There's No Hope in Crime Alley - Detective Comics #457 (March, 1976)
Denny O'Neil and Dick Giordano - 12 pages
What more can really be said about this story? It is certainly one of the most iconic Batman tales of all-time. It is dramatic, exciting, touching and manages to end on a happy, even funny, note. O'Neil and Giordano were working in perfect harmony here. For me, the highlights are the terrific single page origin and the conversation between Batman and Leslie Thompkins. She manages to bring out the humanity in Bruce, and that is really the key to Batman for me. It's important for there to be a heart underneath the grim & gritty exterior. I was surprised that this one came in at 12 pages, but I am delighted to be able to include it here.
Denny O'Neil and Dick Giordano - 12 pages
What more can really be said about this story? It is certainly one of the most iconic Batman tales of all-time. It is dramatic, exciting, touching and manages to end on a happy, even funny, note. O'Neil and Giordano were working in perfect harmony here. For me, the highlights are the terrific single page origin and the conversation between Batman and Leslie Thompkins. She manages to bring out the humanity in Bruce, and that is really the key to Batman for me. It's important for there to be a heart underneath the grim & gritty exterior. I was surprised that this one came in at 12 pages, but I am delighted to be able to include it here. 
1 comment:
This is indeed possibly the best Batman story ever - the caveat being that you have to have read a lot of the preceding ones for it to really have the effect that it has.
I didn't read a lot of Batman in the following years, but kept myself informed one way or the other - and was pretty disappointed at the way he turned into the near-psycho that someone decided was more interesting...and was extremely displeased at the follow-up story many years later "There Is Still No Hope In Crime Alley", which even managed to turn Leslie Tompkins into a grim'n'gritty shadow of her former self.
cheers
B Smith
Post a Comment