Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Comic

 

cover art by Mike Grell

Batman #288 (June 1977) picks up where the last issue left off--with Penguin now aware that Batman is aware of his scheme, but Batman is aware that Penguin is aware that Batman is aware of Penguin's scheme. Writer David Vern (using the pen name David V. Reed) and artist Mike Grell continue to emulate the structure and crazy bat-deductions of the Adam West TV series, while still keeping a straight face and keeping everything acceptable for the Batman of the Bronze Age Universe. 

Penquin has his henchmen rehearsing their next heist with the intent of trapping Batman when the Dark Knight inevitably shows up. Also, Penquin takes time to sit of a sculpture he's having made of himself.

In the meantime, a reporter named Chester Cole has been trying to get Bruce Wayne to allow him to tag along for a story on the millionaire's personal life. Bruce keeps putting him off, but Chester notices that Bruce has been doodling on the tablecloth and has sketched out a logo for a company. Chester figures Bruce is planning on buying that company and plans on dropping in to get a story at last.

The company is a chemical factory and Batman does indeed confront the Penguin. He gets the drop on the villain and his henchmen despite the Penquin's preperations and it looks like victory is at hand. Then Chester Cole comes in at the wrong moment and spoils everything. Both Batman and Cole are captured.

They are dropped in an empy chemical vat. While Penquin leaves to pull off his final heist--the end object of his entire complicated plan--two giant robot vultures attack Batman. Fortunately, he's able to damage them, then salvage parts to allow himself and Cole to get out of the vat. 

Using the same bizarre logic involving the death dates of historically important short people (this time, it's Atilla the Hun), Batman tracks Penguin to a furniture storage company and takes out the bad guys in a final fight. 

Why all this trouble to rob a furniture storage place? There was a million bucks in stolen bonds hidden in a bureau--the unrecovered loot from an old robbery.

Batman has Penguin's statue locked up with the villain, Chester Cole is glad he "misinterpreted" Bruce's doodle as it led him to a better story, and the tale comes to an end. Together, this issue and the previous one nearly perfectly emulate the structure and bizarre logic of the TV series. The inevitable death trap comes partway through the second part rather than be the cliffhanger for the first part, but that's really no big deal. It's a wonderfully done tale, walking that tightrobe between celebrating TV series while keeping the overall tone of Bronze Age Batman. And Mike Grell's artwork give us fantastic fight scenes.

Next week, we'll visit with both the Haunted Tank and ace pilot Johnny Cloud. 

Robot Birds and Adam Westian Logic

 

cover art by Mike Grell

Batman #287 (May 1977) accomplishes something notable. Writer David Vern (using the pen name David V. Reed) and artist Mike Grell put together a story that is a shout-out to the Adam West Batman series from the 1960s, but still keep it relatively grounded in the no-less-fantastical but more serious DC Comics universe.

We get that right from the start, with an alliterative narration box that you can't help hear in the voice of William Dozier, who narrated the TV show: "That pitiless, pestiferous prince of pain and plunder--that pedantic patriarch of predators--the Penguin--reaches for a new pinnacle as he proclaims: BATMAN: EX AS IN EXTINCT!"

A robot pterodactyl destroys a statue of Napoleon at a high-society party. Batman manages to bronco-ride the robot and force it to crash, but later learns that there was a jewel heist being pulled at the exact same time.

Several other robot duplicates of extinct birds launch their own attacks on other days. Each time, their rampage coincides with a robbery at another location.

Batman has a hunch that the Penguin is behind it. And, in trying to figure out what the Waddling Master of Foul (Fowl) Play is up to, he follows a chain of logic that would have made Adam West proud.

The attack on the statue of Napoleon happened at 6:21 pm. At the same time, a jewelry store at 1821 Waterloo (get it?) Road was robbed. 1821 was the year of Napoleon's death, which translates in military time to 6:21 pm.

The other two attacks involve times and street addresses relating to Nelson and Machiavelli. 

So it's off to the library. He discovers the book Big Small Men of History was earlier checked out by a Mr. Whitehead. The Welsh roots of "penguin" are PEN = HEAD and GYWN = WHITE. 

AH HA! It is the Penguin. And the next name in the book is Alaric of the Visigoths. Batman returns home to Alfred, who knows off the top of his head that Alaric died in 410 AD. Alfred and Batman do some word association and come up with a target for the next robbery.

Batman foils the robbery, but the Penguin pulls the old "propeller umbrellas hidden in his sleeves" trick to escape. In the meantime, another robot prehistoric bird had attacked a museum and destroyed an Alaric artifact.

So now Batman knows Penguin's scheme. But Penguin knows Batman knows his scheme. BUT Batman knows that Penquin knows that Batman knows Penguin's scheme. We'll see how that plays out next week when we look at the next issue.

Mike Grell's striking art looks great and the action sequences are all a ton of fun. But its the script that deserves special credit here. The Adam West series was deliberately campy while still giving us an iconic portrayal of Batman. With this story, David Vern takes the silly logic that drove the series and fits it into the DC Comic universe without making it campy. He gives tribute to the series while still recognizing his story is set in a thematically different universe. It's a loving tribute without descending into parody. It's quite an accomplishment.

Cover Cavalcade

 AUGUST IS DC 80-PAGE GIANT MONTH!!!

This Win Mortimer cover is from 1964.

Cover Cavalcade

 OCTOBER IS HAWKEYE & GREEN ARROW MONTH!!!

An awesome Jim Aparo cover from 1980.

Dirigible of Doom!

 

cover art by Bob Kane

Detective Comics #33 (November 1939) is significant in that it includes a two-page origin for Batman, written by Bill Finger. We, though, are going to jump ahead to the entertaining (if clumsily titled) story "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom," written by Gardner Fox. The art is credited to Bob Kane, with Sheldon Moldoff drawing the backgrounds.

Gotham City has always seemed like a dangerous place to live, but it becomes a particularly unpleasant locale when a scarlet dirigible flies overhead, hitting the city with a death ray that crumbles buildings and kills thousands.

Batman checks his files and discovers a mad scientist named Kruger was recently released from an asylum. He heads for Kruger's home and overhears the madman making plans to conquer the world with his three lieutenants. They plan another attack on Gotham, in which they'll loot banks to get the funds to build more dirigibles.

It's a nice touch to have Kruger--a man with a Napoleon Complex--resemble Napoleon.

Batman steps in, but gets knocked out. He escapes just before Kruger blows up the house. Having overheard the names of Krugar's lieutenants, he finds and confronts one of them, panicking the guy into heading to Kruger's secret airbase.

Hiding the Batplane in an artificially generated cloud, Batman sneaks into the base. With gas bombs and a pistol (Golden Age Batman had no problem with packing a gat), he knocks out a lot of the bad guys and destroys all but one of the death rays. But then he's apparently shot and killed by Kruger, who plans to disintegrate the body with his death ray.

But Batman was wearing a bullet-proof vest and is faking death. He knocks out a guard and switches places with him. So Kruger disintegrates the guard thinking he's Batman. (Golden Age Batman not only packed a gat--he could be pretty ruthless when necessary.)

Batman heads home and whips up a chemical that will protect the Batplane from the death ray. When Kruger attacks Gotham, he's ready for a dogfight. He eventually rams the dirigible with his plane, bailing out in the nick of time. 

Kruger tries to get away in small plane, but Batman hits him with a gas pellet. The plane crashes and Kruger is killed. 

It's a fun story--loosely plotted but flowing along at a pace that overlooks its lack of storytelling logic. Over the past three weeks, I think we've found that Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age Batman were all skilled detectives, unfazed when bizarre dangers (death rays, robot monsters or sudden teleportation to another planet) hits, and able to plan or improvise as needed. G.A. Batman was willing to use deadly force; S.A. Batman is the most easy-going;  and B.A. Batman is arguably the most well-rounded in terms of characterization, but all of them justify their existence by starring in entertaining SF/Detective stories.

Next week, Blackhawk tangles with a band of brutal outlaws.

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. 

Solving Murders on Two Planets

 

cover art by Jim Aparo

I was getting ready to write this review when I thought that it might be fun to have a three-week series--reviews of Batman stories from the Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age. I could do the same with Superman.

But, heck, I've already written the Batman Bronze Age review! Well, the obvious solution to this is to do the Batman reviews in reserve chronological order. I'll leave it to future historians to decide whether this was a wise move.

In The Brave and the Bold #181 (April 1980), writer Gerry Conway and artist Jim Aparo manage to pull off a team-up story in which the two superheroes involved never actually meet. 

This actually isn't the only example of this. I'm pretty sure there's at least one World's Finest in which Batman and Superman avert a crisis without ever being in the same place. But I can't for the life of me remember which story that was. There may be other examples I'm not thinking of.  I recognize this to be a Level 7 Nerd Failure and will report myself to the authorities and spend time in the Agony Chamber as soon as I'm done writing this post.

Anyway, Batman is on the way to see Commissioner Gordon (in regards to a serial killer case) when he's hit by a Zeta Beam. He's transported to the planet Rann while Adam Strange appears in his place.

This was done on purpose. On Rann, Adam Strange has been framed for murder. Rann and his wife Alanna have decided that Batman is needed to prove Adam's innocence.

The story shifts back and forth between Rann and Earth--where Adam gets involved in catching the Gotham City killer. This is done very effectively and used to build suspense in both storylines, but I'll handle them one-by-one in my review.

On Rann, Alanna fills Batman in on what's going on. Adam was tricked into a locked room and there is camera footage of him apparently commiting the murder, though the image of his face in the footage is not clear. Before Batman can decide on his next move, an obnoxious local cop bursts in to arrest everyone for being accessories. Batman, of course, gets away.

He later breaks into the police records room and sees the footage. He notices something off about the partial image of the man who is supposed to be Adam. That man is pale, while Adam and Alanna had just returned from vacation with deep tans. 

The obnoxious cop bursts in on him, but one clue leads to another and Batman is able to prove Adam's innocence in front of Rann's robot judges, demonstrating that the real killer is the cop, whose motive was xenophobia against aliens.

Back on Earth, Adam Strange realizes he's obligated to fill in for Batman on the serial killer case. He goes to Gordon, who has heard enough weird stuff in his career to accept Adam's story. He lets Adam examine the murder victims and the superhero notices each of them has a fresh tattoo.

Adam finds out a new tattoo parlor opened not long before the killings started. He stakes the place out and is soon able to nab the tattoo artist before the guy can knife his next victims.

The two switch back just as the two cases are resolved, though that does mean that Batman finds himself hanging in midair over the water holding a serial killer. But he's Batman--that's not really a problem for him.

This really is a fun story that plays effectively off Batman's skill as a detective. Neither case is that hard to solve. In Batman's case, his intervention is probably needed because the cop in charge was the actually killer. In Adam Strange's case, you can argue that the cops should have noticed the tattoos on the victims without Adam's help. But what the hey--Conway and Aparo had only 17 pages to tell what is essentially two different stories, so the mysteries needed to be pretty basic. And that's a nitpick anyways. It doesn't effect the quality of the story. It's still fun.

Next week, we jump back to the Silver Age to watch Batman and Robin battle a giant monster.

Cover Cavalcade

 

August is Second-Tier Villain Month!

A Joe Kubert cover from 1980.

Batman vs. Magic

 

cover art by Carmen Infantino

We're continuing to look at the reprints that appeared in Detective Comics #439 (1974). So far, we've gone back to the Golden Age for a Hawkman story and a tale of Dr. Fate. We've visited the Silver Age to time travel with the Atom. This week, we stay with the Silver Age to look at "Batman's Bewitched Nightmare," reprinted from Detective Comics #336 (Feb. 1965). 

This one was written by Gardner Fox, who would actually be the writer for 4 of the 6 reprints we'll eventually talk about. That's not surprising. The super-prolific Fox was a creative driving force behind much of what made both the Golden Age and the Silver Age of comics so much fun.

The art is by Sheldon Moldoff, ghosting for Bob Kane. 

A witch is helping crooks rob a bank, disguising their car as a pumpkin being pulled by mice (because apparently no one in Gotham City would notice this) and transforming the vehicle and the crooks back into their normal forms outside the bank, which she's already broken open for them.

It's interesting that Batman automatically assumes the magic must be fake (which, in fact, turns out to be the case) because magic isn't real. But Batman lives in a universe where magic DOES exist. Heck, it's only been a year since Zatanna was introduced into the DC Universe. And Batman has met Dr. Fate and Spectre. To be fair, of course, those latter two live in another universe where the physical laws might be a little different. But still, Batman has no reason to doubt the existance of magic. This isn't really a big deal in terms of this individual story, but it shows that the DC editors weren't that concerned about the overall continuity of their universe. To put it crudely, while Marvel was building a universe that intertwined upon itself, DC was concerned with telling individual stories---individual legends about legendary characters--without a worry about cleanly fitting it all together. Both attitudes produce entertaining stories, so both have their strengths.

Anyway, the crooks go down pretty easily when Batman and Robin arrive, joking about it as they are captured. Then, all of a sudden, Batman and Robin are unable to touch them. The witch has taken away their sense of touch.

The crooks take off in their car. With their sense of touch back, the Dynamic Duo pursue them in the Batmobile. 

But the witch then takes away their sense of sight--or at least limits it so they can't see the getaway car. Instea, the pursue the witch on her broomstick into a large cave.

Over the next few pages, the witch deprives the good guys of first their hearing and then their sense of smell, luring them into traps designed to take them out based on the sense they are currently missing. But Batman foils the first trap and Robin, through an on-the-fly Sherlockian deduction, saves them from the second trap. In fact, Robin really shines during the story's climax, figuring out that the broomstick works as a magic wand. Without it, she's powerless.

Robin takes the broomstick. He himself can't make it do magic, but that doesn't matter. The witch and the bank robbers are easily subdued.

But back at the Bat Cave, the two heroes get one last surprise. Communicating through the broomstick, a villain they've encountered before talks to them. This is the mysterious Outsider, who explains the broom is made from a rare piece of wood that allows someone with ESP (which the witch had) to seem to perform "magic." The Outsider set all this up to destroy Batman and Robin. It's not his first attempt and won't be his last. (Spoiler: The Outsider turns out to be an evil alternate personality of Alfred's. He's eventually cured of this.)

I like the story. The "eliminate one sense at a time" trick is fun and I especially enjoy Gardner Fox allowing Robin to take the lead and save the day at the end. The one-panel explanation of how the broom worked is convoluted even by Silver Age Comic Book Logic. But what the hey, it's the Silver Age. It exists according to its own logic and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Next week, we return again to the Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz.

Night of the Stalker!

 

cover art by Neal Adams

 Detective Comics #439 (February-March 1974) was one of those awesome 100-pagers that DC used to do, often (as in this case) containing one original story and a bunch of reprints. Growing up, it was the reprints in these and in Marvel's Giant-Size books that first taught me so much about the history of the comic book universes I loved. 

Today, though, we're going to look at this issue's original story. "Night of the Stalker!" was written by Stevel Englehart, from a plot by Vin and Sal Amendola. Sal Amendola did the pencils. 

It's a pretty simple story. A bank robbery goes wrong and the robbers gun down a young, married couple, leaving a child weeping over the corpses of his parents.

Sound familar? Batman is close enough to witness this, but not close enough to stop it. He immediately takes a VERY personal interest, taking out one of the robbers at the scene while the other three speed off in the getaway car.

What follows is Batman stalking the remaining bad guys as they speed out of the city, nearly crash the car when a shadow seems to indicate Batman is on the roof, then jump out of the car to find him. He takes their car keys and manages to scare the snot out of them by just standing there. 

He dodges bullets, but apparently falls to his death when one of the robbers tackles him. The remaining two crooks recover the car keys and speed off, thinking they're safe. Silly crooks.

Batman chases one of the two remaining crooks into a shallow river, where he lets the guy briefly think that he (the crook) has just killed the superhero. His glee does not last long.

Batman confronts the last crook, who falls to his knees, sobbing that he never wanted to be involved in murder. Batman shows a modicum of mercy here, choosing not to terrorize him any longer. Back in Wayne Manor, Batman thinks about the crying child outside the bank and the crying young crook while looking at a portrait of his parents. He begins to cry himself.

That's the perfect ending to this story. Batman SHOULD be scary and relentless from the crooks' point-of-view, but 1970s Batman is my favorite iteration of the character in part because the writers understood he needed this human moments. The darkness inherent in the character had to be balanced by Bruce Wayne's humanity and his ability to still shed tears.

The cover is a fantastic example of Neal Adams' skill as a Batman artist. Sal Amendola does a bang-up job drawing this story, but that cover makes me wish we'd seen an Adams-illustrated version of it. I do realize, though, that this is an unfair, knee-jerk reaction. Amendola does make scary Batman look scary and crying Bruce Wayne look tragic. The artist does his job well.

Next week, we're going to begin a look at a superb WWII story arc published by Charlton beginning in 1967, but I think we'll intersperse that with looks at the various reprint stories from this issue. So get ready to be shoved from week to week from World War II to DC superheroes and back again. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

March is TRIAL BY JURY month!

Here's a 1964 cover by Sheldon Moldoff

Superman Turns Villain!

 

cover art by Neal Adams

World's Finest #180 (November 1968) starts where #178 had left off (#179 was a reprint issue). Superman has lost his powers; adopted a non-powered hero identity using the name Nova and a different costume; made a mess of things; and got captured by a master criminal named Mr. Socrates.

By the way, Cary Bates continues to write the script, but Ross Andru takes over on the pencils. Perhaps this somehow explains the abrupt color change (blue to red) in Nova's costume. On the other hand, I'm reading digital reprints and perhaps the error came about when the issues were digitally re-colored? 

Anyway, Mr. Socrates plants a mind-control chip into Superman's neck. Despite a brief instance in which Superman breaks free from control, Mr. Socrates is convinced this brief failure can be accounted for and corrected.

Superman has been ordered to kill Batman, but he's still not up to speed in fighting without superpowers. Batman knocks him out and brings him to the Bat Cave.

But this is all a part of Mr. Socrates' plan. Superman escapes and, while Batman and Robin are pursuing him, the villain has used the chip to identify the Bat Cave's location. 

He and his henchmen rig the elevator that comes down from Wayne Manor to explode. That will do away with Batman and Robin next time they use it and leave Mr. Socrates access to all the cool Bat Equipment.

The story  continues to be a strong one and Andru's portayal of the Bat Cave is pretty darn cool. Mr. Socrates plan, examined via the logic of a Comic book Universe, is a good one. Most astute readers, though, will have picked up on his overconfidence in his mind-control chip after it briefly fails. This indeed will be his downfall. 

I like what follows because it shows both Superman and Batman (both without actual powers) using their brains to come out on top. Batman allowed Superman to escape. Superman quickly found Jimmy Olsen and used Jimmy's signal watch to jam the mind-control signals. Batman equipped Superman with a lead collar to permanently jam the signal. The good guys return to the Bat Cave and start going to town on the henchmen. Mr. Socrates panics and tries to escape via the booby-trapped elevator.

Batman tells the henchmen that he will ask Green Lantern to wipe the memory of the Bat Cave's location from their minds and everything is back to normal. Well, almost. Superman still has no powers, but the Caped Crusader will help train him into a proper crimefighter.

As I mentioned last week, making this an "imaginary" story was the perfect decision. This meant that we were not automatically expecting Superman to regain his powers. It left the ending uncertain and even opened the possibility of a tragic ending. This led to a strong, entertaining story that earned its more upbeat conclusion. 

Next week, it's time for the Laff-a-Lympics.