I Wanna Go to Skyland!

 

I wanna go to Skyland! Of course, the place looks like it would be more absurdly dangerous than Jurassic Park and Westworld combined, but I wanna go anyways. It just looks so cool.

Skyland is a theme park that hovers over Gotham City on a platform that is actually a giant blimp. It has areas in it that simulate the conditions on other planets in our Solar System. Workers dress up as aliens native to those planets. There's a museum of space weapons that apparently all ACTUALLY WORK! And robot doubles of various monsters that come from those planets that can apparently be easily programmed to GO ON DEADLY RAMPAGES! You can also ride on "rocket horses" and rent flying belts. 

Who wouldn't want to go there? Bring your kids!

The story isn't clear on whether the various aliens/monsters are completely made up or if they accurately represent the denizens of Venus, Saturn, etc. Since this story is set in a Comic Book Universe during the Silver Age, we can probably assume they are indeed accurate.

Anyway, the story is "Murder in Skyland," written by Bill Finger and drawn by Sheldon Moldoff. Appearing in Detective Comics #303 (May 1962), it is a story dripping with wonderful Silver Age fun.

The owner of Skyland (whose name was Dodd) is murdered when someone tampers with his spacesuit while he's inspected the Pluto area of the park. Because the sub-zero conditions on Pluto are replicated exactly, he freezes to death when his suit fails. 

Batman and Robin are called in to investigate and soon discover that several of Dodd's business partners have motives. Batman also finds out that Dodd was investigating a series of accidents in the park and had hidden a film reel somewhere proving that these "accidents" are really sabotage.

Finding the film leads to an encounter with a bad guy on a Rocket Horse and those rampaging robot monsters I mentioned earlier. But the Dynamic Duo dodge the monsters and capture the bad guy, who proves to be a mob thug who had been trying to convince Dodd to pay protection.

But the thug can't be the murderer, since he's known to be color blind so wouldn't have been able to tamper with Dodd's color-coded suit. The killer is still loose and the Dynamic Duo is soon dodging a Martian Lightning Tank.

Batman tricks the killer into giving himself away, which leads to the killer--disguised in one of the alien costumes worn by the park workers--stealing Batman's Whirly-Bat, but getting caught when the heroes don flying belts and run him down. 

It's a fun story, with a mystery plot that more or less makes sense moving in tandem with the Skyland Park silliness. And, by golly, Skyland Park is cool. I feel about it much the way I do about Jurassic Park. I don't care if I might die. I really, really want to go there!

Next week--well, when I bought this issue of Detective Comics off my Comixology wish list, I first accidently clicked on an issue of World's Finest that was also on the wish list. So we'll stay in DC's Silver Age Universe for one more week as Batman shares another adventure with the Man of Steel.