Nov. '86 - Batman # 401

This was the start of a new era for Batman. Denny O'Neil had returned to DC after a stay at Marvel and was the new editor on Batman. It wasn't a great start as this issue was not very good. It seemed like a very weak fill-in issue. The assistant editor wrote it which supports that idea. It's like they were just filling time until Batman: Year One could get started in #404. The art was good though, done by Trevor Von Eeden.

Doug Moench had been writing both Batman and Detective Comics for the three years prior to this and I thought he did a great job. He kept things fresh and interesting for three years. After reading this issue I was really worried about still buying Batman because it didn't come close to comparing to Moench's run.

This was the first crossover with the Legends mini-series. All of the crossovers dealt with the idea of heroes and whether it was good or bad to have them around. It was all a plan by Darkseid to eliminate heroes by turning the public against them. You got some interesting discussion from characters wondering if the existence of heroes caused regular people to not be heroic and whether heroes caused as much trouble as they tried to fix. Sort of sounds like what Marvel is doing now with Civil War but Marvel is doing it on a much bigger scale. Legends didn't have any lasting effects at DC. It was nothing like Crisis. It did lead into the new Justice League, the new Flash and Suicide Squad so for that I am thankful.

So this issue was just a regular adventure with Batman and Robin, nothing exciting, nothing new. In the letter column the writer talked about how much she wanted to use the Magpie character because of her potential (she had previously appeared in the Man of Steel miniseries). I just saw a crook with wacky hair who liked jewels. The fact that she's never appeared again that I can remember shows how much potential she had.