a letdown once I finally got hold of it and read it,” Stewart wrote.
Bob Doncaster wrote: Always hated it when a great cover had poor sub par art or story. Have to admit though it succeeded in its intent of selling the book.
ReplyDeleteCharles W. Fouquette wrote: I bought that issue off the stands in 1967. I never made the connection between Blockbuster and the Hulk however. Maybe because in a real confrontation, the Hulk would make Batman a black and gray smear on the sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Lenius said: Wow, yes, and I well remember my huge young disappointment at the great Infantino covers (especially those inked by the great Murphy Anderson), hiding just plain BAD interior art!
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