I think DC Comics is leaving some money on the table not publishing collections of the 1990s Showcase series. The odd Robin story or such has been collected here or there, but in no way have the depths of this been plumbed. I don’t know exactly how much audience there is for a Blue Devil story from the 1990s, though it is by Blue Devil’s creators Gary Cohn and Dan Mishkin — and then in Showcase '93 alone there is a Peacemaker story with Kobra et al. by Mike Baron, Fire and Ice by Elliot S. Maggin(!), Shining Knight by James Robinson, and on and on.

Point being, some of these are multi-part stories, and as DC continues to try to find success with anthologies in the modern age, carving these out of their individual issues and putting them together to be read story by story in a collection might be entertaining.

This recurring thought came back to me reading Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Out of the Darkness, the first real “anthology” collection of the new series following the dedicated Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card volume. Oddly, though called “Brave and the Bold,” this anthology series so far hasn’t lived up to that title’s best-known team-up roots, seeming less like a Brave and the Bold and more like a Showcase. As well as — putting me in mind of Blue Devil, Peacemaker, etc. — is that Out of the Darkness contains a Batman story, a Superman story, another Batman story … and then a story each about Suicide Squad’s Emilia Harcourt and Wild Dog.

The final two aren’t entirely random, of course, and perhaps mildly related. Harcourt, though a relatively minor character introduced and killed off in Rob Williams' Suicide Squad run, has gained new life in the Suicide Squad/Peacemaker corner of the DC Cinematic Universe, and so Williams' Bold story serves to resurrect her for the comics. The Wild Dog story is by Kyle Starks, who also wrote the Peacemaker Tries Hard! TV tie-in-ish miniseries, and from what I perceive, there’s probably some similarity between the aesthetic of Peacemaker and the aesthetic of the Wild Dog story.

For the reader off the street, however, Batman, Superman, Harcourt, and Wild Dog is a little weird. And Bold is going to keep this up — Gotham Academy, Artemis, and Bat Lash stories, for instance. That’s fine for now — I think that works better for me than with Batman: Urban Legends, with a focus on the Bat-family that I think got harder to maintain as it went — and puts me in mind of the old days.

[Review contains spoilers]

Among the Batman/Superman stories, there’s no lack of talent — Guillem March writing, drawing, and lettering his whole Batman tale, and Dennis Culver with Otto Schmidt on the other, and then Christopher Cantwell with Absolute Martian Manhunter’s Javier Rodriguez on the Superman story. March’s and Cantwell’s each have an enjoyable gimmick to them (and each plays with memory and the audience’s perspective), which make them feel right for a pseudo-book of short stories. All three are also slightly rough, often in their dialogue, not quite ready for prime time, which equally makes them seem at home in an anthology. Where the writers falter, they are often bolstered by artists whose stars at DC have already risen a bit higher.

We’re presented at the beginning of March’s story with an amnesic, unmasked Batman; the twist is it turns out not to be Batman, but a confused, antiheroic thief. In both Frank “re-learning” how to be Batman, and then working with Batman once Frank’s memory is restored, March gets to deconstruct Batman, sometimes hilariously — the business model, the “scary myth,” etc. I left the story willing to read more about Frank, kind of a street-level Batman versus the real Batman busy fighting the “big villains,” if you buy in to that interpretation.

I’d also read more of Cantwell’s Superman story, in which Superman quests to save long-forgotten adventurer Hop Harrigan from, it turns out, a villain who can erase people’s memories. It’s pulpy, drawn in Fleischer-esque style by Rodriguez, and ends indeed with Superman forgetting the whole thing. That end comes suddenly (as does March’s), making a sequel feel imperative for this Superman story by way of Doc Savage.

In contrast, Culver’s “Mr. Baseball” story is modest (though I’d never sneeze at more Otto Schmidt art), a crime caper that doesn’t much challenge Batman or teach us much about him. William’s Harcourt story is also light, mostly action sequences of a resurrected Harcourt breaking into and out of a villain hideout. Some of the details are unusual if not erroneous, like Harcourt having Weapons Master “mentally pass” his powers to her. Plus there’s a lot here — Karla, the Farm — that’s surely far more familiar to Williams as the former Suicide Squad writer than it is to the audience for a run that ended more than five years ago.

My only strong frame of reference for Wild Dog is Rick Gonzalez' excellent portrayal on Arrow, though that seems far removed from the character Starks writes here. What we get early on is that Wild Dog is a vigilante that doesn’t much hesitate to kill his foes, but that he’s also kind of goofy in what I believe is the Peacemaker style — though a “beloved businessman,” he’s “bad at words,” and gets served with copyright infringement for his costume. It’s altogether interesting, since I’m coming to Wild Dog new, with fine art by Fernando Pasarin, and if anything, Starks does a bang-up job making Gizmo a scary villain! But equally I know “violent superhero comedy” isn’t my favored genre long-term.

I couldn’t say who I’d recommend Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Out of the Darkness to. If you want to read Superman and Batman stories, even one-offs, there’s probably stronger or more lasting ones out there. Whether there are ardent enough Emilia Harcourt or Wild Dog fans out there to justify buying this whole book, also I couldn’t say. DC published these issues and then they collected them, so I’m glad of that and I’m glad I read them. Maybe another collection with more characters might also offer wider appeal.

[Includes original and variant covers]