A Lamb Becomes a Wolf

cover art credited to Bob Kane

Head injuries in fiction are interesting things. In real life, getting knocked on the head will likely result in a concussion and is not something you shrug off easily after a few minutes. And, aside from possible short-term memory loss, you aren't likely to get amnesia or suddenly have another personality become dominant.

But in fiction, either you do shrug off a head injury OR you end up with some form of amnesia/personality change. 

For instance, a story in Batman #2 (summer 1940, written by Bill Finger and the art credited to Bob Kane) starts off by indroducing us to a mousy guy named Adam Lamb, who is custodian of a private museum and a lover of murder mysteries.

One night, Lamb takes a fall down a flight of stairs. He had been reading a book titled The Crime Master and, upon awakening, decides to become a crime master. He promptly murders some poor sap he randomly encounters on the street.

Changing his name from Lamb to Wolf, he spends his nights planning crimes and forming a rather large gang. Where a museum custodian, regardless of his personality change, finds criminals willing to join a gang is not explained. Heck, if I suddenly decided to form a criminal gang, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to go to find recruits. I live a sheltered life,  I guess.

When Wolf wakes up in the mornings, he reverts into Lamb and has no memory of his other life.

Batman and Robin begin encountering the gang, but are initially unable to catch any of them. 

That brings us to one of the weaknesses of this otherwise very entertaining story. Batman doesn't have to do any actual detective work to eventually get a line on Wolf and his gang. By mere chance, he meets Lamb and that later notices a dent in Lamb's car that IDs that car as having been at the scene of one of the crimes. This story really is fun and, to be fair, it quite properly focuses on Lamb's shifting personality. But giving the Dark Knight some real detective work to do rather than eventually triumphing because of dumb luck would have made the tale that much stronger.

By following Lamb, Batman and Robin are able to find the gang at the docks. When Batman gets shot and falls into the water, we get a wonderful image of just how Medievel the Boy Wonder will go if he thinks you've killed his mentor.

And remember, this story was written before Alfred came into the picture, so Bruce has to later depend on a 12-year-old boy to perform surgery on him and remove the bullet--all while Bruce is conscious! 

Eventually, Batman realizes that Wolf is patterning his crimes after those in the Crime Master novel, which allows him to stop the madman from committing a murder in the nick of time. Badly hurt, Wolf reverts back to Lamb and, now remembering everything he did, confesses his crimes before dying. 

The finale hits just the right emotional notes, generating a real sense of tragedy when Lamb dies. 

So its a strong story, punctuated with several great action scenes and a genuinely tragic figure in Adam Lamb. Despite the script depending on an element of dumb luck in Batman's detective work, its one of my favorite Golden Age stories.

Next week, we'll return to Animal Comics #4 to find out what Little Dinky the kitten is up to. Of course, all cats are evil, so I'll probably be unable to review the story objectively, but I'll try.