The Road to Episode 100 ends with...EPISODE 100!

(It's shocking. We know.)

Anyway, Andy and Mike devote this landmark episode, which will no doubt go down in podcasting history as, "A show where two guys in their fifties talk about Batman!", to talking about the three stories from Batman #47 from 1948. First up is a Catwoman story titled, "Fashions in Crime!" Catwoman finds that her fashion is no longer in style after her most recent stay in prison, so she does what any rational person would do...start a fashion magazine! The guys talk about the giant props, the ludicrous plot, and how this one would have made a great episode of the Adam West series. This is followed by "The Chain Gang Crimes!", where Batman goes undercover in chain gang to expose corruption! If that plot sounds like one that would be at home on an episode of a show produced by Stephen J. Cannell or an episode of the nineties animated series, well, Andy and Mike agree with you.

Finally, they discuss "The Origin of Batman!" While this story might not exactly be "overlooked" the guys felt like this one would be a great story to celebrate the 100th episode. This one has been reprinted numerous times and even adapted in animated form on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The story of Batman confronting the man that was responsible for the death of his parents is a powerful one and the guys tackle it from all sides. From the story itself to the slight retcon of how Martha died to Bill Finger's writing to how a scene in this story reminded Mike of an episode of Everybody Hates Chris.

Deciding to use "the whole Buffalo" with this comic, the guys also talk about the ads, which were mostly about shoes. The late forties was a weird time.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: Despite not knowing during the episode, Andy and Mike landed upon celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Batman television series!

The road to episode 100 continues with another Bat Flashback!

This particular flashback takes us back all the way to the second episode. Andy and Mike talked about issues 2 and 3 of The Untold Legend of the Batman. Topics include the origins of Robin, the Joker, Batgirl, and Two-Face. We also learn about how this version of Batman became friends with Jim Gordon and how Alfred came to live with Bruce and Dick. There's even some fun stuff about who was building the Batmobile back in the Bronze Age. For grins, Mike included some audio from the book-on-tape version of this story because, shockingly, there was a book-on-tape version of this story.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: The march towards episode 100 concludes with episode 100! Andy and Mike promise an episode that will break the Internet in half! Actually they don't, but it is a fun episode.

The road to Episode 100 continues by going ALL the way back to the very first episode of the show! Presented just as it was when it came out, without any cuts to make the guys look better!

Way back in 2017, Andy and Mike started The Overlooked Dark Knight with a mandate of talking about Batman comics that hardly anyone talks about. They promptly side stepped that mandate by starting things with an exploration of Batman's history. The Untold Legend of the Batman was a three-issue mini-series written by Len Wein with art (initially) by John Byrne and then (eventually) Jim Aparo. The point of the series was to take all of various tellings and re-tellings of Batman's origin, as well as the origins of his friends and foes and and present them as one, clean history.

Back when you could do such a thing.

After telling you why they started the show and discuss the pros and cons of doing an index podcast, the guys talk about the first issue of the series. That's all Mike remembers of the episode, so hopefully neither he nor Andy said anything that has since become problematic.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Episode 100 of The Overlooked Dark Knight three weeks away! To celebrate this milestone, Andy and Mike thought it might be fun to re-present some older audio that is, sadly, no longer available. It seemed like a fun idea that kills two birds with one stone. Older conversations that can't be found anywhere else can find a new home and you get some extra content.

It's a win-win. For everyone.

For this first Bat Flashback Mike dusted off an episode of Bailey's Batman Podcast that was originally released in October of 2012. This episode was the first time Andy and Mike got together to talk about Batman and they chose a big issue to talk about. Batman #400, which came out in July of 1986, was not only an anniversary issue that had Batman fighting a bunch of his villains with an all-star roster of artists, it was also the final issue before Denny O'Neil took over as editor. The guys go over the book from cover to cover...literally. They talk about the era and the story and how the idea of a villain breaking out all of Batman's foes from Arkham would come back again in the nineties.

Andy and Mike would like to apologize, in advance, that this thing was three hours long. They were much chattier back in the old days.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: The march towards episode 100 continues with a replay of the very first episode of The Overlooked Dark Knight!

This time out Andy and Mike go back to the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight well to talk about a story that came out in 1991 and was very much a done and one tale that later turned out to be one of the building blocks of the Knightfall Saga.

(To be fair, they've talked about Legends of the Dark Knight stories before, but that doesn't stop Mike from giving you a history of the title.)

Venom was a story that ran from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #16 to issue #20. Written by Denny O'Neil with art by the unlikely trio of Russell Braun, Trevor Von Eden, and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, this story is about a time in Batman's history when he become addicted to performance enhancing drugs. That's actually an oversimplification. There's a lot of moving parts to this story and it not only takes place in Gotham City but also on the island of Santa Prisca. It's part examination of addiction and part James Bond type story that includes a fun reference to shark repellent.

Andy and Mike talk about a variety of things during the course of the episode. From a brief synopsis from Mike to Batman becoming an addict to addiction in general to the two bad guys and how much the guys hated them to how wonky the last act of the story is. They also have a brief conversation about how this story ties in Knightfall, which leads them to talking about the Bat Crossovers in general. They even go through the house ads that were in the book as well and Mike reads two of the letters from later issues, one of which seems to presage Knightfall.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: In the lead up to episode 100, we are going to represent some audio from the past. First up will be the first time Andy and Mike talked about Batman in a podcast! From the archives of Bailey's Batman Podcast, the guys do a deep dive into Batman #400!

Andy and Mike are back and this time they are looking at stories from two different decades but written by the same writer. Doug Moench had two distinct runs on Batman. In the eighties he followed Gerry Conway on Dark Knight writing duties and continued the "Triangle Era before the Triangle Era and without triangles" storytelling style by working on both Batman and Detective Comics. He left the book after Batman #400, but came back to the Batman title in the early nineties just before Knightfall. He would stay on that title until No Mans Land and is one of the rare Bat writers to leave the character and then return.

First up on the docket is Batman #367 and Detective Comics #534, which has a pre-Crisis and even pre-Robin Jason Todd dressed in a fancy costume helping the Batman as he battles Poison Ivy. It's a standard Ivy plot for the time, but this doesn't stop these issues from being entertaining. The guys talk about how skimpy Poison Ivy's outfit is, the very seventies television/Hammer Horror feel to the story, the subplots, and the differences between Don Newton and Gene Colan's art.

Then they jump forward to 1995 and talk about Batman #525, which was an Underworld Unleased crossover issue. Not that you would be able to tell that as it has nearly nothing to do with the larger event going on. The story focuses on Mister Freeze and his Underworld Unleashed upgrade, but the bulk of the commentary is about Kelly Jones's art. Mike was not the biggest fan of Kelly's style back in 1995, but that has changed in a big way over the past three decades.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: Andy and Mike jump back to the early nineties and talk about Venom. Not the Spider-Man villain, but a storyline fromBatman: Legends of the Dark Knight that would later become important to the Knightfall storyline.

Andy and Mike are back with more Elseworlds fun with stories that take place in the 1930's and the late 1800's!

And boy was it a mixed bag.

First up is Batman: Dark Allegiances, written and drawn by Howard Chaykin. This story, the one set in the 1930's, has a self-made Bruce Wayne fighting against corrupt politicians and a racist secret society with a dash of fascism thrown in for good measure. For a story set in the early part of the 20th century and published a little over three decades ago there is a really "now" feeling to it that Andy and Mike make a meal of. They also talk about the two-fisted action, men in suits, women that know their own mind, and the guest appearance from Hitler. There is some contempoary policial talk during this section if you have a problem with such things, but when the sub-text in the story is text in real life it's hard to avoid.

Next up is Batman: Two Faces, which has the elevator pitch of "Batman meets The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde". Bruce Wayne is a wealthy socialite that has an interest in fighting crime. The death of a friend at the hands of Two-Face pushes Bruce to create a serum that makes him stronger, faster, and better and he becomes the Batman to bring Two-Face down. A new villain named The Joker complicates matters and a final face-off leads to a shocking revelation. Andy and Mike had issues with this one, but they wonder if maybe starting with a strong story made this one look worse by comparison.

The wrap things up with a conversation about the difference between Marvel's What If stories and DC's Elseworlds and the contemporary comic fan scene where they manage to not sound like two old men yelling at clouds.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: The guys take a look at two Doug Moench written Batman stories. One from the eighties and one from the nineties.

This time out Andy and Mike continue and finish their look at The Demon Trilogy by talking about The Bride of the Demon and The Birth of the Demon. Though, when you really think about it, it's not a trilogy in the traditional sense. It's kind of like saying that RoboCop 1 through 3 is a trilogy. It's three films (or graphic novels in the case) but it's not one big story by any stretch of the imagination.

Not that they compare these two stories to the second and third RoboCop films. At all.

Anyway, the guys start with The Bride of the Demon, but much like Andy's assessment of Batman Begins (there is an awful lot of begins before you get to the Batman) there is an awful lot of the Demon before you get to the Bride. They discuss the story's ecological themes and how that was right at home when this graphic novel was published in 1990, the fact that Tim Drake does not feel like Tim Drake in this story, how the story itself doesn't feel like a Batman story from 1990, the weird dynamic between Ra's Al Ghul's bride and Talia, how this doesn't really feel like a follow up to Son of the Demon, the many Neal Adams homages, and more.

Then they discuss Birth of the Demon, which they enjoyed more for a variety of reasons. Maybe it was the Denny O'Neil writing. Maybe it's the Norm Breyfogle artwork. Maybe it's because the origin Ra's is engaging and makes you root for him throughout the flashbacks. Maybe it is the part of the conversation where Andy and Mike realize that this story makes the events of Knightfall questionable. Maybe it's the idea of Richard E. Grant playing Ra's Al Ghul in a movie. Maybe it's because it just a great story. You decide.

It may not seem like it, but Andy and Mike do like feedback even if they are crap at getting to it. The most direct way to do this is to email them, which you can do by directing your thoughts to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. You can also leave a comment over on their Facebook page. You can also leave a comment at the new web home of the show, The Bailey Planet.

Next Time: More Elseworlds fun with a take on Jekyl and Hyde and a Howard Chaykin story from 30 years ago that has a really now feeling.