A Movie-Sabotaging Monster

 

cover art by Sheldon Moldoff

Detective Comics #252 (February 1958) gives us the story "The Creature from the Green Lagoon"--a prime example of Silver Age fun. Written by Dave Wood and drawn by Sheldon Moldoff, it's a tale that remembers Batman is a skilled detective while still throwing him into a wild science-fiction adventure. 

Though the story is actually a little less science-fictiony than many Batman tales from this era. There's no aliens, space travel or inter-dimensional travel. Just a giant monster that turns out to be a robot.

We begin with Batman and Robin travelling to Skull Island. (Despite the title, the story keys off of King Kong more than The Creature from the Black Lagoon.) A friend of Batman is producing a monster movie there, but his production keeps getting interrupted by what is apparently a real monster.

I do wonder how someone who is friends with Batman (as opposed to Bruce Wayne) is able to contact him. But that's a side issue. The story itself flows along nicely. The Dynamic Duo sees footage of the monster. When the monster attacks again, Batman nearly captures it, but one of the film's technical advisors ruins this because he wants to preserve the monster for SCIENCE!

Batman lays an trap in the form of an electric net, but the monster turns out to have non-conducting sea sponges attached to its feet. Also, the movie's other technical advisor gets in the way. Of course, this means both advisors are definite suspects when we find out a human being is behind it all. They are red herrings and arguably a little too obvious as red herrings, but the set-up for solving the mystery behind it all is still fun.

By now, Batman realizes the monster is acting with human intelligence and is probably a robot being controlled by someone. When it attacks again, Batman is able to temporarily discombobulate it with electricity.

It ducks under the water. Batman puts on diving gear and follows. This leads to a deadly game of hide-and-seek around a sunken pirate ship until Robin identifies the bad guy, knocks him out and uses the control devise he finds to shut down the monster.

Batman had noticed a valuable bed of pearls under the water, so its no surprise that the bad guy is the producer's assistant, who had scouted the island before the film crew arrived. He wanted to scare them off and keep the pearls for himself. 

It's actually a fair-play mystery, in that it was mentioned earlier in the story that the guy had scouted the island, thus was the only one who could have known about the pearls. 

So we get a fun SF adventure with a giant robot, Batman getting to show his detective skills and Robin taking initiative to save the day.  

So last week we looked at a Bronze Age Batman story. This week was the Silver Age. Next week, we'll jump still further back in time to examine a Golden Age Batman story.