Norm Breyfogle (1960–2018)

It's 1998 and the Batman writers have noticed The X-Files is really popular. So Bats gets abducted while out for a drive and spends the rest of the book trying to work out if aliens are real.

Alan Grant never quite squares that with the fact Batman has met tons of aliens (not least Superman), but I don't care: for this story, Batman needs to be a sceptic and so a sceptic he will be. The DC Comics universe has always been pretty plastic anyway.

I love it when Batman gets shoved into some faddy show more new format, whether it's Predator crossovers, kung fu action, or UFO conspiracy thrillers. There's something endlessly appealing about grumpy old Batman, whose ambition is to take down crime in Gotham City, getting dragged into these gimmicky fun adventures against his will. You wanna be a hero? Well you're gonna have to have some fun, boy!

And in the 90s that meant getting a probe up your bum (fun fact: reports of alien abductees being anally probed only became common after colonoscopies were introduced in the 1960s). This was the same year Lara Croft went to Area 51 and climbed aboard an alien spaceship. As well as The X-Files there was the famous 'alien autopsy' video in 1995, Men in Black in 1997, and any number of indulgent documentaries. (The UFO fever seems to have petered out after 9/11 gave the conspiracy theorists something else to worry about – though not before the 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult tragically committed group suicide in the belief their souls would board a passing alien spacecraft.)

Anyway, there were a lot of people getting very worried about this stuff in 1998. As Batman proudly tells Alfred: "According to what I've accessed on the internet [sic] the UFO phenomenon appears to have been with us for virtually all recorded history!" Presumably he also found out a lot about the Grateful Dead and some pretty lo-res pornography. (I hope he doesn't still try and solve all threats to Gotham by just googling them...)

But I love it. I love the po-faced, zeitgeist-riding madness of it. I love it slightly less when it goes a bit psychedelic around the midway point and a floating hippie begins throwing illusory Bruce Lees at the Caped Crusader, but it did remind me of Batman: Arkham City – and I love that. show less

I'll get a few negatives out of the way. The art style isn't nearly as impressive as Hush, Court of Owls or a few of the other Batman Graphic Novels I've been reading. The writing is pretty campy and classic, lots of stuff that would fit right in with the campy 1960s Batman, so if you're not down wit that, I don't blame you.

With that said, this was really compelling. The tension keeps going, and Batman's inner monologue makes you want him to go take a 3 month nap and immediate medical show more attention. Bane's plan really wears Batman down, and you along with him. The end 20 pages are just incredible, iconic and classic for a reason. I would say the overall structure is really strong and easy to follow. There's a reason they adapted this for Dark Knight Rises, Bane is a fun, intimidating villain. show less

Batman: Birth of the Demon reprints Mike W. Barr and Dennis O'Neil's trilogy of Ra's al Ghul stories with art by Jerry Bingham, Tom and Eva Grindberg, and Norm Breyfogle. DC originally published the stories as Son of the Demon, Bride of the Demon, and Birth of the Demon. DC reprinted this collection to serve as a prequel to Grant Morrison's Batman & Son, though the connection is somewhat loose. Ra's al Ghul links all three, though they are more self-contained than the collection would show more indicate to the reader.
Mike Barr's Son of the Demon is the strongest story in this collection, featuring Batman's marriage to Talia al Ghul and partnership with Ra's to fight a common enemy. Jerry Bingham's art perfectly matches the tone of the story and his original cover to the paperback collection, included at the end of this volume, looks like the poster to a "James Bond" film as befits the Barr's plot. In hindsight, certain elements meant to set the story in the real world date it, such as the U.S.S.R. and Mikhail Gorbachev, but they are brief and work for the narrative. Barr's Bride of the Demon is a close second, with a story pitting Batman and al Ghul against each other alongside an underlying ecological plot, timely in the early 1990s and still relevant in the 2010s. Like the previous story, this one recalls Ian Fleming's "James Bond." Tom and Eva Grindberg have their own artistic style, but they maintain a basic continuity with Bingham so that these two stories work well together. If the first and second stories can be read as two parts of a larger thematic whole, then Dennis O'Neil's Birth of the Demon stands alone, primarily focusing on Ra's al Ghul's backstory. Norm Breyfogle's artwork, though gorgeous, does not fit this tone of this collection. O'Neil, an expert Batman storyteller, evokes Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter" series more than Ian Fleming.
DC's reissue of these stories as a single volume features cover art by Andy Kubert. The modern style does not match the tone of the interior stories or artwork, though. Finally, this edition contains a printing error: the climax of Son of the Demon is missing one page; the printer substituted a page from Bride of the Demon in its place. Fans of Batman or Ra's al Ghul will find plenty to enjoy here, but the arbitrary nature of this collection means that the stories are a bit disjointed at times since the reader consumes them as one. show less

The follow up to Batman: The Abduction, but the joke's either run out or Alan Grant just isn't having as much fun with it. Critically the story takes itself far too seriously, so instead of the Grey-tastic fun the cover promises we get a poe-faced, sub-X-Files thriller.

If you're enough into comics that you've dug this out, you've read similar conspiracy stories before. Batman breaking into Area 51 should be a lot more fun than this.