A rogues gallery in brief – The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #14, “Batman’s Villains”
The digest-sized books are kind of interesting. They’re small, difficult to read, usually chock full of reprints, and, as I just learned, they’re a bitch to scan. They’re like anti-treasuries. This one is a bit unique in that, in addition to the reprinted Batman tales focusing on each of the baddies on the cover, there’s also an assortment of new one page origin tales for these primary enemies of the Caped Crusader. You want to see them? Sure you do. And they’re easier to read when scanned. Everybody wins!
We start with (who else?) the Joker:
Next up is Two-Face:
Then there’s the prominent probiscis of the Penguin:
Here’s the Riddler:
And — ladies last — Catwoman:
There’s not a great deal of new information or character insights to be gleaned from these, but it’s different to see these characters boiled down to one miniature page. Their brevity is quite fitting when one considers their diminutive surroundings. There were no credits in the book for these short stories, and I couldn’t track any down on the web. I’m sure they’re out there somewhere. If anyone knows, feel free to leave a comment.
Jared
blog into mystery 
Sorry, can’t help you with the credits on those shorts, although to my (admittedly amateur) eye, the art looks like it could have been done by Mike Nasser/Netzer.
I just have to say, though, that I absolutely loved these digests, and had a big stack of them. For us fans who only started reading comics in the latter half of the ’70s, they were a great and cheap way to read tons of stories from DC’s Golden, Silver and early Bronze Ages … and the size didn’t bother me, never found ”em hard to read…
I don’t recall the size bothering me when I read digest-sized books as a kid, but with these I had my nose a lot closer to the page. I guess my eyes, if not exactly old, are no longer all that young.