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.

From Rann to Earth and Back Again

 

The thing about Adam Strange was that he wanted to live on the planet Rann with his wife, but would be forced to regularly return to Earth. While on Earth, he would get zapped by a teleportation beam called the Zeta Ray. That would bring him to Rann. But when the Zeta radiation wore off, he would be zapped back to Earth. 

I always wondered why he didn't just get to Rann by another method--he lives in a Comic Book Universe where this is a real possibility--and then be able to just stay there permanently.

That's because I never happened to have read Mystery in Space #75 (May 1962), in which writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine Infantino explain just why this is. 

In the previous issue, Adam had returned to Rann via a teleport machine he'd captured from invading aliens. Now he can stay as long as he want.

But space pirate Kanjar Ro has escaped from the planet on which the Justice League had imprisoned him. (Which was apparently done without any judicial process, but there you go.) He wants revenge on the JLA. His plan is to find a planet with three suns that has a lighter gravity than his home planet. Then he can figure out a method to gain Superman-like powers. Remember that the Man of Steel gets his powers from our yellow sun plus Earth's lower gravity when compared to Krypton. By replicating this on a planet with three suns, Kanjar will have three times Superman's power. Comic Book Science at its best!

The action now jumps back to Rann, where Adam and his wife Alanna enounter a barbarian tribe that now has a bell-like weapon that allows them to gain physical control over others. Adam and Alanna have a narrow escape, then wear earplugs to allow them to infiltrate the barbarian camp by mingling with prisoners. Here they discover that Kanjar Ro has set up camp. He has a Gamma Gong that he intends to use to control the entire planet AND he's having those he has enslaved build the devise necessary to bombard him with solar radiation from the three suns, giving him Superman Powers x 3.

Gardner Fox was a great writer and I largely enjoy this story, but he tended to occasionally over-write and over-explain. This happens here, slowing the story and obscuring Infantino's magnificent art with too many word balloons and boxes of expository narration. 

In fact, I'm not going to try to explain the rest of the story in detail, because that would bog down this blog post even more than it probably already is. Suffice to say that stopping Kanjar Ro involves stealing the bad guy's Cosmic Ship, sailing to Earth as a clue for the JLA, taking a Zeta Beam back to Rann and eventually confronting Kanjar with the Justice League as allies. It's actually a cool plot, following sound Comic Book Logic from start to finish. Adam come up with legitimate clever ideas for countering the villain throughout the tale. It just needs an excessive amount of exposition to get there. 

By now, though, Kanjar has completed his solar radiation bath and is easily kicking JLA butt. But Adam deduces that metal from Kanjar's home planet would work on him the way Kryptonite works on Superman. This allows him to save the day.

But Adam got zapped by Kanjar Ro before the battle ended. This leaves him with a perculiar condition--if he stays on Rann for more than short visits, he'll get sick. So the short Zeta Beam visits are now his only option.

Despite my criticisms of the story, it really is a fun Silver-Age romp. And I'm happy to learn that what I always thought was a plot hole was actually explained. You see? The Silver Age all made sense! It did! It really did!

Next week, we'll jump back in time to land on the beaches of Normandy with a particular Allied soldier on D-Day. Or try to land, anyways.

Worst Date Night Ever

It seems poor Adam Strange never gets to just spend a quiet day with his girlfriend when he arrives on the planet Rann. There's always a disaster of some sort he needs to deal with.

For instance, in Strange Adventures #222 (Jan.-February 1970), the latest Zeta Beam brings Adam back to Rann, but he lands right smack in the middle of a war. People around him are fighting to the death. And his side seems to be losing. And his gal is being kidnapped. NONE of this is the recipe for a fun date night.

The story, by the way, was written by Denny O'Neil and drawn by Gil Kane.

The bad guys are Reekahs, a race of barbarians who have short-term super-speed in addition to their robot unicorns. They get alway with Alanna and a few other hostages, offering to release them only if supplied with modern weapons. But if they get the weapons, their fortress will become impregnable and they will become unstoppable conquerers.

In fact, their fortress already is impregnable. So how does one get inside the walls? Adam has an epiphany--What if they leave a gift for the Reekahs just outside the fortress?

This sounds just like the Trojan War, doesn't it?

I like the nice twist that O'Neil gives the story here. The people of Rann leave a ship outside the walls as tribute. But the Reekahs tumble to the fact that its a trick. Their leader orders the ship destroyed.

But Adam had figured on this. The ship, in fact, is a double-bluff. When it blows up, it releases a gas that weakens the Reekahs and takes away their super-speed.

Adam leads an attack force into the fortress. The bad guys are defeated and the hostages are saved. But this takes a little too long as far as Adam's love life is concerned. He teleports back to Earth after he and Alanna have time for one brief hug.

Gil Kane's art looks fantastic, the robot unicorns are cool and the plot twist involving the double-bluff Trojan ship is a good one. This is a solid and entertaining science fiction adventure.

Next week, we visit again with Turok. I've got a back log of Turok issues I've been meaning to review, so please remember--you can NEVER have too many dinosaurs!

A Quick Trip to the 73rd Century

Justice League of America #138 (January 1977) shows us that being heroic can sometimes cause more problems than it solves. Especially if the problem being solved didn't even exist in the first place.

The Justice League satallite receives a surprise visit from the planet Rann. Alanna, the wife of Adam Strange, has traveled 4 light years because she needs someone to save her husband.

Adam Strange's deal--as most readers here probably know--was getting bounced back and forth between Earth and Rann (which orbits around Alpha Centauri) by zeta beams. Not long before this issue, he'd been able to settle permanently on Rann and finally marry the woman he loved. But now he's getting zapped back to Earth again--while also being carried forward in time to the 73rd Century. He's having a harder and harder time battling various threats to future Earth.

So Alanna goes to the League for help. Superman and Flash, both able to casually time travel, soon arrive in the 73rd Century along with Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Batman. Once there, they encounter that century's Green Lantern for Sector 2814.

They soon encounter one of the threats that has been giving Adam a hard time. But its not a threat. The fireball plummeting from the sky is actually a 73rd Century streat cleaning device. Which means the citizens of that country have simply gotten used to a fireball plunging towards them every day. The future is weird.

When Adam shows up to stop this "threat," his efforts simply cause damage. And the corrupt Zeta Beams infusing Adam have both made him unable to think things through and made him powerful enough to be a threat even to Superman.

By the way, Dick Dillon's art is superb in this issue. I especially like the panels above in which future Green Lantern and Aquaman double-team Adam in a valiant effort to make Aquaman seem useful in a fight not taking place in the ocean. 

Typically, Batman is the only hero there who comes up with a plan other than "everyone hit Adam Strange." He manages to stay one step ahead of Adam's ray gun, which eventually drains Adam of the corrupt Zeta energy, snapping him back to normal.

Written by Cary Bates, "Adam Strange--Puppet of Time" is a wonderful story containing several really fun ideas. The fight between Adam and the League is well-choreographed and I like the design of future G.L.

But despite the happy ending, this isn't really a stand-alone tale. The next issue, the five Leaguers who traveled into the future will find themselves fading from reality. Why? How?

Well, next week we'll pause for me to vent about an old Charlton story that commits the grevious sin of making dinosaurs boring. But in two weeks, we'll pay another visit to the 73rd Century.