[Comics]: Batman #3, "The Ugliest Man in the World"

Publication date: Fall 1940
Author: Bob Kane

The ugliest man in the world? This sounds promising.

We start as Batman breaks up a fight on the street, knocking heads together and punning up a storm. It's five men on one, and although Batman rescues the one, the five speed away in a convenient getaway car, sending bullets flying over Batman's head on their way out.

The one turns out to be a police officer--Detective McGonigle--who was stopping an attempted arson.

Oh, this is gonna be good.

ahahahahaha FACE

Later, the humiliated McGonigle tries to explain to his fellow cops that Batman would have been his, if only Batman's three goons hadn't jumped him from behind. But they're not falling for it. Yes, in this incredibly incompetent police department, it appears we've found the worst of the bunch. Detective, I look forward to your future hilarious bumbling.

Meanwhile, Batman has put on a mask and become Bruce Wayne for the evening, meeting a man named Dodge and a man amusingly named Larry Larrimore. I have little to say about their dinner, which is astoundingly boring.

I do like how the writer clearly went, "Huh. I could invent a character for Larrimore, and have him say something interesting here. Or I could just throw some empty nonsense up, and go eat this pastry. Writing... pastry... decisions, decisions..."

Anyway, nothing interesting is happening, so we'll just holy shit

Dodge turns aged and ugly! Now this is interesting.

A doctor examines the poor man and finds no medical cause for his ailment. Bruce thinks to himself, "There's something fiendish afoot! I'm sure of it! And I'm sure that poor Dodge is only the beginning." Proving once again that the best superpower of all is having read the script.

This isn't funny or anything, I just think "ghastly change" is a lovely phrase. It sounds like the plot of a great steampunk novel. Or I suppose a book about puberty.

Never a comic to use one plot where six or seven will do, we're next told of a wave of civil unrest, which, let's face it, probably has nothing to do with anything else, and won't result in Batman punching some ugly people in the face. Clearly this will all be resolved with some kind words and maybe a new law or two. Clearly.

"I don't mean ugly as in angry and destructive, I mean ugly like their faces are all messed up. Although I guess they are also being ugly and destructive. Hah! That means I made a pun! ...I really wish I had a partner."

In fact, the pattern of the ugly mob's attacks are the same as the museum arson from the beginning of the story, as McGonigle reminds Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne. First the mob tries to destroy beautiful things; then, when the police arrive, a getaway car drives up, sprays bullets, and rescues the mob.

Meanwhile, a group of really ridiculously ugly people hold a secret meeting to hear from their leader...

"Ugly Hitler is right! Down with beauty!"

This is getting positively Fight Club-ish. This philosophy is much less, well, appealing, for obvious reasons. So there's no danger of a generation of college students adopting its tenets and catch-phrases with zombie-like tenacity. Watch out, though, because if Brad Pitt ever did start a cult, he'd be unstoppable.

Later, in a fit of jealous rage, Ugly Hitler slashes to death what appears to be a giant postage stamp:

In the interest of public safety, I'll ignore the bad "going postal" pun I've set up for myself, and instead make fun of the colorist, to wit: Jeez, Ugly Hitler. You wouldn't look so bad if you didn't insist on dying your hair baby blue and then wearing suits to match.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

"You're thinking, 'Damn, Robin. You look super sexy in those plaid pants.'"

Actually, Bruce is thinking, "Where the hell is Boravia? Are they making up countries now?"

Sorry, I could do this all day. What he's really thinking is, the ugly mob is going to try and destroy the statue. Clearly the authors have missed a golden opportunity for humor, here--it's much funnier if Bruce Wayne declares that his handsome, chiseled features and rock-hard abs will be the bait for these beauty-haters. Way to fail at comedy, guys.

A 'date with death'? Are you planning on dying? No, you're planning on killing some ugly people tonight, aren't you. Yeah, I thought so.

Oh yeah. I've been waiting to spring this for a long time (probably too long):

A moment later? Really? Gee, Batman authors--don't you remember this panel from way back in the third Batman story ever?

Boom! Thought I'd forgotten about that, didn't you? Nope. It's canon that it takes Batman way more than just "a moment" to get into his costume.

So, you see, you made a factual error, which matters, because, uh...

Yeah, this is pretty pathetic, isn't it. Let's just pretend it never happened. Please?

soanywaybacktothecomicathand...

Batman and Robin arrive at the pier and start tearing things up, punching some crooks but good. I have to say, though, I'm quite disappointed in the quality of puns, here. What, no, "Looks like this fight is about to turn ugly"? That was just off the top of my head. And I'm not even a superhero.

Unfortunately, and possibly related to the lack of puns, the whole fight's a bust. McGonigle shows up just in time to shoot one of the thugs and then watch the ugly mob speed away in their getaway car yet again... but he can still salvage things by arresting Batman. Well. He could, if he wasn't comically inept.

hahahahaha WIPEOUT

On their way home, Batman and Robin hear that one Dr. Ekhart has discovered a cure for the ghastly change, and realize that'll make him the next target of the ugly mob. They race over to the doctor's house, smash in the door, and start kicking ass. No time to take names, unfortunately; the ugly mob make good another escape in that same getaway car. This time, however, Batman spies the car being loaded into a truck--clearly their method of concealment in previous instances of violence and vandalism. He trails the truck to a private residence:

World's greatest detective, ladies and gentlemen. Did he think they wouldn't notice a grown man wearing a cape and cowl in their rear-view mirror?

Batman awakens tied up in the basement headquarters of the ugly mob, alongside fellow captives Mr. and Mrs. Tyler. In steps none other than... Larrimore! Gasp! And he takes off his rubber mask to reveal... Ugly Hitler! Gasp again!

No, don't gasp, not even once. This is precisely the wrong way to write a plot twist. Since we had no idea who Larrimore was (partially because the writer chose the pastry over characterization), it has absolutely no impact on us to learn that the bad guy and Larrimore are the same person.

Anyway, Batman watches as "Larrimore" vents his rage on the Tylers, first by reminding them of some back story:

Man, what a dick. What a contrived, contrived dick.

When Tyler goes to fake the injection, however, he's jostled by a presumably drunken frat boy, and the needle actually does inject Carlson. The mystery mix of chemicals turns him ugly, and the resulting dumping by his shallow, shallow fiancee turns him Hitler. (The fiancee, by the way, is now Mrs. Tyler.) Apparently Carlson/Larrimore/Ugly Hitler spent fifteen years finding the chemical compound that turned him ugly, at which point he began his revenge spree-slash-mob-violence-whatever.

As he prepares to inject Mrs. Tyler with the very same formula, his hypodermic is shattered by a slug from Robin's sling. Apparently Robin, who had been left behind with Dr. Ekhart, went after Batman immediately, and followed the glowing traces from the Batmobile's wheels. The two vigilantes get to work doing what they do best:

'The consternation of the ugly horde' is such a mellifluous phrase, isn't it?

Suddenly a shot rings out. Ugly Hitler is dead! Killed by McGonigle, who for all I and Batman mock him, is getting to be a deadly man to be around. It's a pity; he probably wouldn't have been such a dick if he had just allowed Ekhart to cure him. On the other hand, he had 15 years to do that, and instead of making a cure, he chose to make the poison. So good riddance, I guess.

McGonigle, having followed Robin here (world's greatest sidekick detective, ladies and gentlemen!) is pleased as punch. He's killed both the source of the ghastly change and the leader of the ugly mob in one fell swoop--two birds with one stone, or two birds who aren't really two birds, but who are actually the same bird, and--oh, hell. The point is, he's shot Ugly Hitler and he's got Batman to boot. Or does he?

The answer is no. No, he does not.

bwahahahaha HAT

Batman and Robin run away grinning like little kids. Which I guess Robin at least is. Anyway, during the "later, at home" case post-mortem, they do some weird moral equivocating, saying anybody would have gone mad in Carlson's situation. And that, after all, the blame lies with those who rejected him. Bizarre. They've never shied away from speaking ill of the dead before, why start now?

Finally, we get our comic foreshadowing of future issues:

Notice he has a new hat, which is too small to be jammed down over his eyes.

Ah, McGonigile. You and your bumbling, murdersome ways are welcome in my comic and my heart any time.

Next time on Batman: more heavy-handed moralizing than you can shake a stick at! Will Batman and Robin learn a valuable lesson? Will somebody get shot to death in a children's comic? Will I ever tire of mocking Batman for being both too moral and not nearly moral enough? Tune in to find out!

[Comics]: Batman #3, "The Strange Case of the Diabolical Puppet Master"

Publication date: Fall 1940
Author: Bob Kane

I don't know why I like this title page, but I do. Probably it's the puppets.

Our story begins with the caped crusader on his nightly patrol...

In this issue, Batman is really really bored.

Batman literally jumps down there and uses his crimefighting abilities to ask, "Hey buddy! Why you gotta shove this guy for?" Absurdly, the shover throws a punch. In return, Batman pulls a Crocodile Dundee ('That's not a punch... now this...'), but while he's busy, a carload of thugs pulls up, hits Batman from behind, and absconds with the shover.

Slightly annoyed, Batman turns his attention to the man whose unnecessary jostling the dark knight has just avenged.

Wait a minute... goatee... little round glasses... probably balding under that hat... Batman, are you sure this isn't a generic mad scientist villain?

Also, note how good this doctor is at keeping secrets from strange people he just met on the street. Ten to one he'll be dead in a week. Luckily for him, he escaped the shoving incident with only one little scratch...

The next day, Wayne is walking around the city when he sees the goons he fought last night going into an alley. Upon inquiry, he learns the men he saw work the strings at "Dmitri's" puppet show.

"I'd investigate myself, but this puppet show is awesome!"

Robin, meanwhile, does the best he can with what he's got:

...yes. This is their newest gadget, the Bat-oscope.

Robin overhears the villains (the puppet-master from the title page and his two henchmen, of the Green Turtleneck Sweater Brigade) discussing their plan in vague terms. The doctor whose shoving Batman objected to will soon be under the puppet-master's power. They're doing something with him tonight, something with a "voss rifle" the next night. Batman vows to stop... whatever it is they're doing.

While Batman rushes off to Dr. Craig's house, the puppet-master explains stuff to his henchman, who already knows it. Specifically, that when shoved, Craig was injected with a "thought serum", which enables the puppet-master to hypnotize anybody telepathically for two days. I assume this ridiculously powerful ability, with which he could easily take over the world, will only be used to facilitate a separate, absurdly complicated and difficult plan.

All hail the hypno-chair!

The hypnotized Dr. Craig is told to take his atomic formula and give it to the puppet-master's men. Batman, however, intervenes, and we get some nicely done action here.

It's always fun when Batman punches people so hard, they break through the fourth wall.

Batman makes mincemeat out of the Matching Green Jumpsuits Brigade, sending the conscious ones limping back to their leader as a warning. Then he and Robin turn their attention to the still-hypnotized Dr. Craig.

Well, I suppose it is worth a try. Let's check the next panel to see if it works:

wait what?

Okay, here's my guess: "Later," in the narration box, actually means, "Later, after they dispose of the body." Let's just move on...

Meanwhile, the puppet-master is getting increasingly annoyed at the Batman, who has ruined a perfect plan "whereby I may gain inventions to sell to warring nations". Hah! That's a ridiculously stupid use of hypnosis powers. The puppet-master could influence politics, or the media! Hell, why not just cut out the middle man and hypnotize a bank manager into handing over millions in cash? Villains today, no imagination.

But he moves forward anyway, after the Voss rifle, a new type of gun currently being guarded by a bunch of soldiers. So in order to steal it, he builds an army of his own, surreptitiously injecting dozens of lowlifes and hoodlums with his thought serum, and then telling them all hypnotically to go steal the gun for him.

I don't have a joke here, I just think this looks cool.

The hypnotized thugs go and attack the train carrying the soldiers and the Voss rifle; meanwhile, Batman and Robin fly over there in their Bat-Plane. They knock several thugs off the top of the train, set the Bat-Plane to "hover", and jump inside--where Batman is injected with the thought serum!

Both of our heroes are driven back out of the train by tear gas, which is also keeping the soldiers from fighting effectively. Luckily, the Bat-Plane has a gadget just for this precise circumstance (!): pellets that drop down and neutralize tear gas. The soldiers are able to properly defend the Voss rifle, and Batman and Robin fly off, triumphant.

The puppet-master is furious--until he learns that Batman was scratched with a needle carrying the thought serum. That night, he hypnotizes Batman, telling him to rob a particular jewelry store. Then he phones the police, informing them of the impending crime, and assuming Batman will be shot dead. Obviously the flaw in this plan is, he doesn't realize how incompetent Gotham's police force is. Batman robs the jewelry store, beats up the cops who confront him, and heads off to the puppet-master's house.

Robin, meanwhile, sees that Bruce and his costume are missing, and assumes he's going after the puppet-master alone. Robin heads over to the house, and encounters Batman on his way with the jewels.

If it's wrong to laugh at this, then I don't want to be right.

Robin's response is to punch Batman back, in the hopes that it'll knock him out of his hypnotic state. But does it work? Batman returns to the puppet-master's house, jewels in hand...

Just long enough to get the puppet-master's guard down! Then there's some punching.

The end.

Well, okay, there is the traditional one-panel denouement:

Yeah, right, Batman. I'm sure the police don't care about all the assaults, murders, accidental deaths, B&Es, unauthorized low-flying plane trips, speeding in the Batmobile, unofficially adopting a wayward orphan, identity theft, punching police officers, taunting punched police officers, egregious punning...

Actually, he has the perfect defense, now.

"Batman, why did you hit this innocent bystander?"
"I was hypnotized."
"Why did you throw pygmies off a speeding train?"
"Once again, I was hypnotized."
"What about that day at the circus when you--"
"Hypnotized."
"And the night of--"
"Hyp. No. Tiiiiized."
*sigh*

[Comics]: Batman #2, "The Case of the Missing Link"

Publication date: Summer 1940
Author: Bob Kane

This story may have the best opening of any of them yet, purely from an action point of view: we start with Batman leaping onto a speeding train in the night, and racing along its roofs. Then all of a sudden, he--

Well, shit.

You just had to do it, didn't you. Take a perfectly good action opening and muck it up with the racisms. Here we go again.

Batman fights with the AFRICAN PYGMIES!!, avoiding their arrows and spears and stuff. Eventually, however, he drops flat on the roof of the train, watching as the pygmies are killed by a low bridge. As Batman puts it, their race was their biggest weakness:

Well, Batman, that seems rather small of you.

Okay, seriously, shut the hell up.

Now you're just being a dick.

please stop saying things

The old white dude (Professor Drake) Batman has just rescued from the pygmies then reveals why he was under attack in the first place:

"It looks different from me! I feel the need to punch it!"

The Professor then tells Batman that this is the missing link, the only surviving prehistoric man. Apparently, he encountered the giant in Africa, where the pygmies worshiped him as a god. The professor and his expedition abducted the giant, shooting many of the pygmies in the process, and his transportation has been harried ever since by men desperate to retrieve their deity. Serves him bloody right.

Perhaps the most obnoxious part of this scientific imperialism is that the professor claims to have tamed the giant, and to have named him "Goliath". By doing so he has declared ultimate victory over a native religion by re-contextualizing the subject of their worship in terms of his own holy book. I have to say, for the first time ever, I feel Batman's fists are aimed at the wrong side of this conflict. It's a sad day in Gotham when the caped crusader fights to protect what amounts to a kidnapper and a thief.

Of course, as with any other stolen goods, any thief's success will attract others of his kind. A pair of miscreant circus owners (with the lovely, Roald Dahl-ian names of Hackett and Snead) take it into their heads that exhibiting the missing link would be an incredibly lucrative venture. Their proposal of this to Professor Drake does not go over well:

Take a moment and look at that panel. Professor, you're not studying this giant. You're keeping him as a fucking pet, dressed in a tuxedo, so you can pretend he's your prehistoric butler, God knows why. (Perhaps every once in a while, he puts on a pink dress and a blonde wig and imagines "Goliath" is Max to his Darla Dimple.)

Professor, you've not only committed a monstrous crime in ripping this giant man from his home half a world away, you've done it for no fucking reason. It would be better if you intended to make money off of him, even.

Anyway, Hackett and Snead come away disappointed but not discouraged; their vile hearts are already calculating ways to murder Drake and take the giant for their circus. Drake is rightly concerned, and luckily Batman pays a visit.

Goddammit, if this is all just a shaggy dog story to get to another Robin/David fights "Goliath" biblical pun, I will be even more pissed than I already am at this story.

And so:

"As you know, Grimes, unnecessary exposition setting up the plot."

The thugs break into the professor's house, shoot him in the head, and stage it as a suicide. As they're leaving, they get spotted by Robin, just reporting for duty. He should really stop hanging around at arcades when he's supposed to be guarding endangered men. Anyway, a fight naturally breaks out, and one of the thugs is about to shoot Robin in the back, when he's interrupted by "Goliath", in oversized green pajamas, no less. The giant marks Grimes' face in his memory, and then goes back into the house to discover his "master's" dead body.

Despite the interventions of Batman and Robin, for a while everything goes according to plan. The fake suicide story is swallowed by the public, and Hackett and Snead begin exhibiting the giant in a cage at their circus. The prehistoric man has been in a daze ever since he discovered the professor's body, and he only comes out of it when a mob of news reporters anger him with flashbulbs and wait that's a movie.

No, he comes out of it when he sees Grimes at the circus. Enraged, the giant breaks free of his cage, bashes Grimes to death against a pole, and goes on a kill-crazy rampage through the circus. Enter the dynamic duo, of course.

They deal with a couple of animals the giant has inadvertently set loose, and then tackle the prehistoric man himself. I don't mean that literally, of course, he's huge, they'd bounce right off.

The giant picks up Robin and throws him into the air, where he manages to swing safely onto a girder. Infuriated, the giant climbs up after him. As he stalks toward Robin, Batman tries to tie him up...

Well, live by the Bat-Rope, die by the Bat-Rope, I always say.

How will they get out of this one? Surely there's some new, creative solution to--

oh you motherfuckers

Robin wangs him in the head with a pellet, throwing the giant off-balance, sending both him and Batman tumbling off the girder. Batman snags a trapeze, but the giant is killed when he hits the ground.

"They'll think we murdered this man, because guess what WE DID"

The giant is dead, the professor is dead, Grimes is dead, and Hackett and Snead are arrested for murder.

Sum it all up for us, Bruce.

No, no, three times no.

You know, if I can step outside of this story for a moment, it's hard to tell how to respond to stories like this in this blog. On the one hand, it may not be fair to hold Batman to the standards of today; we've come a long way in 70 years. And certainly Batman comics are not the worst offenders of their time (see my earlier post on this here). On the other hand, I feel it makes an equally terrible statement today to skip over these elements without comment or condemnation.

On the third hand, this blog is first and foremost a matter of entertainment, and my increasingly strident protests against racism is only going to get more and more boring for you readers.

And yet, I can't just skip over it, even if I was comfortable with the moral issue, because the other goal of this blog is interpretation, and these racist elements can be part and parcel with the meaning of the story.

Case in point, Batman gets the moral of this tale completely wrong.

It's Drake who mistook tuxedos for civilization; a truly cognizant human being would have understood that it's better not to fuck with a man in his natural environment, let alone bring him to America and try to turn him into a butler. Not to mention murdering all those African--

Hey, wait. What happened to the pygmies? I guess they all gave up. Just like them too: lazy gits, the whole lot of 'em.

[Comics]: Batman #2, "The Case of the Clubfoot Murders"

Publication date: Summer 1940
Author: Bob Kane

Clubfoot murders? Really? Really, Batman writers? Are you out of ideas already? Alright, I guess we'll give it a shot.

We open with... a clubfoot murder, naturally. A mysterious, bearded man with a club foot and a hook for a hand  has just killed someone on a rooftop, and Batman immediately descends upon him in retaliation. All is not well for the Caped Crusader, however--it appears that a club foot is his greatest weakness!

Noooo! Batmaaaaaaan! 

Then Batman gets kicked in the head with the club foot, and the assailant limps off, gloating over vengeance achieved and vengeance to come. Batman flees as the police arrive. The cops find the dead man--recognizing him as the millionaire, Harley Storme (best 80s rock star name ever, by the way), and finding a card in his pocket:

"Joe, put out an APB! We're looking for a Mr. Clubfoot!"

Aha! My disappointment is foolish, for what we have here is another mystery. Bruce Wayne accompanies his friend Commissioner Gordon to the Storme Mansion, to get to the bottom of this. In the classiest of acts, they get there just in time for the late Storme's will to be read to his grieving (greedy) family and friends.

Batman comics, this is not how you do a mystery.

Well, I guess that's solved. Wayne and Gordon could go home now, if they didn't want to see the high society people expressing vile, vile hatred over the divvying up of Storme's worldly posessions. You have to remember that back then, they had no reality TV, so crashing will-readings was really the only way to get this form of schadenfreudian entertainment.

We're not sure yet whether these are suspects or victims, so I guess for now they're just characters. Soon they'll be doomed or complicit (or both!), but now they're just a bunch of whiny upper-class bastards.

Bastard #1: The purple-dressed Portia, the dead man's niece (in the panel above). She's doing the introductions.

Bastards #2 and #3: Abel and Carl, the dead man's brothers. Not too shy about speaking ill of the dead, either:

"I'd like to get an early start on all the shopping I assume I'll be doing today."

Bastards #4 and #5: Roger, the dead man's son, and Tommy, Portia's brother, seen here being petty:

The family lawyer, Ward, then reads the will. As it turns out, they're all boned, Brewster's Millions style, and like all rich men, Storme has decided to use his vast wealth to play a practical joke on his greedy greedy family from beyond the grave.

First, he gives all his money and stuff to charity.
Then, he gives each of the Bastards (and the lawyer) an envelope. Each envelope contains a piece of gold with the inscription, "United we stand--divided we fall."

The family is not pleased. They're about to start chucking their gold pieces out the window when Ward tells them he is to read another letter in 30 days, so they all have to keep their pieces. Confronted with this puzzle, Bruce maintains he thinks nothing about it or anything else, because "thinking is too laborious", but Batman's mind is hard at work. You can almost see the Bat-gears turning.

That night, however, the results of the late Storme's will are already being put into motion. Tommy, the blonde with the gambling debt, explains to Varrick, a snide-faced gangster, why his dead uncle's ridiculously circuitous lesson means he won't be paying his debt anytime soon. Varrick decides to snatch the lawyer and steal the sealed letter, to see if there's any way he can get any money out of this.

And that night, Clubfoot strikes again, murdering Abel. And then there were four...

In response, Batman also decides to go to the lawyer and see what's up with the will. Has everyone read the script but me?

Anyway, this puts him in conflict with the gangsters, who have abducted the lawyer and left two goons wandering around searching the place for the sealed letter.

There's no reason to show this panel, except that I love their full-color suits.

Batman and Robin joke their way through another beating, Alex DeLarge style. (The oddest probably being Batman punching a guy on the chin and noting, "Hmm... You didn't shave today!" As if they do this dance of fists every once in a while, and Batman is concerned that he isn't taking care of himself.) This is followed by one of Batman's awesome interrogation techniques:

"Awww... You broke so soon! I didn't even get to the good threats." *sad Batman face*

Batman and Robin rush over to the pier, where the crooks are literally giving Ward a hotfoot (burning matches between his toes). I'm convinced this is only to set up some fire puns ("Next time you play with fire, Varrick--" PUNCH "--watch out you don't get burnt!") as Batman and Robin start beating the crap out of at least a dozen guys. See these awesome splash panels:

They're so good, they've ruptured the poor panel borders!

I'd also like to point out that, while Batman and Robin eschew weapons, they appear to have no qualms picking up criminals and using them as weapons with which to beat other criminals.

Finally, he rescues Ward, and they recap what we already know: No, the lawyer hasn't opened the envelope. Yes, the pieces probably mean something, given the odd markings on them and the message, "United we stand, divided we fall."

Later, at home, presumably after a few whacks in the head with the Clue Hammer, Batman realizes what it means. The broken shards are a metaphor for his divided, hateful family, and if all of them collaborate and put the pieces together, something cool will happen. The something cool will be described in the letter.

Batman reiterates his desire to seek out the sealed letter; meanwhile, he sends Robin over to Roger Storme's house to protect him in case Clubfoot shows up. Nobody but me questions Robin's ability to take down a villain who already beat down Batman and left him unconscious on a rooftop.

Robin gets there only to find his job is moot. Murderously moot.

"Maybe I shouldn't have hung out at the arcade for so long before coming over! Oh well."

On his way back, Robin encounters the fleeing Clubfoot, who ultimately gets away. So Robin is a failure on both counts, but still does better than Batman, because he doesn't actually take any blows.

Meanwhile, Batman solves the mystery! Back at the lawyer's house, he hears a sound coming from the basement, and goes down the steps to find... Clubfoot!

"Well, you do have a trustworthy face."

Clubfoot explains that he was lured to the lawyer's house with promise of a payoff, then clubbed (get it? get it?) and chained up in the basement. Then Ward impersonated him and went around killing everybody, presumably to keep the inheritance to himself.

Clearly the dead Storme's moral lesson has backfired. Instead of encouraging these hateful people to cooperate, he's inspired them to become even more evil. This just goes to show you, you should do double-blind clinical trials of all your bizarre will-puzzles, or at least check with a game theorist before implementing them.

Anyway, the innocent Clubfoot has just finished explaining things when the killer Clubfoot shows up.

What he should have said: "Fuck you." *BLAM*

What he actually says: "My pleasure!"

In the course of monologuing, Ward explains that when put together, the shards reveal the name of a goldmine which was to be divided among Storme's heirs, however many were alive. By killing most of them off, Ward increased the value of his own share. But before he can silence Batman forever, Robin sneaks up behind him and attacks.

And that, boys and girls, is why you should always shoot first, monologue later.

Ironically, a fleeing Ward is unable to get up the stairs due to his false club foot, and Batman punches the story to a satisfying conclusion. Batman and Robin triumphantly sum up the moral of the piece:

For a comic obsessed with dramatic irony, it's rather silly that Batman doesn't realize that he and Robin have both broken away from the law and order in their vigilantism. Just sayin'.

I suppose this issue wasn't that bad. It recovered with an interesting plot at the end. My only regret is that never I found a way to work in a joke about a "schadenfreudian slip".

Next time, the final story in Batman #2!