Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers' Unpublished Dark Detective III

As you may've noticed, this month marks the 80th birthday of The Caped Crusader himself, so let's celebrate with something REALLY special.
Once again, we're indebted to that Master Of The Missing Arts, Mr. Mark Frazer for pointing me in the direction of this one:
Over at Steve Englehart's site ( http://www.steveenglehart.com natch ), The Stainless One has posted a free digital file of his work on The Batman with Marshall Rogers. This contains his & Marshall's classic Detective Comics run from 1978, the team's just as great sequel Dark Detective from 2005 AND ( and here's the best bit ) the full script for the never picked-up Dark Detective III, with pencilled art for the first issue from Marshall!
According to Mark: 'Rumour has it that after Rogers died, Simonson stepped up to finish the art for DDIII ( which would've been totally cool ) - however DC stopped taking Englehart's calls & quietly dropped the whole project, citing Rogers' death as an excuse.'
Bearing in mind, Steve also seemingly wasn't asked to contribute anything to the 1000th issue of Detective Comics, AND how much of the movies ripped off his stories without crediting him, then who can blame him for putting up this 'official bootleg'.
As I always do when coming across lost stuff, I emailed Steve to ask if it would be ok to post a few pages and direct everybody to his site, and ever the gent, here's what he came back with:

'Hey Pete, 
I hope you enjoyed your weekend with The Batman in London. You can absolutely point people toward the bootleg; my whole point is to let people read it, despite DC.'

Needless to say, Dark Detective III is absolutely brilliant, and although I really want to tell you all the best bits, I won't spoil a thing, except to say I got to the last page with a big grin on my face.
And as Steve would obviously prefer you to get this stuff direct from him, I'm just gonna put up the first 5 pages of the art. We're literally two minutes after the end of Dark Detective II: The Joker's hideout is in flames, and The Batman ( in makeshift mask ) has got Silver St.Cloud out but The Joker's missing. Now read on, and then go get the rest of it!

Howard The Duck Is Duck-Man In Ducktective Comics

Even though the only Howard The Duck stories that really count are the ones written by Steve Gerber, you have to admit the Steve-less b/w Howard mag was a pretty good shot at continuing the character.
Bill Mantlo did his best, contributing a Gerber-lite version of Howard & Bev, and even though he didn't mean it in the same way Steve obviously did, there's still a lot of fun to be had here.
Gene Colan was still on board for most of the stories, and there were guest slots like a couple of fantastic Michael Golden pieces, and this, one of the best things Marshall Rogers ever did.
Howard eating pizza by Marshall is worth the price of admission alone, but his wry take on the classic Batman run he'd done with Steve Englehart just a couple of years before makes this more than a little bit special, even if it is by necessity a more de-clawed duck than we'd been used to.

Daughters Of The Dragon

Why isn't there a Daughters Of The Dragon movie yet? For that matter, why wasn't there one in the Bronze Age?
I mean, if you don't like Misty Knight, the ultimate badass blaxploitation babe, you don't like pulp.
She's Pam Grier at the peak of her powers, except with a bionic arm, and is obviously more than the one line idea she could've been, but instead a character with real longevity, as proved by her recent team-up with DD in Daredevil: Dark Nights ( yes, Irving, I DO buy modern comics! )

But, Colleen Wing, her partner in Nightwing Restorations is also a great, if often overlooked character, sometimes put in the shade by Knight. She's a cold as ice, modern-day samurai, and it's a real shame that this pair of female friends were mostly relegated to guest-star status throughout the '70's.
They did get their own stories occasionally though, and this is the best one: From Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu, this two-parter is a Kung-Fu pulp B Movie in the best way, that Tarantino is even now remaking and ruining.
It's Marshall Rogers in overdrive, exulting in the chance to go mad with every stylistic trick in his repertoire, and Chris Claremont riffing on every Shaw Brothers movie he's ever seen. There's not too many patented Claremont tics ( Colleen, of course, has to refer to the bad guy as 'Butcher' ) but I feel mean-spirited even mentioning it, as this is a real tour de force from both creators.