ZapTown

Besides being the Best.Batman.Artist.Ever. Jim Aparo drew “Brave and the Bold” for DC comics for almost 100 issues.  “Brave and the Bold” was a team-up book, primarily pairing Batman with a different super hero each issue. 

In the very early 80s, DC stopped putting a “Next Issue:” blurb on the letters page, leaving readers in the dark as to who would star alongside Batman in the next issue.  Instead, Aparo would leave clues for the readers to figure out who would be in the next issue – a practice I’m calling the “Jim Aparo Scavenger Hunt”. 

Some examples:

In this panel (from an issue featuring Batman and the Elongated Man), you can see the shadow of The Creeper reflected on the wall. 

In the next issue (featuring The Creeper, of course), we have this panel where the space cruiser for The Legion of Super-Heroes can be seen flying overhead.  Obviously, the Legion would appear in the next issue.

This one is my personal favorite – in an issue with the Spectre as the guest star, we can see the images of next issue’s guests “The Hawk and the Dove” swirling around to the right (Hawk) and left (Dove) of Spectre’s path back to Earth.

In the next issue, we get a panel of Batman and The Dove jumping onto a trolley where Robin’s emblem (a black circle surrounding a yellow “R”) is visible on the side of the car.

Finally, we have a panel from a later issue featuring The Metal Men.  The next issue featured “The Rose and Thorn”, which explains the metal rose laying on the ground.

These are the only examples I have available in my collection.  I noticed that this appeared to be something that was unique to Jim Aparo, as these clues did not appear in issues drawn by the occasional guest artist. If anyone out there has any other examples to add to the “Jim Aparo Scavenger Hunt”, drop us a line and we’ll add them to the list.