"This book serves as a nice tribute to work of Nick Cardy who died in November 2013 mere days before this book was published. This book includes a whopping 16 comic issues reprinted. Mr Cardy did work on all of them except the last story. He did 15 covers, 11 issues were inked by him and 5 issues he also did complete pencils.
The book is 400 pages and reprints Teen Titans #6 to #20 and Brave & The Bold #83 starring Batman and The Teen Titans. Original publishing dates are from 1966 to 1969. The Comic was published bi-monthly. The reproduction work is fantastic. The introduction by Michael Uslan is excellent and very informative.
Besides the before mentioned Nick Cardy we have other artwork by Bill Molono, Sal Trapani, Irv Novick, Lee Ellias, Bill Draut, Gil Kane, Wally Wood and Neal Adams. A few obscure names and some of the giants.
Bob Haney wrote all the stories except Teen Titans #18 to 20 which feature the writing talents of Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich and Neal Adams.
Bob Haney was not a bad writer, he did some excellent work in the media. This sadly (with one exception) was not it. Bob who was born in 1926 and had no idea how teenagers of the 1960's should sound. Their dialog sounds like they were Beatniks on some Bizzaro World. These books written at the peak of The Adam West Batman and the Monkees TV shows have Bob Haney trying to be both "Camp" and "Funny" something he never quite pulls off.
Teen Titans #6 opens the Archive with a story guest starring Beast Boy and the Doom Patrol, as Gar decides he wants to become a Teen Titan. It is fun little story that ends with Robin asking readers to let them know if Beast Boy should be on the team. It's too bad that never happens.
Teen Titans #7 is an all Nick Cardy art issue and introduces Mad Mod one of the only silver age Teen Titans re-occurring villains. The Teen Titans have collectively the worst cast of villains ever. They set a new depth to lame and many could have been beat up by Aunt Harriet.
Teen Titan #8 introduces us to the Titans Helicopter which they explain the Titans bought with their reward money. The Titans Copter is featured in almost all the remaining stories. When a fake billboard for the Batman TV shows springs aside the Helicopter exits their Mountain side Titans Lair. At the Titans Lair they always remain in full costume since they appear not to know each others secret identities. The title of this tale is "A Killer Called Honey Bun" The Honey Bun is a robotic machine that kind of looks like J. Jonah Jameson's Spider Slayer. And no explanation for why it is called Honey Bun is ever given.
Teen Titans #13 is the issue where Nick Cardy really starts cutting loose and he transforms into one of the masters of the art form. According to Uslan's introduction he credits Neal Adams with setting the stage. Unfortunately for me this is about the same time Bob Haney's scripts go from being so bad it's good fun to almost complete gibberish. Despite the beautiful art I found these last half of Haney's run to be very slow going.
Teen Titans #18 was written by 20 year old writers Marv Wolfman and Len Wein and we no longer have to suffer from the crazy dialog. This was Len Wein's debut comic work and introduces us to Red Star the Russian Super Hero.
Teen Titans #19 written by Michael Friedrich was another fun story despite featuring another lame-o villian, this one named Punch. The art is excellent with pencils from Gil Kane and inks from Wally Wood.
When the original story from Wein & Wolfman featuring the debut of a black super hero was scrapped for Teen Titans #20 , Neal Adams was tasked with putting together this replacement. Adams wrote and penciled and Nick Cardy inked a good story.
The very last story is from Brave & The Bold #83. It is written by Bob Haney in a quite different style. A very gritty and realistic style. Neal Adams does the art. It is the story of Bruce Wayne getting a new ward and it is a power house of a story. And an excellent way to end this collection.
This is a very mixed bag, but Highly Recommended for art lovers of Nick Cardy." - Stephen Vincent Kempton, Amazon .com
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