(hijack)
Yikes! I just checked out the DC message boards because I never knew there was such a thing. Again, Yikes! I can go into obsessive-fan-mode as much as the next pasty-faced guy, but some of the people on there go beyond even the typical comic book store crowd!
(end hijack)
For Batman comics, I definitely recommend you get Batman: Year One in trade paperback format. It’s my favorite comic book, and I’m not even that big a fan of Batman. As you would expect, it’s a version of the Batman origin story – in this case, told partly from Commissioner Gordon’s perspective.
Given your handle, Sol, I’ll bet you ventured onto the Green Lantern board, hmm? That’s a horrid, horrid place. Most of the rest of the boards are enjoyable enough.
Actually, I went into the Batman board and turned back when I saw all the people vehemently protesting, over several pages, the new “Birds of Prey” series. Without having seen it. Now I’ve seen some really really horrible things done with some of my favorite licenses (e.g. the proposed script for the Hellblazer movie that moves it to the United States!) but I always thought it was implicit that movies/TV shows and their source material were two separate things and you can appreciate them independently.
And I’ve actually never read Green Lantern; is Solomon Grundy involved in that too? I thought he was just a Batman villain. In any case, my handle’s from the “Challenge of the Superfriends” version, in which he was the consummate bad-ass. I picked up a copy of some comic book recently, just because I saw Grundy on the cover, and was disappointed to see that they’ve turned him into just any other George Romero-esque zombie. I remembered him being so much cooler. “Solomon Grundy want pants too!”
By the way, Nick Cages collection went for over $1.6 million.
Action Comics #1 – $86,259 (Superman)
Detective Comics #38 – $121,000 or $132,250 (Robin)
All-Star Comics #3 – $45,000 (JLA)
He was originally a Green Lantern bad guy back in the 40’s.
And yes, people do get touchy about film & TV adaptations. OTOH, what has been known to happen in the past is that the comic is changed to bring it more in line with the TV show. This is not necessarily a bad business decision, but if you’re someone who enjoys the dynamic currently playing in Birds of Prey (the comic), then you can legitimately fear that in the coming months the things you enjoy about the comic will change.