If you're even vaguely familiar with Batman lore I'd wager the cover to Detective Comics #457 needs no introduction:
Nor do I need to relate the relevance of There Is No Hope In Crime Alley to Batman continuity other than to say Leslie Thompkins made surprisingly few subsequent appearances in Batman pre-Crisis but has a rather more prominent profile post-Crisis.
I'm note sure where I first read this story - probably in Detective Comics #457, but it was possibly in Batman Album #40:
The impact of the original cover is diminished in this quadrant of covers, but not so the full-size splash page which has an impact all its own in black and white:
Anyway, it was my fondness for the original cover which prompted me to seek out the French edition of this story:
Batman Poche #6 ("Batman Pocket") is dated April-May 1977, a year or more before Batman Album #40, and this edition does justice to the cover image with a black bleed and minimal intrusion by trade dress. Indeed the Batman title logo is both bolder and less intrusive than the original Detective Comics masthead which blocked the ears, and the cover design is much less cluttered by the DC type and banners and logos.
The GCD lists two other international editions of this cover c.1977 - Swedish and Norwegian - and interestingly they both opt for black and white versions of the cover which are also appealing, but the French version is the best to my eye.
Batman Poche #6 is also interesting in that it contains another classic Batman tale The First Batman:
I like the colours on this page - even the incorrectly coloured Robin costume - and the overall palette is more appealing to me than the brown version published on the cover of Planet Comics' Batman Album #32:
However, Batman Poche #6 is only partially printed in colour. Each two-page spread alternates between a colour and a black and white printing. Such machinations, not uncommon in certain Murray editions, have always irritated me - they come off as cheap and desperate - which is a shame as the French colour pages are so appealing.
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1 comment:
Re: “Each two-page spread alternates between a colour and a black and white printing.”
As the printing process involves printing multiple pages at a time sometimes there is an availability of a second ‘spot’ colour or ‘full colour’ on certain plates. When the printed pages are collated, trimmed, and bound some of those pages will fall in between the ‘mono’ printed pages.
Here is a pretend example of a printer’s imposition using a 16-page layout –
On one side of the sheet pages 1, 16, 3, 14, 5, 12, 7, and 10 are printed in colour.
On the other (reverse) side of the sheet pages 2, 15, 4, 13, 6, 11, 8, and 9 are printed mono.
Thus, pp 1 and 16 are colour, the middle spread of pp 8 and 9 are mono, all left-hand pages are mono, and all right-hand pages (except pp9) are colour.
I do agree though. Such jobs look butt-ugly!
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