One of the neat experiments DC has been doing on the digital side of things is reviving the title Legends Of The Dark Knight, and running the stories as weekly installments. And they’re bringing back one of their oldest heroes as well for the next (printed) issue: Slam Bradley.
Legends Of The Dark Knight started in 1989. The idea was to be a higher-end Batman comic, featuring more serious and grounded stories, sometimes outside continuity, and it ran until 2007. The arcs tended to feature stories that either wouldn’t fit in ’90s and ’00s Batman books, or were aimed at trades. The results were stories like Going Sane and Venom, as well as retellings and updates of classic Batman stories. The book has returned in digital form in largely the same method: Short stories about Batman varying from the somewhat comedic (a recent arc featured Batman dealing with the production of a Batman movie in Gotham) to the series.
Which brings us to the latest issue, written by Joshua Hale Fialkov with Phil Hester and Eric Gapstur on art, and the return of a character who predates Batman by a couple of years, Slam Bradley. Slam vanished in 1949, forced out of his own book Detective Comics by Batman, reappeared in the ’80s and has been featured off and on in books, most recently as the grandpa of Helena Kyle.
This is, as far as we’re aware, Slam’s first appearance in the New 52, and in many ways, he’s still the made-of-iron P.I., but he’s up against… well, Batman, who thinks he’s guilty of a murder. How’s that work out for him? Let’s find out…
