‘Marshall Rogers: Bright Days and Darkest Knights’ (review)

Written by Jeff Messer and Dewey Cassell
Published by TwoMorrows

Like so many others, I became a Batman fan in 1966, the year of Batmania.

I bought the comics, watched the TV show and the movie, collected the trading cards, colored the coloring books, played with all the Bat-toys, and wore the costume for Halloween. I loved Adam West’s Batman…but Sheldon Moldoff’s in the comic books not so much. Something was missing. In a couple of years, that something was provided by Jim Aparo and Neal Adams, with their sleeker, more serious—but still recognizable—version of the Dark Knight. For a while, I was content, not realizing that something was STILL missing! That would finally come when I first glimpsed Marshall Rogers’ Batman in Detective Comics in 1977.

Rogers’ art was like nothing I had ever seen in comics before it, and I was mesmerized. I would follow him through whatever he drew after that—Doctor Strange, Howard the Duck, Cap’n Quick and a Foozle, Coyote, Detectives, Inc, Silver Surfer, Mister Miracle… I even spotted art by him in a dirty magazine from the ‘70s (that shall remain nameless, if only because I can’t remember it).

Marshall Rogers: Bright Days and Darkest Knights is the latest in TwoMorrows’ always superb books on comics genres, eras, or creators. A highlight of the book is a 20-page radio interview with Rogers, himself, conducted by Ken Gale on WBAI in 2005. I was actually familiar with this interview already, having transcribed it myself from the original audio recording a few years back. Until I saw my name at the top of that section, though, I had forgotten all about it. Since I didn’t even know that I had anything to do with this book, I didn’t feel it was necessary to withdraw myself from reviewing it.

To me, the other big highlights of the book are the interviews with Steve Englehart, writer on Rogers’ initial Detective Comics Batman stories and later teamed with Rogers and Terry Austin on Mister Miracle and others. When I say interviews, plural, it’s because there are two. Englehart being a superb storyteller, they both make fascinating reading, as he details the unlikely fact that the bat-books were drawn while Steve was in Europe and he didn’t even know who the artist would be until DC sent him comp copies there. Or the fact that Joe Orlando and others really seemed to have it in for Rogers (and longtime collaborator Terry Austin) from the get-go, never suspecting just how popular the series would become. Or the travails of trying to get the band back together for the sequel series, and then for yet another sequel which died along with the artist.

My only issue is that Englehart repeats the same stories in both interviews. As riveting as they are each time, as an editor, myself, it seems as though the logical thing might have been to combine the two pieces or even take out some of the repetition. Still, if my only complaint about this book is that we get too much of a good thing, I think that says something.

Marshall’s other great collaborator, Don McGregor, is present here via a remembrance he wrote at the time of the artist’s passing. Other creators such as Michael Netzer, Arvell Jones, and, of course, inker Terry Austin, discuss Marshall. There are also detailed full-page sidebar-style Profiles of various series on which our subject worked, a generous helping of photos and artwork, both published and previously unpublished, and a wonderful bibliography of all of Marshall Rogers’ work in the field of comics.

This book is credited to Jeff Messer and Dewey Cassell. Cassell was also one of the authors of TwoMorrows’ wonderful book on Marie Severin from a few years back. Herein, he interviews the late artist’s sister and writes of the ill-fated comic strip revival. It’s Messer, though, who succinctly sums up Marshall Rogers’ importance in the history of comics in both his Foreword and his Afterword.

Despite being a fan for nearly half a century now, I have to admit that Marshall Rogers: Bright Days and Darkest Knights was both a dark revelation and a pleasant but sad reminder of what we once had.

Booksteve recommends.