Batman Completion

[Comics] Batman #8, "The Strange Case of Professor Radium"

2012-01-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

Publication date: December/January, 1941/1942
Author: Bob Kane

Professor Radium, you guys! This is going to be awesome. Let's get to it!

Our story begins with one of the finest examples of the surreal in Batman to date, a panel which you could basically just put in the New Yorker, no changes needed:

"This permit seems all right, and golly, but you just seem like the friendliest person. Take all the dead dogs you want, mister!"

Creepy McCreeperson (or as the comic insists on calling him, "Professor Ross") may not wish to be a Batman villain, but he's got three things going against him: he's a scientist, he's got a goatee, and his laboratory has, shall we say, too much negative space.

Good scientists experiment on dead dogs in clean, brightly-lit labs.

Despite his methods and facial hair (or perhaps because of them?!?!), the Professor's new "radium serum" does indeed "repair protoplasm", which is scientifiction gobbledegook for "holy shit, I brought a dog back to life!" Does he stop there? Do not pass Go, collect your Nobel Prize? Naturally not. "Next I must revive a dead man--then I shall be famous!" he cries.

It's not hubris, however, which is the Professor's fatal flaw, but poor documentation. Observe!

This is actually how they used to do peer review.

Anyway, Jowly J. Jowlton there (middle name: Joseph) accuses the Professor of fraud and radium theft (does radium even have a "private use"? can it get you high or something?), but "for your excellent work in the past", decides to fire him instead of making him pay for the radium. Because all of that makes sense, somehow.

But the Professor refuses to give up! If the Institute won't issue him a permit for a dead body, he'll find his own! After all, anyone can dig up a grave! And I'm sure Gotham has more than a few homeless that no one will--

"I will revive you, Professor. But from now on Johnston is the Professor, and you are the assistant!"

You're a poor scientist, Professor Ross. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! Also, if they didn't believe your assistant about the dogs, why would they believe you were ever dead? Witnesses! Pictures! Bar graphs! You need evidence, dammit!

Well, he does get evidence, after Johnston brings him back to life. First a flower wilts in his hand; then a sparrow dies when he touches it. I can only imagine what's going to happen when Johnston rushes in for a hug.

"I say, Professor, you're looking a little green around the gills!"

In fact, Ross now glows in the dark, which I'll just bet will get him all the ladies. Dating will have to wait, however--the Professor accidentally touches Johnston, killing him instantly (sadly Johnston doesn't crumble into little bits).

"Oh, how could I have known that injecting myself with radium would lead to bad things!"

To his credit, Ross's response is not "I AM INVINCIBLE! GIVE ME ALL THE DIAMONDS OR I MELT YOU!" (That's totally what I would do.) Instead, he discovers an antidote, called "Volitell", but it wears off after 24 hours, and his meager supply is soon exhausted. Let's say you're in this situation. Do you:

A) Call somebody for help?

B) Stay in your home and try not to touch people?

C) Make a ridiculous costume and go on a crime spree?

If you answered C, congratulations! You will soon get punched in your crazy steampunk face:

What is it with Batman villains and posing in front of wavy smoke lines?

The Professor embarks on a campaign of... well, not terror exactly... no murders either... a campaign of stealing drugs from hospitals, I guess? Not terribly exciting, really, but it must be a slow week for Batman and Robin, because our heroes decide to give this their full attention. Batman theorizes the thief will show up at Gotham Hospital tonight (he's read the script), and it turns out to be quite true.

Sadly, the ensuing fight is as bland and rote as we've ever seen. I won't post the whole thing, but Batman and Robin basically tell him, "Stealing is wrong! You're going to jail!" The Professor reacts by taking off his glove and melting Batman's face off no wait that would be awesome. Actually he does this:

For a Professor he's really quite stupid.

Stunned by the "shove a table at them" trick, Batman and Robin watch in astonishment as the Professor pushes a supply cabinet over and then climbs out the window. Have they never seen a dude try to escape before? Maybe the suit's throwing them off. Moments later, the "human radium ray" dissolves the pipe as he climbs down, and our daredevil heroes are thrown for a loop:

"Hold on, Robin! Don't fall into the inky black nothing that is apparently the entire world besides this building!" "...okay!"

This is the paragraph where I prove I know more about writing than the people currently behind "Dexter": good villains are all about how they interact with the heroes. Do they push them to new places physically or emotionally? Do they reflect some aspect of the heroes back onto themselves, a warped and twisted mirror? Does their level of violence and mayhem demand that the heroes cross their personal and moral boundaries? The great Batman villains have done one or all of these. A fight scene with a great villain isn't just exciting or novel; it's a direct representation of the inherent conflict between good and evil, hero and villain. When it's as boring as the one we just witnessed, perhaps that's a sign that, to put it in literary terms, this villain sucks donkey balls.

Also, he's incompetent: Professor Like, Totally Rad dropped one of his gloves at the scene, which, if you had a thing which was the only thing stopping you from killing people, would you accidentally leave it behind? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, Batman spends the better part of a page pulling fingerprints off the inside of the glove, which is a neat little forensic trick, detailed step by step (try it at home, kids! all you need is powdered lead oxide, a sheet of photographic citrate paper, and a glove left by a criminal!), and in a more interesting story I might actually like it. Here it's just a reminder that Bruce isn't challenged or even perturbed in the least in this story. But at least we get lots of pictures of Robin pretending to be interested!

"Hm. Hmmmm. Hm. Yes, I see. Mmhmm. I am going to play so much Nintendo when you finally shut up about friggin' fingerprints."

The real problem with this villain is that he actually belongs in Spiderman, where Peter Parker, a scientist who accidentally acquires strange powers and uses them for good, fights scientists who accidentally acquire strange powers and use them for evil. Spiderman is about power and how you use it (and thus also about growing up), but Batman is about trauma and how you deal with it (and thus also about the past, which is why it works so well with noir). (Superman should be about identity and how you define it, but from what I can tell it's too often about power and/or Jesus instead.)

All of which is to say that what we have here is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Batman is about on a thematic level, which translates to the character level and then to the action. It's all a dreadful misfire and whoever actually wrote it should feel bad.

The proper way to write this character (for this era of Batman, anyway) would be to focus on connecting his radioactive body with a past trauma--perhaps his father experimented on him as a child, with both the experiments and the necessarily resulting isolation acting as metaphors for child abuse; when his father finally dies (or lets him out), Ross tries to find a cure, but the Volitell doesn't last and is literally and (with the murders committed in acquiring it) figuratively expensive. In Batman, trauma is never eliminated, only alleviated through (violent) expression. (You can apply this theory to virtually every lasting Batman villain, and it works because it mirrors Batman himself. The Joker is the most attractive villain of all because he won't tell us what his trauma was--although to look at him, it must have been a doozy of a bad day.)

Anyway, that alternate outline isn't Shakespeare, but it would give Ross something to feel and Bruce something to play off of, and it would get Batman out of the realm of words and ideas (Spiderman's area) and into that of emotions and images, where it belongs. The Spiderman template is "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", where Frankenstein and his monster are combined into the same character, with one side (or in some cases one of multiple personalities) played for horror and the other for sympathy; you can tell that's what the author is going for here because they double down on the sympathy angle:

"I've acquired this spanking new hat! Isn't it stylish? Also, I'm a radioactive monster and we really shouldn't hug."

As you can guess, Doc Insta-Kill instantly kills her as they touch. He reverts to that healthy green glow and laments loudly enough for the maid to hear, sending him fleeing into the night. I know I should feel sad for the Professor, but I can't help but find all this hilarious--partially because, as you know, I'm a terrible person, but also because of just how poorly this has all been done. This is page 8 of 12, and we're just now hearing about his girlfriend? And why has he only just now decided to tell her about his discovery? Why doesn't he take better precautions? We're asked to believe that somebody smart enough to reverse death is dumb enough to continue hugging the people he cares about, and it just doesn't fly.

Speaking of which, why doesn't he just revive Mary with his radium serum? Sure, she'll be a deadly green monster, but that still beats being dead, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, Batman's little trick with the fingerprints has solved the whole case, immediately connecting the glove to Ross and his involvement with Johnston's death, as well as the new murder, which is apparently being reported directly from Mary's maid to the Commissioner (that's what he gets for picking up the 911 phone when it's not his turn to pick up the 911 phone):

"What's that? Repeat everything you say to provide exposition?"

I don't know what's funnier there: Gordon, Robin's "if I had a nickel for every time I heard Bruce say that" expression, or the creeping advance of the Terrible Darkness behind them which continues to subtly eat away at the world, Duck Amok style.

Anyway, upon hearing about the Professor's odd glow, Batman guesstimates that radium's the culprit and Volitell's the cure (say it with me: he's read the script!). The police camp out at Ross's house, leaving him no choice but to go both on the run and crazy.

"I've found him! He's at the giant newspaper factory!"

Meanwhile the radium is catching up with him, causing his hair to fall out and his brain to be consumed by a lust for murder (ie., mid-life crisis). Bizarrely, everybody involved doesn't really care about the murders so much as the Volitell, which is somehow completely hidden from the police in Ross's house. They decide to lure Ross back home so he can show them the drug's location, and then maybe punch him or something. A key part of the plan is making sure the media knows, because if there's one thing we know about "Professor Radium", it's that he definitely reads the giant newspapers. (Except the Giant Washington Post, that's practically a giant rag.)

As they lie in wait in Ross's home, Robin expresses concern that Ross will fall for this "stunt", but Batman is confident that Ross is a moron. I can't say I disagree. The Prof proves us both right by showing up in his goofy suit to get the Volitell out of the hollow book where he hid it. (I'd take more issue with this being somehow an impenetrable hiding place, but we are dealing with the GCPD, who once lost crime in a fog, so whatever.) Batman and Robin jump out and yell "boo!" but the professor is unstartled.

This is ridiculous, but I do like the alliteration.

Anyway, hilariously, Batman and Robin are completely fine, with Batman exclaiming, "Yes--we're still alive! I made a transparent rubberoid composition that I sprayed over our bodies immunizing us from the radium!" which is probably his least pithy retort ever. The Professor is still able to escape, Batman and Robin basically stumbling over their own feet to give him the opportunity, although Ross does what I would do and makes time to hit a small child:

"I don't always hit children. But when I do, I prefer to hit annoying cartoon sidekicks."

The rest of the action climax is terrible, takes place on a cargo ship for literally no reason (does Ross live next to a port?), and Batman wins with the old Errol Flyn "swing feet-first into the bad guy" move that's like, derring-do 101. He kicks Ross off a platform and into the water, where he presumably drowns or something, Batman can't be bothered to check.

"But Batman, shouldn't we try to save his life?"

"Meh."

And with that, it's all over but our usual, overstuffed denouement panel:

For the love of God, seal the tomb.

And so ends a pretty boring and poorly-conceived Batman tale. Even the art was pretty terrible. And the charm of that goofy radiation suit only went so far. What bothers me the most, though, was that this story totally missed the opportunity to be the story of Professor Radium and his Radioactive Murder Dogs. Come on! How do you miss that? Murder Dogs!

[Comics]: Batman #8, "Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make"

2012-01-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

Publication date: December/January, 1941/1942
Author: Bob Kane

And we're back! After a long hiatus, Batman Completion will resume its weekly schedule, starting with the last few issues of 1941 and moving on to 1942.

This post is dedicated to Paul. Sorry it took so long, Paul!

--

Before we begin the story proper, please note that this is the cover of the whole issue:

oh dear god it's become self-aware

The horror, I feel, cannot be understated. And on that note, let's read a children's story about murderous, murderous gangsters! Woo!

Man, if Fox News was unhappy about Obama's other Czars, just wait 'til they hear about this.

Usually, you'll agree, once Batman catches the bad guys, they either die, confess, or at least seem a bit put out. Big Mike, on the other hand, is not only okay with going to prison, but happy! Even what I can only assume are two neck holes as the result of a life-long smoking habit don't get him down:

"Everything's--" *cough, wheeze* "--comin' up Russo!"

He gets twenty years in the state pen, and tells the judge with a sneer, "I been needin' a vacation anyway!" What's got him so... is equanimitous a word? Fuck it, it is now. Well, maybe this is a clue:

Is this a prison or a Hollywood premiere?

The warden spells it out--ironically, in an attempt to give his own version of the "Put your trust in the Lord" speech. "Russo," he says, "you were a big shot once--but that was outside these walls--now you're inside." What the warden fails to realize is that Big Mike is a celebrity, now in a building full of admirers. Russo strides through the prison like he owns the place, saying "long time no see" to all his old chums. He even gets mandatory prison sex on his terms! At least I think that's what they're talking about here:

Try not to think about this too hard.

But Big Mike isn't just planning on getting by; no, Russo's in it to win it. And with the entire prison population at his beck and call, that's not too hard to arrange. Russo's men on the outside kidnap the Warden on his way home, and with the help of a little makeup, and samples of the warden's speech patterns (from his appearances in newsreels and radio programs, naturally), they're able to come up with an imposter Warden--

"A clever makeup job--but he's a head taller than me, moron."

And the imposter Warden arrives at the island prison with plenty of imposter guards, in a wonderfully moody panel which makes excellent use of color and negative space:

Oh, right, I need a joke here. So two Batmans walk into a bar... Batmen? Crap, I'm almost out of spa--

I really like how neatly the plan unfolds. A fake driver gets them a fake Warden gets them fake guards into the prison. The fake guards take the real guards alive, and Russo gives the real guards the old "carrot and stick" speech. The carrot: "play ball with me and you'll be eatin' outa gold plates!" And the stick?

As he threatened the guards, Big Mike remembered his tragic backstory: as a child he made a face, and it stuck that way. Now only crime could fill the hole in his heart...

So far this is legitimately pretty excellent--a really interesting premise, colorful characters, really nice art, Batman already six steps behind, and the promise of our hero's difficult assault on a prison-turned-island fortress. Also there are a number of wonderful little touches--I love how, when Russo is freed by his men, the first thing he does is change into some comfortable shoes, after the painful prison standard issues.

Anyway, Russo gets the guards, but he isn't done recruiting. He decides to keep most of the prisoners in line and unaware, so his secret takeover remains secret for now; but he does free the worst of the worst, the condemned men on "Murderer's Row". So begins one of my favorite parts of any Batman comic, the Epic Crime Spree! Sometimes this is just told in normal panels, the comic equivalent of a montage, but sometimes, as it is here, we get something special, more expressionistic than Batman normally gets. Take a look:

It's like a beautiful dream! A beautiful, carcinogenic dream.

And the best part? After each crime, Russo's boys flee by motor boats back to prison--the last place the Coast Guard expects them to go.

But enough about the plot! As the issue finally brings Batman in, it continues the surprisingly well-developed themes. Specifically, what we're exploring here is the philosophical concept of reality--how it relates to image, and how you tell the difference.

We've already seen several conflicts along these lines. There are two different competing images of Russo; is he the defeated criminal, out of sight and out of mind, like every crook at the end of a Batman story? Or is he a celebrity, triumphantly arriving in a place he can control? Russo has in a certain sense imposed his will on reality, turning the very site of his imprisonment into the seat of a criminal empire.

Then there are the two Wardens Higgins. They look the same; act the same; talk the same; and the false Warden even carries on the normal prison business for most of the inmates. In fact, their main difference appears to be that the real Warden (as seen in a newsreel) believes in capital punishment, while the fake one (under Russo's orders) lets the condemned men go free. Is that a difference in kind, or only in degree?

And don't forget the guards--once Russo imposes his standard gang conditions on them (work for me and earn riches, reject me and earn death), are they any different from their imposters? How do we differentiate between reality and pretense? The next page begins to answer that question.

The new act begins with a movie shoot (by "World Studios", presumably a play on Universal) of a bank robbery scene, and I do mean shoot:

Notice how the actual robber's shoe breaks through the panel border as he breaks the movie's fourth wall.

Before the cops realize what's happened, spectator Bruce Wayne (you may have heard of him) recognizes that the crook was firing real bullets. The "bogus movie truck", as the narration terms it, pulls away as the robber hops on, with a quickly-changed Batman following. (Is it bogus, though? Does the answer change depending on whether or not there's film in the camera?)

In the ensuing chase, Batman catches sight of the robber's face, and recognizes him as Trigger Sherman, who should be on Death Row. Batman tells Commissioner Gordon he surmises that Russo is behind all this somehow, and a skeptical Gordon takes Batman on a guided tour of North Island Prison, where the assumed reality and the actual reality have temporarily aligned:

Fanfiction idea: Batman struggles with unpopularity while attending a high school for criminals. Teen Batman in... "Prison High"

Gordon and Batman visit Trigger Sherman, nicely behind bars where he should be, and then check on Mike Russo. While they trade sarcastic pleasantries (of the "Oh no, my good sir, the pleasure is all mine, I'm sure, sneer sneer" variety), Batman is again the only one to notice the false note--or rather, the only true note:

"The guards simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?"

Now, having noticed this tiny discrepancy, Batman could act overtly here--beat the truth out of Trigger Sherman, for instance, or ask Gordon to have Russo transfered to another prison. Instead, he fights illusion with illusion.

"I like my soap hard, with lots of grit in it! Nothin' cleans yer deep places like a wet wad of sandpaper!"

Following the second most important rule of prison, "Killer" beats somebody up on the first day. The fact that he chooses a guard for this is probably what gets the attention of one of Russo's men. They recruit "Killer"--in actuality, of course, Bruce Wayne under a lot of makeup--and plan on pulling a warehouse job that very night. But how does he get a message over the wall to Robin? By writing it on a baseball, of course.

Only Batman could casually insert "step 4, hit a home run on demand" into his complicated crime-fighting plan. He's just so damn American!

At the warehouse, however, Wayne's secret is literally brought to light:

"Uh... no, I, uh... I just got that face meltin' disease! You know, the one that melts your face?"

Batman and Robin fight valiantly, but the plot requires them to lose, so they get outnumbered just because. (In my opinion, they did not meet the minimum number of puns in order to win.) I don't mind, though, because this is always a fun plot development:

Batman, behind bars? How delightfully absurd!

Russo details his plan for Batman: oddly enough, the caped crusader will be executed precisely according to current state law, in the prison's gas chamber. For those of us who don't know how it works, a gas chamber was literally a small room where the condemned prisoner was strapped to a chair. Underneath the chair was a pan of water; a lever would release several chemical tablets, which would dissolve into poison gas when it hit the water. Russo intends to follow this procedure to the letter--although he'll put in one tablet instead of three, giving Batman a "lingering death".

In fact, Batman even gets a darkly comic last meal:

Robin you coward! (Also, what the hell is he serving? Dog food?)

In his infinite kindness--and increasing convergence with the reality of the post he's assumed--Russo even lets Batman have his last words with Robin. (No, no conjugal visit.) Our hero's final speech, however, isn't dramatic, defiant, or even noble. Here they are, they last words of the Batman:

"I wish I had a Burpo Seltzer Tablet!"

Batman claims that his stomach is bothering him after his last meal, and Big Mike lets Robin get Batman some tablets. Batman all but hits Robin over the head with his plan, and finally the dumb kid gets it. They lock Robin into a cell, but he's able to escape with the help of a magnet constructed from the wireless set in his belt. But can he get to the gas chamber in time to save Batman? IS THIS THE END OF MY BLOG?!

Hah! "Breathless minutes." Good one, Narrator.

Anonymous Thug there is right to doubt his senses. As soon as they pull Batman out of the gas chamber, he comes back to life. In a flurry of fists, he and Robin punch right through to reality:

"Take that, Plato's Parable of the Cave!"

Batman takes out Russo...

...and Robin tricks the rest of the goons by threatening to drop the "cyanide tablets" into a bucket of water and kill them all. Time for a denouement panel!

Finis!

Batman has the final word, here: even if you can't tell what's real or isn't based on your senses, you can still think (and punch) your way to an empirical truth. Dress up all you want, but in the end, life and death and pain will always out. Truly, these are deep, meaningful ideas about the nature of the universe.

This Issue Brought To You By Burpo Seltzer Tablets

"Burpo: It's Not Cyanide!"™

[METAPOST] Reports of my arrest have been greatly exaggerated

2011-05-13T18:10:00.001-07:00

"DETROIT -- A man dressed as Batman was arrested on Wednesday after police in a small Michigan town found him hanging off the side of a building and carrying concealed weapons including a baton and a can of chemical irritant spray.
Police in Petoskey, in northwest Michigan, received a call reporting that a man dressed as Batman, a comic book hero and the subject of a number of blockbuster movies, was on the roof of a building in the center of the town of about 6,000 people.
Officers found Mark Wayne Williams, 31, hanging off the western wall of the building. They pulled him back onto the roof and found he was carrying the baton, spray and a pair of lead-lined gloves.
Williams was charged with several counts of carrying concealed weapons, one count of carrying a gas-ejecting weapon and another count of creating a disturbance, said John Calabrese, public safety chief in Petoskey.
"He really didn't offer us any explanation," Calabrese said when asked why Williams was in costume. "Our officers did not interrogate him at any length."
Calabrese said it was not the first time Williams has appeared in public in costume. A few years ago, he caught the attention of police by dressing as the Crow, a figure from a graphic novel."

Not me.

The thing I like most about that article, other than the subject matter itself, is that they felt the need to explain what the word "Batman" means. Oh, is Batman a comic book hero and the subject of several movies? As an archaeologist reading this newspaper in the year 3457, I appreciate the helpful context.

The rest of us were, I think, well aware. The article isn't news otherwise. Look at the last sentence there--do you think this same guy made the internet rounds when he dressed up as The Crow? Probably not. That's partially because the Crow is less well-known*, but mostly because the story is not "Dude dressed up in costume when it wasn't Halloween".

The story is the picture. The story is "That guy thought he was Batman?" The media and the internet (not just this story, but the way it has been passed around) armed with the picture, turned what is probably a story of mental illness into a joke about masculinity. The real joke is on us, though; it just goes to show that our modern icons of masculinity are fictional characters. That's a step down from, say, the action heroes of the 80s and 90s, who were at least actual human beings. Theoretically you could be, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger** if you just lifted enough weights and maybe did some steroids. And he had human flaws, too, like his accent, or Kindergarten Cop. But Mark Williams is never going to be Batman, and neither are you.***

------------------------

*And rightly so--as a comic it's rubbish, although taken as the flailings of a moderately-talented artist filtering staggering amounts of rage, sorrow and guilt through therapeutic wish-fulfillment violence, it's at least interesting.

**I cannot believe I spelled that correctly without looking.

***I said waaaaaaaay back in my first ever post here that part of Batman's appeal is precisely the opposite--that you could be him, conceivably. That's true on a physical level--if you had his money, his determination, and his dead parents, sure. It's at least more reachable than, say, getting chosen by an alien race as the new recipient of magical powers. But it's still not something millions and millions of people should be aspiring to, because unreasonable standards make everybody unhappy.

[METAPOST] State of the Bat-Union

2011-05-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

So.

There are five posts remaining in 1941, and when they are finished I plan on taking a short hiatus. This will probably become a regular thing, after the completion of each year of Batman stuff, to give myself a chance to recharge and hopefully prevent long breaks in the middle of years when I get overwhelmed.

I will get overwhelmed, though, and although this blog is important to me, it's not more important than my actual career. Right now most of my creative energy is going towards real screenwriting, and most of my normal energy and time is going to maintaining 4 separate jobs (an awesome 9 to 5 and several ongoing freelancing gigs). So when I will actually get to those next five posts is still up in the air. I'd like to get one up this weekend, and potentially that long-overdue bonus one up in the middle of next week, but again, not sure. From there, who knows?

In the interests of providing you content and me an outlet, during periods of overwhelm and hiatus, there will be semi-regular posts, some Batman related, some talking about other culture I'm currently into; I can tie just about anything back into Batman, though, so no worries. For example, did you know Batman invented the semicolon? It's true!

Note: not actually true.

[Comics]: Detective Comics #58, [untitled]

2011-04-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

Publication date: December, 1941.
Author: Bob Kane

It's been a long time since we've had an issue where they forgot to put a title in the opening crawl, but rest assured: this is indeed about "the strange, almost ludicrous figure of the Penguin--the umbrella man!"

I have generally enjoyed the Penguin. He's one of Batman's sillier villains, a short, waddling man with a beakish nose and a penchant for tuxedos. In fact, in the way his absurd physical attributes match his moniker, the Penguin hearkens back to the old Dick Tracy villains, and the corresponding notion that crime should be colorful (and ugly). What makes the Penguin work is not his stories (can you name one? I can't, outside of the execrable Tim Burton movie), or even his array of weaponized umbrellas (although that was what I loved about him as a child).

No, the Penguin gets by on his attitude. He comports himself with the kind of dignity only given to people who actually use the word "comport". The tuxedo, the self-confidence bordering on arrogance, the breezy sense of violent whimsy--the man has style. It's that peculiar mix of dignity and absurdity that makes him a compelling character and a very fun villain to watch.

Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, of course, have no dignity whatsoever:

Privately shattered by the boy's critique, the "Grrrrrreat" Bustolli ended his art career and found new work as a cereal mascot in a tiger costume.

Knowing that no school would take an unofficially adopted ward, Bruce has brought Dick here in an attempt to educate him. But Bruce only actually knows one lesson: the importance of money, something he demonstrates to the kid by showing him two paintings (by "Watteau") collectively worth half a million dollars. Also admiring the paintings is a peculiar fellow in a tuxedo and top hat, carrying an umbrella. In his stature and coloring, he closely resembles a nearby penguin on a pedestal--which is either a rather boring sculpture, or an animal that has escaped from the zoo for an afternoon of culture.

"Bruce, are you high right now? Because--"

"I am so high."

"Because I am totally high."

Suddenly--or as the comic puts it:

The Watteau paintings have been stolen! Nobody can leave until everybody has been searched!

All fall under the questioning gaze and curious, tender hands of the museum guards--even Bruce Wayne, who, as a member of the ruling class, is usually above such petty suspicions. Even the man in the tuxedo has to open his umbrella, complaining good-naturedly about bad luck.

Consider this hypothetical: let's say you have successfully absconded with two paintings worth half a million dollars. What do you do next? Sell them, of course. Ah, but you (probably) do not cut half so ridiculous a figure as the Penguin. He doesn't need money; what he needs is respect.

"If he turns out to be a Jehovah's Witness, then you can drill him."

The boss of these thugs, by the way, is known only as "Boss", either because the writers were lazy, or because he's actually Bruce Springsteen. (What? He obviously grew old and left his music career to become a time-traveling gangster. It could happen!)

Anyway, once Penguin pulls the purloined paintings out of his pumbrella (mmm, alliteration), he immediately earns the undying respect of Old Man Springsteen and his goons (drums and base guitar, respectively). Penguin uses his ingenuity to plan heists, the goons carry them out, and Bob's your father's brother, leaving the newspapers just spinning and montaging into one another with curiosity.

Obviously Bruce Wayne never fights crime unless it's right in front of his nose, so the comic does the narrative equivalent of buying a vowel--it arranges yet another convenient coincidence.

"Fatty"? Jeez, Bruce. Didn't your mother ever teach you--oh. Oh man. I'm so sorry. I--I didn't think.

The lights go out, and when they come back on, the diamond is gone. Bruce starts to notice a pattern:

"I mean, I would like to investigate these crimes, but it's happy hour at that awesome dive bar tonight. Two for one beers! My hands are tied."

Later, the Penguin gets into an argument with "The Boss" about money (after all, royalties on "Born to Run" won't start rolling in for another 34 years). And let this be a lesson to you, children: never argue money with friends. Especially when your friend has an umbrella machine gun. Even after murdering the Boss, however, the Penguin possesses a perfectly polite panache: "If none of you lads objects--I'm your new boss!" The (pr)E Street Band is... surprisingly okay with that.

That night, Bruce Wayne enjoys happy hour at a scuzzy bar on the waterfront. He's in disguise, of course, mostly because society is not yet ready for a man's man who prefers the appletini. Also because he's eavesdropping on a few of Penguin's thugs, who, like most thugs, have an otherwise rare, unfortunate condition known as Exposition Tourette's. It's actually quite sad--they can't help but tell each other the broad details of a plan they already know. For just a dollar a day, you can help these poor goons buy the medicine they need. Call 1-800-HENCHMEN! Operators are standing by.

"You're drunk!"

"You're drunk!"

"I'm twelve years old!"

"Then you're under arrest for underage intoxication!"

Is it just me, or this is issue vacillating wildly between the evocative--

And the ridiculous?

You don't know want to know the context for this picture. Suffice to say, that was the ugliest painting I have ever seen in my life, and Batman's true victory today was ruining it.

But perhaps this wild contrast in tones is to a purpose: the examination of contrasting identities. Batman stories (and this comes from both noirs and gothics) are often about twins--Bruce Wayne and his secret identity, Batman (Order) and Joker (Chaos), Bruce Wayne and Ra's al Ghoul, and of course both sides of Two-Face, just to name a few--and here we have yet another. Today it's a question of couth.

This is why Freestyle Jousting never caught on.

During this confrontation, each panel represents the duality at play here visually. Not only are the characters here placed on either side of the frame, facing each other and isolated from any potential background (assuming that's not just a case of artistic laziness), but their figures convey contrasting attitudes quite nicely. Batman is in motion, ready for action, charging ahead! Penguin is calm, stationary, ready to defend himself but not concerned about it either. And look at the way Penguin is bound by the lines of the panel, whereas Batman breaks out of it (his foot and cape poking out into the previous panel).

Penguin frames the conflict as the old mind/body divide--Batman's muscles versus his intellect. That's true, as far as it goes, but I think both visually and in terms of what happens in this "fight", there's a deeper layer here. To me, it's about investment. Batman is in the moment, physically present, fully engaged in both the battle and the narrative framework in which it exists. Penguin, on the other hand, is detached, above it all, observing even as he participates. His reaction to poisoning Batman with a spray of noxious green gas from his trick umbrella is completely out of sync--barely even looking at the man he's trying to kill, Penguin is still continuing the previous conversation, concluding that Batman would never make a good partner in crime... not because Batman is too moral, but because he wouldn't "appreciate the beauty" of a good theft.

Appreciation; observation; a detached, ironic point of view. Everything's a joke to him. Penguin is only an "intellectual" for show, quoting Keats to his thugs and telling them he's going home to "browse through Shakespeare". The man's a proto-hipster, embracing the top hat and tails because they set him apart from everyone else. (Look at him! He's never not smoking!)

Why an umbrella? Why not a cane, a much more traditional "rich man" accessory? Because an open umbrella in the rain closes you off from the world. Because it isolates you.

After rescuing his henchmen and successfully completing the theft, Penguin exits, stage left--but first he smashes the burglar alarm, leaving the unconscious, gassed Batman for the police to find.

Shockingly, the comic actually follows through on its own continuity--where previous issues would have had the police arresting him, now they're just questioning him in his new role as an honorary member of the department.

Note the curtains opening--we're about to see a very clever little show.

Mr. Boniface, in a genuinely surprising and interesting twist, is actually the Penguin himself! According to "Mr. Boniface" (whose nose is so large it looks like he has a BONer In the middle oF his fACE), Batman has been threatening him for weeks, demanding protection money and bragging that his pseudo-police status meant he was above the law.

"Officers, I ask you--is the proud, erect nose of a liar?"

Batman is still too hazy from that poison gas to do what he'd normally do in this situation, ie., bribe the cops to look the other way. (Wayne's annual contributions to the Policeman's Ball are the only things keeping Grayson away from Child Services.) In the absence of a counter-argument, the police are convinced that Batman should be taken in, because all crime is handled on a plutocratic basis--rich man beats dude in ridiculous costume any day. (Saves tons on paperwork.)

But the Penguin's perfidious plot is not quite plenary:

I'm surprised accidents like this don't happen more often, given that Gotham appears to have no roads, street signs, or distinguishing features.

A dazed Batman stumbles from the wreckage, to be swooped up by Penguin's thugs. Later, Batman is subjected to a full-on gloating session. Penguin wants nothing from him except an audience. Neck wattles all a-quiver with self satisfaction, Penguin explains each step of his plan: stealing a valuable idol from himself, framing Batman for the crime in order to draw suspicion away from him, and then helping Batman "escape" from the cops so as to solidify any questions of the caped crusader's guilt. Batman realizes that he looks guilty if he stays here, but will get shot if he leaves. Based on past results, I'd go with leaving, given that the police in Gotham couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. Batman chooses a different strategy, however.

I think half the reason Batman is alive right now is so that he can admire those umbrellas.

While Penguin goes over his prize collection with all the zeal of a fetishist ("Hmm! Got this one in Spain! Hmm!" he burbles), Batman is busy tapping a Morse code message out over his foot phone. Robin, dressed and ready for action upon hearing of the accusations against Batman over the phone, receives the call on his "telephone belt", and decides to rush to his aid. At last, an excuse not to do that homework.

Soon enough, Penguin's doorbell rings. "It's a telegram messenger!" comes the call from outside.

Let's all just take a moment to admire that. "Sssppllff!" What a fantastic sound effect.

In the ensuing battle, Batman is able to free himself from his ropes using some broken glass on the floor. ("I've got to cut these cords--and quickly!" he exclaims to no one in particular. It would appear that Exposition Tourette's is catching.) Batman and Robin make quick work of the goons, but they've lost the war--Penguin holds them at bay with an umbrella while he phones the police.

(It occurs to me that Penguin could actually, randomly, use a completely normal umbrella to scare somebody into doing what he wants. You'd never know!)

Our heroes decide that they'd rather not have to punch their way through the entire Gotham Police Department--oh, they could do it, it's just that their fists would get tired eventually--and so make their way out the back. Batman is pissed enough to make punny ultimatums.

Get it? The bird is ready for a "coup", aka "coop", which is where you keep birds, albeit not penguins? Okay, so it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Batman and Robin disguise themselves as a couple of street people, begging for alms outside Penguin's mansion. After several nights of this, our heroes catch Penguin and his gang heading out on a job. As it turns out, they're pulling the old "Red-Headed League" trick. If you haven't read this original Sherlock Holmes story, give it a shot here. As a detective Batman owes a good deal to Holmes, although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories had fewer homicidal clowns.

At any rate, the "Red-Headed League" trick is where you gain entry by subterfuge to an (otherwise innocuous) underground location which happens to share a back wall with your real target--in this case, the Diamond Exchange vault--and then drill or dig through, a little bit at a time. Holmes elected to surprise the villains at the other end of their tunnel, but Batman and Robin have been dicking (and Brucing!) around, and are too late to do anything but the most dramatic possible entrance.

Robin: "Actually I haven't jumped through the window yet, Batman. First I have to tie my shoe."

While Batman and Robin beat up Penguin's thugs in revenge for the framing, the Penguin, caught in the brazen act of open and unequivocal theft, undergoes a remarkable transformation. First he levels his umbrella at our heroes, snarling (no more pretense of good humor) and--for the first time--breaking through the panel border. He's had enough, and is now taking an active, interested role in the proceedings. Then he's seen by the police spraying deadly acid into the face of one of his henchmen:

Ouch. That's probably not covered under medical, I don't think.

Look at that panel, contrasted with Penguin's previous images. Rather than restrained, he's drawn with action lines; he's leaning forward, looming over the rest of the figures, indicating his complicity and responsibility for setting all this into motion; he's finally been caught openly committing a crime, as indicated by the police observers--who, it should be noted, are the first people besides his thugs to name him as the Penguin. He's no longer separated from his actions or the situation they have caused, but overlaps and is overlapped by them--integrated visually and thus metaphorically into the situation, and no longer reacting like anything but a villain.

Finally, he makes a run for it:

Awesome.

Look, he's lost his top hat on the way--his respectability, his safer identity as Boniface. Penguins, of course, don't wear top hats, and the art does a lovely job of showing that Penguin has now stepped fully into his iconic persona. The umbrella is no longer a symbol of isolation, but firmly of violence and crime, a reputation he carries with him going forward. A downward sloping roof, but the rise of a villain.

Fittingly, Penguin makes a run for the el-train--trains, of course, being a traditional symbol of change and freedom. The climactic fight plays out largely in symbolic terms--Batman throws a punch, Penguin loses hold of his umbrella (which we'll see in a moment was full of diamonds), and the exchange leaves both men affected in opposite ways by the rumbling trains:

I'm beginning to think that he thinks real penguins actually say "hee hee".

Batman is alive but shaken thanks to the train passing over him--a fitting conclusion to an adventure in which the cops' newfound trust in him was sorely tested. If nothing else, this was a story about Batman's vulnerability to forces larger or smarter than him, from Penguin's plan which our hero barely guessed at, to the poison gas that left him virtually helpless and the acid he and Robin barely escaped, to actually being taken in by the police as a thief. There's a wider world out there, and Batman's ability to change it is not unlimited. After all, Penguin gets away, scot free.

If there's a reason why Batman has the best and most interesting rogue's gallery of any major superhero, I think it has its origins in stories like this, or the recent introduction of Scarecrow. In contrast to Spiderman, or Superman, these early Batman stories are often not about Batman, but instead use Batman as a force of nature, or an iconic symbol, against which to measure deeper, richer characters such as Scarecrow, the Joker, and now the Penguin.

It's no coincidence, I think, that Batman's main villains have received less and less comeuppance for their crimes as we go along--the Joker is always "killed", whereas Scarecrow was jailed, and Penguin simply allowed to flee. The comic is learning, I think, that its villains are more interesting and attractive to the reader than Batman and Robin (as characters, not icons); that it's far easier to bring on recurring villains if you don't tie them up in narrative knots ("So, I know Joker was shot, stabbed, poisoned, drowned, and thrown into a volcano in his last appearance, but let's figure out a way to bring him back..."); and that the comic's moral constraints do not necessarily require crime to be punished. Judging by the statements and actions of the heroes--who we've seen time and time again as the arbiter's of each issue's moral lesson--Penguin's real crime was making life very inconvenient for Batman, not insurance fraud or the murder of the old crime Boss. Or even running away with a bunch of diamonds.

"Yes, he'll probably be back someday," agreed the others, as they all divided up the jewels amongst themselves. "For one thing, we never found his stolen diamonds." They all shared a significant glance.

[Comics]: Detective Comics #57, "Twenty-Four Hours to Live!"

2011-04-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

Publication date: November, 1941
Author: Bob Kane

It's been a genre trope ever since the dawn of noir: the slow-acting poison. The dead man walking. And even before that, perhaps going back to the days of myth, when god and human alike were born with a foretold death sentence. We've all thought about it--what would we do if we knew that we were going to die, not years from now, but a month, a week, a day? From Ikiru to The Ring, from DOA to Crank, the idea of the death sentence has always fascinated both writers and audiences... perhaps because what we wish we would do in that situation is become truly free--from laws, from rules, from caution and restraint.

What would we say to those we care about? What would we do to those we hate? "You'll be dead tomorrow" is a blank check to whomever hears it, and whatever they spend that on will reveal who they are--or who they've always wanted to be.

Based on his actions, Jasper Sneed has always wanted to be an asshole.

"Damn you, disembodied voice!"

Sneed goes to his doctor, who tells him he's been dosed with enough Oriental poison to take down Gengis Khan. There's no cure, no pain, and he'll be dead in twenty-four hours, give or take the time Sneed spent reading old issues of Look Magazine in the waiting room.

Does he go to the police? Does he vow revenge on the man who killed him? Does he spend a last happy day at the amusement park?

No, he decides to fuck with his family for his own entertainment.

The butler's face betrayed no hint of emotion, but inside his heart fell; for years he had grown fonder of Mr. Sneed, and now he had made his move, putting all his love into three words. They had been so cruelly misinterpreted... "Yes sir," he said softly, putting on a brave face.

One by one the family is assembled, each of them the very epitome of spoiled, selfish hangers-on just waiting for Sneed to die so they can get a hold of his money. And they still come off better than him; they're just greedy, but Sneed's a sadist.

There's Sneed's sister, a dowager in a fur coat with a permanent sneer on her face; her well-dressed slut of a son (Sneed's nephew); and Sneed's niece, who dreams of singing in the opera.

Then there's Sneed's business partner, John Harvey, and Harvey's cousin (who bears the delightfully baroque name of Mosmer Clay), an undertaker. One fat and short, one tall and thin, they're like a nursery rhyme that's gone sour.

All five of them assemble in the living room, wondering what's going on. Jasper doesn't keep them in suspense for long. Admirably brief, given his short time left on this earth, Sneed tells them that one of them has poisoned him, and that he will have his revenge. Also, all of them will be getting some money.

What we have here is a variation on a plot structure we haven't seen in a while--the beloved murder mystery! ...with the victim still walking around, of course. And pissed.

These suspects:

Might all be victims by the time Sneed gets done with them. Who needs Batman? I'm gonna go get some popcorn.

Note that the bank manager is so shocked his bifocals are hovering in mid-air.

One million dollars in 1941, by the way, is about 14.6 million today, so maybe Stuttering Stanley there is just wondering how all that will fit in one little brown briefcase.

Armed with enough cash to buy a small country, Sneed decides to go shopping (but sadly, not at Tiny Nation Emporium, where if you buy Luxembourg today, they'll throw in Estonia for free!). He buys a car, a saw, and a screwdriver.

"What kind of shoddy workmanship is this? Serves me right for buying American."

Sneed pulls off the steering wheel, tossing it out of the car with barely-contained glee. Mosmer realizes there are no doorknobs on the doors... just in time to see Sneed jump out of the car and slam his own door shut. The deranged little man gives the car a good shove, laughing at how he was able to turn a car into a deathtrap with nothing but a saw and a few hours. The doors won't open, the car can't stop or turn, the windows are unbreakable, and the bright yellow vehicle runs right off the nearby pier and into the water, becoming a bright yellow tomb for the undertaker.

As Jasper crows over his victory, there are still eighteen hours remaining.

The dying man next sets his sights on his business partner, John Harvey. He visits "the hangout of a notorious criminal", which he knows about for some reason, and buys the man's goons away with a thousand dollar bill. Then he goes into the back room and pays the "notorious criminal" 100 grand to kill the partner--half now, half when it's done. Literally. He cuts the bills in half. What a dick.

"Well, uh, sure Mac, that's oddly specific but I'll do my best!

...

Hey Mac did you know your eye's gonna come out?"

Meanwhile, Lucille Sneed (the niece who wants to sing in the opera) is meeting with her good friend Linda Page and her boyfriend, Bruce Wayne, looking even more bored than usual. Which is hard to believe because Lucille's story boils down to "So my crazy uncle is dying and homicidal and probably crazy," which, I mean, it's no killer clown, but it beats the hell out of daytime TV.

Later, however, Batman rushes out to see if John Harvey knows anything about his business partner's newfound derangement. He arrives too late to catch Harvey, but not too late to scare the ever-loving shit out of some poor clerk:

"Let's go, Robin--I mean, uh, Santa's Helpful Elf... boy... uh... Oh, fuck it. I'm Batman. Look at the cape, moron."

Wow, I was so amused by the whole "I need a secret identity to protect my secret identity" thing that I completely missed Batman saying, "Let's go, Robin--I've got a hunch we're going to see some action." Let's see how the next scene plays with that in mind.

Okay, so the thugs get Harvey into the steel mill and immediately decide to tie him up. (Hm.) And apparently one of the gangsters is named Silky. (hmmmm) And they're going shove Harvey deep into this furnace, when suddenly:

"Like... in a good way?"

Surely they must be talking about shooting Batman with their guns--something nobody, gay or straight, could possibly want done to them.

...

The next words out of Batman's mouth are, I kid you not, "Ah! Very satisfying--very satisfying, indeed!" I give the hell up.

Anyway, after the... uh... "fight"... is over... Harvey, uh, wipes the sweat off his face and--okay skipping ahead some more. Some part of this story has to stop with the innuendos...

dammit comic! I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt!

Sneed does this bizarre "seduction" process where first he gives the Amazingly-Still Man ten grand to "play a joke" for him, pretending to be a statue. Then he covers the ASM in bronze paint, so he'll really look like a statue, because the woman in question (Sneed's sister) collects statues. Then he's like, "So I'll give you another 50 grand if you kill her for me."

"Wink," added the human statue, his eyes glued open by the paint. "Salacious wink."

Mrs. Biggs receives her statue, and while Batman and Robin decide to go ask her about Sneed, she returns to her gallery to admire her present once again.

"As a man who seldom moves, I actually have very weak muscles, so it's going to take me like forever to beat you to death."

Luckily Robin bursts in and beats the ASM down. Meanwhile, Sneed is already on to other plans, throwing money around like it was paper or something. Oh well. Can't take it with you, can't leave it to a bunch of corpses, screw charity, let's go hire some more gangsters. Also he buys a golf course just to make sure it's empty that afternoon.

"I'd wait until tomorrow, but, you know, he'll be dead by then, so..."

Mrs. Biggs tries to warn her son, but the boy has perfected the art of not listening to her crap and so hangs up. Batman rushes off to save him.

Ten says it's the old "exploding golf ball" trick.

Before Stanley can give it a big ol' whack of a drive, Batman's silk rope pulls the club out of his hands. ("Comes in handy as a whip, too!" says Batman. Really.)

The thugs posing as club members descend on Batman and Robin and are defeated in comically easy fashion. Then Batman tosses the suspect golf ball onto the green to see what will happen (without even yelling "Fore!" Bad form, Batman):

Hah! You owe me ten bucks!

Batman's seen Sneed's goons try to throw his business partner in the furnace, club his sister to death, and blow up his nephew. Sneed is a dangerous man with a lot of money and nothing to lose. What should be done?

"And with that, my work here is done."

Sneed, nearing the end of his rope, is hounded at every turn by police cars. They've found the undertaker's body, they've got his description out over the radio ("wildeyed man carrying a bag full of money"), and now he can't even finish his vengeance by giving Lucille a throat spray full of acid. So not fair.

"Part of the black shadows?" Please. Batman's costume was designed with stealth in mind. Robin's, on the other hand, was designed to be visible by the cheap seats at the circus.

Batman and Robin wait all night long for Sneed to arrive, and then follow him upstairs to see where he's going. Sneed opens a door, enters... and confronts his killer!

Really? The butler did it? Really?

Batman stops Sneed before Jasper can put a bullet in the butler, and the last thing the poor, unfortunate, evil son of a bitch feels before he succumbs to the poison is Batman's fist in his face. Serves him right!

"Red Herring?!"

As it turns out, the "butler" is actually Jasper's twin brother, Richard. They were both in love with the same woman, but she married Jasper (maybe he was less evil back then?) When Jasper ran a poor person down with his car and drove off (okay so maybe he wasn't less evil back then), Richard took his place and the terrible responsibility, to avoid disgracing the Jasper's wife, the woman he still loved. It was all for nothing, however--the wife died, there were allegations of abuse, and an upset Richard decided to get revenge. He tattooed love on the fingers of one hand and hate on the other, lifted some weights, and then broke out of jail to come poison Jasper, because, uh, I dunno. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Nothing, though, and I mean nothing fazes Batman. His response to this ridiculously convoluted backstory is literally "I suspected as much!" God damn.

One gets the sense that Batman doesn't really give a crap about Jasper, and even sympathizes with and admires Richard, but the law is the law is the law is the law, so Richard will be getting the chair for this.

Batman and Robin shrugged.

"Go for some ice cream?"

"Yeah, okay."

What a dark and twisted story this was. Probably the grimmest, gloomiest one yet. Batman saved some lives, sure, but otherwise he sort of just wandered through a maze of hate, deceit, and murderous intentions. I don't think this era's Batman is cut out to deal with this level of banal human evil.

I mean, look at them. At the dark (yet elegant) conclusion to this little tale of woe, Batman and Robin are just staring at each other in dumbfoundedness. They don't even know what to do with a criminal who sets out to commit murder, succeeds, and then kills himself in despair. There's no room for a goofy pair of two-fisted crimefighters in that scenario, no room at all.

This was a good and interesting story, but I think I need to go take a shower now. Maybe next week's will be lighter fare.

*checks* Oh hell yeah, it's about the Penguin! Awesome. Now I feel better. Tune in next time, boys and girls!

[Comics]: Detective Comics #56, "The Stone Idol"

2011-04-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Publication date: October, 1941.
Author: Bob Kane

There are those Batman stories out there which have a strong focus on psychological realism, telling stories about crimes and criminals which may be colorful, but are still grounded in the reality of the characters and of Gotham City.

And then there's this:

what is this I don't even

As our utterly ridiculous story opens, Bruce and Dick are on vacation, driving across America because, well, they're bored. Who could blame them? Crime in Gotham has gotten kind of stale of late, walking scarecrows notwithstanding. Plus it's not as though Dick goes to school or anything. That would require him to have been legally adopted, not just found at the circus. And I don't think we've ever actually seen Bruce work--not even "running Wayne Enterprises" kind of work. So he probably asked for some vacation time, and Commissioner Gordon's couch was kind enough to agree.

In this fashion our heroes happen to stumble blindly into yet another series of weird happenstances, like a proto-Scooby gang. (It's all part of the bat-thropic principle: Batman and Robin only drive through towns where weird crimes are occurring because otherwise it wouldn't be a story.)

This time it's what the narration calls a "ghost town", but I don't think those words mean what they think it means. For one thing they've decided that the town, formerly the bustling center of a thriving silver mining operation, is actually named "Ghost Gulch City", which, okay, but that's kind of pessimistic on the part of the town founders. For another thing, there are still people living in this ghost town. People with strange superstitions and an even stranger assortment of hats:

The bartender is wearing a baseball cap, I am not even kidding

Anyway, Beardy McForeshadowing turns out to be right. That night, while Bruce and Dick are "enjoying" the quaint local hospitality of an inn in a town where even the jobs factory has gone out of business, a terrible--excuse me, "turrible"--storm blows in. The rain puts a truck in danger as it washes out the mountain road; and a lightning bolt strikes at the feet of the giant stone idol which apparently has been on the mountain, worshipped by Native Americans, since... well, since before Beardy McForeshadowing could shave.

It hasn't rained in 2000 years? Okay now I know why everybody left.

"Mad Mack" crows over the fallen idol, immediately trying to use his newfound spiritual cache for evil purposes. "The stone idol's powerful--last night he upped and spoke to me--about you, Mr. Mayor. He said--" But before he can end that sentence with "He said you should give me all your fancy booze", the stone idol flashes and comes to life!

Worse, he's totally pissed:

A symbol of Native America, justly angry that his land has been stolen and filled with strip-mines and whorehouses? This looks like a job for Batman!

Everybody runs off, except for the Mayor, who decides to stand his ground. He's not leaving, goddammit. Not when being Mayor gives him two for one beers on weekends. Sadly, he is not smooshed by a giant stone fist; instead, the statue flashes again, and goes back to normal.

This story is even better if you imagine they're talking about a stoned, rampaging Billy Idol.

What we have here, fascinatingly, is a religious conflict. Even in the face of what some consider to be plain-sight miracles, the skeptic remains. Belief seems natural, given the evidence, but carries with it the price of leaving their home forever (or risk incurring the stone god's wrath).

Debate sweeps the "ghost" town--are they afraid of something that isn't real, as the Mayor claims? Or is the correct decision, both morally and pragmatically, for the townspeople to follow the edicts of their new divine leader? Devotion does not come without sacrifice, but disbelief in reality does not come without getting smooshed by a giant stone fist. Which path will the citizens of "Ghost Gulch City" choose?

Whoops, time's up.

This is so silly.

Aw, comic! You were doing so well. But here's where it all falls apart:

...

A walking, talking giant stone man? Okay, I can buy that. But flesh and blood servants? I call shenanigans.

Remember how I said Batman and Robin were driving around like a proto-Scooby gang? Yeah, more prophetic words have never been spoken (not even by Beardy McForeshadowing). Because those are clearly not statues, or even Native American ghosts. No, they are clearly criminal mugs who have never actually seen Native Americans but maybe read about them in a book once. That is why their costumes are "Fred Flintstone," "naked midget", and "caveman", respectively.

In fact, this is the exact same set-up countless episodes of Scooby Doo used in the late sixties and early seventies. You've got the vaguely exotic setting, the innocuous townspeople, the made-up legends, the historic wealth and present poverty, and the seemingly impossible supernatural figure whose sole desire is to scare people away. Based on the setting, I predict it's a gang of crooks who stumbled across a rich silver vein and wish to mine it themselves without the interference of the "ghost town" residents. If we're really lucky, there'll be Batman Snacks.

This is actually the same exact plot as the season 1 Scooby Doo episode, "Mine Your Own Business", where a mysterious figure named the "Miner 49er" scares everyone away from desert mining town "Gold City". That link there leads to the show, online. I'm gonna go watch it!

Man, I'd forgotten how cheesy and awesome that show was. (Isn't nostaliga great? Used to be better, though.)

Granted, part of the similarities between this comic and the Scooby Doo cartoon might be both works' adherence to even earlier Gothic traditions, going back to the mother of them all, Ann Radcliffe, whose novels made Gothicism morally palatable to the masses by giving them supernatural events which were later explained as trickery, allowing readers to have their self-righteous cake and eat it, too. We already know Batman draws on Gothic traditions, and usually at least pretends to take place in a world with crazy science but no actual horror elements. (Never mind the werewolves.) And it wouldn't surprise me if at least the tropes of Gothic fiction also filtered into a children's mystery show.

Of course, it might also be a case of direct influence--after all, somebody at Hanna Barbera was a Batman fan, since Batman and Robin made a couple of appearances during that "special guest" season of Scooby Doo.

But I digress (should be this blog's motto). What's important here is, now that we understand these are just criminals, Batman and Robin can safely combat the stone idol and his goons without getting into a religious war or perpetuating an ancient racial injustice. And get into it they do, in this fabulous splash panel:

Due to the size of the panel, you may not be able to read the "quips". FYI, it's all nonsensical sports metaphors.

Our heroes are doing well, up until there's another one of those flashes of light. The "servants" disappear, and the stone god returns to the chair he stole from the Lincoln Memorial. Their work apparently done, Batman and Robin hightail it out of there.

The townspeople, meanwhile, are standing around in a circle, jaws agape. Stone idols and vengeful ghosts are one thing--but masked crimefighters? Well, I never! (Apparently Batman's market penetration hasn't made it out to Bumfuck, Nowhere.) And the only one who actually likes them is the Mayor. "Whoever they were, they certainly have my respect! What fighters!" he says, with a look on his face that says he's thinking, "If I could just harness their power for eeeevil..."

While Bruce and Dick are getting undressed in their hotel room (no, not like that), Bruce pontificates a bit on the philosophical ramifications of the punching he just did.

"Perhaps... yes. Yes, I do have the sexiest chin."

Meanwhile, like any religion worth its salt, the Ghost Gulch Cult of the Stone Idol has decided that their god requires human sacrifice. And what better candidate than the Mayor, local heretic and encourager of masked fighters?

Oh, superstitious townsfolk. Is there any problem you can't solve?

The crazy mob is foiled, however, when Batman swings in, using his strength and acrobatic skill to... uh... whatever this is:

The Mayor is naturally speechless. For some moments in life, there are no words.

Batman lands, and after an awkward moment, lets go of the Mayor's, uh, Mayoral seat. No time for recriminations or sexual harassment accusations, however! There are fanatics about! They must be beaten with the chair leg of truth until they renounce their (literal) idolatry.

Apologies (and love) to Warren Ellis.

Before the depunchgramming can begin, however, the stone man in the stone loincloth decides to join the fight. He grabs Robin ("He's got Robin!" Batman helpfully exclaims) and does his flashy-light trick, leaving the stone idol back in his chair and Robin nowhere to be found. Get this statue a show in Vegas, please.

Naturally, the fastest way to Angry Batman is through hurting or kidnapping Robin. So he grabs a giant ax-looking thing (from, I dunno, hammerspace?) and tries his Batman-est to beat the stone bastard to death with it. And he bursts open like a pinata, and out comes Robin, covered in candy! Yay!

No, wait, I think that was a dream I had once. Yeah. No, in the comic, it doesn't work. Batman's axythingy just breaks some of the stone off, nothing actually happens. Clearly Batman was not expecting this, and it is breaking his poor little Bat-Brain:

When asked later, after the murder-spree, one prominent psychologist traced Batman's psychotic break back to this very moment.

Batman and the Mayor literally topple the idol (heavy-handed, much?), and underneath they find a "yawning cavern". Batman wastes no time diving in, and finds--exactly what I predicted. A mine, and a mechanical apparatus which replaces the statue's chair with an identical, empty one under the cover of the flashing light. Also, goons!

Remembering that the townspeople around here were ignorant of his persona, Batman helpfully added, "And then I'll tear off your head and fuck the neck hole."

The key difference between Robin and a damsel in distress is that Robin is smart enough to kick the man next to him and try to escape. Oh, and that it's politically correct to show this in a comic book:

Good Lord! He just smacked the Japan out of that kid!

Meanwhile:

Sometimes my jokes just seem unnecessary.

The mine car picks up Batman, and Batman leans out of it and picks up Robin, and the two barrel on through the mine like... like dudes in a barrel? I don't know.

The mine cart takes him right to the boss of the level, the giant stone idol himself. To be honest the story and I have kind of checked out, so I'm just gonna gloss over the rest of this. There's a fight, they talk about stuff... about cooking, apparently? At least I think they're comparing recipes.

Guys, guys. There's no need to fight! You both make the best knuckle sandwich.

Batman knocks the stone dude back into a load-bearing beam, and the mine shaft starts collapsing around them. Batman and Robin survive by hiding under their mine cart, but the stone idol is crushed. When our heroes emerge from the pile of rubble ("like two human moles", claims the comic--Narrator, this isn't the adventures of Mole-Man, come on), they find Mad Mack, dying.

"The mine was mine! Get it? Ha ha!"

Why does nobody confess in this comic until they're dying? Batman never interrogates anybody, he just asks politely if they'll tell him now that there's no point in keeping secrets. World's laziest detective.

Mack explains a truly ridiculous series of events: after he found the silver vein, a traveling circus happened to come to town, walk up to him, and ask for work. They painted the strong man to look like a stone statue, and dressed some of them up as the idol's servants (although that dude in a caveman outfit looked like that when he arrived, so clearly Mad Mack got lazy at some point). Then they used flashlight powder to blind on-lookers for a minute while the elevator switched the real statue for the strong man. His plan was to scare the townspeople off, but he whipped them into a religious fervor instead, and this is where Batman and Robin came in.

"It would have worked, too, if it weren't for those meddling crime fighters, and that mangy Mayor!"

Ironically, Mad Mack's injuries were survivable--it's the Creeper that gets him.

Mack actually dies apologizing for his greed, but really, this is the same problem I had with that Scooby Doo episode (which ended with the Miner 49-er going to jail)--there's no law against dressing up and yelling scary stuff. Speech intended to harm somebody is troublesome, but speech intended to get people to leave, there's nothing wrong with that, legally or morally. Mad Mack's crime was theft--of the silver lode, from the rest of the town--but his scheme to accomplish that theft didn't actually hurt anybody. In fact Batman and Robin threw the first punches. This is one story where our "heroes" aren't that much less morally at fault than the supposed "villain", who gets over-punished for his deeds.

Not as much as the strong man, though. Buried under the cave-in without even getting mentioned again. Harsh.

Well, time for Batman and Robin to hit the road. A new day is dawning, and they must away, ere the sun turns them into a little pile of ash. (No wait, that's vampires. Never mind.) But they do have to go and continue their "vacation". There are more mysteries to be solved! Screw Gotham, let's hit the road, man. Burn a trail through this crazy country they call America.

A grateful person, anyway.

Batman never knew it, but for a brief time after he and Robin left, the townspeople of Ghost Gulch formed a religion around his worship. They fashioned crude costumes for themselves, night after night re-enacting the great fight between the stone idol and the masked warriors. The strong among them fought for the right to play the man in the dark cape, and the town fop always portrayed the wonderful boy who fought at his side. This state of affairs lasted about three and a half weeks, until they realized that they were all incredibly rich, and had no further need for silly cults.

[Comics]: World's Finest #3, "The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow"

2011-03-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

Publication date: Fall, 1941
Author: Bob Kane

Enter the Scarecrow.

Scarecrow is one of my favorite Batman villains because he's an invitation to writers to spread their wings a little, stretch the boundaries of a normal Batman story. From the visually-intense cinematics and mini-games in the Arkham Asylum game to the single best episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Scarecrow allows writers to bring in symbolism, subjectivity, and just plain horror. I'm very excited to see where he comes from. Let's get to it.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee

When I first looked at this, I was going to write about Batman's frequently Freudian ideas about how people are shaped by their childhood experiences, and how that relates to Batman's pantheon of villains being, by and large, "normal" albeit insane individuals, as opposed to most superheroes.... and how that in turn engenders the notion of Gotham as a troubled place where damaged individuals inflict their childhood traumas on one another, seeking a catharsis which, thanks to the endless nature of comics publishing and the DC Corporation in particular, will never, ever come.

Then I took closer look and realized this isn't about that. This is about god-damned "irony" of the sort Batman writers love so much in this period. Batman writers, if you love irony so much, why didn't you marry it?

(That's not totally fair. They probably tried, and then Bob Kane snuck up and signed the marriage license before they could.)

That said, while the tone here is insufferable, the content is actually quite nice. We rarely if ever get a glimpse into Batman villains beyond the simplest of motivations. Partly because Batman's most common villain at this point, the Joker, is deliberately and consciously presented as an unsolvable mystery (at least in terms of his origins); partly because the writers simply aren't interested in character depth or, I'd argue, the resulting human empathy.

Yet this simple glimpse into Jonathan Crane's childhood, as rudimentary as it is, is phenomenally effective. Batman title pages, as you may remember, often have a splash panel taking up 95% of the page, with the very first narrative panel tucked into the bottom right corner as a "tease" for the story ahead. You turn the page and the story continues, presumably a pretty good way to get you keep reading once you'd picked up the comic in the story. At any rate, the panel posted above is on the title page as the tease; turn the page, and you get this:

The vast gulf between the two is seized by the imagination. One sees that, in the "gutter" between the panels, in that turn of the page, exists an entire life. Jonathan Crane grew up, went to school, became a professor of psychology, and along the way he ate, slept, loved, bled, felt pain. The comic doesn't provide us the answer to what Crane did between a childhood spent chasing birds and an old age spent teaching; but getting us to ask the question is, I submit, significant progress. Think about what this means for our investment in the plot--and especially what it means for the intended audience, children. I'm sure they connected to Batman as the grown-up version of the lonely little orphan, and I'll bet they connect to Crane as the grown-up version of the little troublemaker.

Let's see if the rest of the story follows through on such a wonderful touch. Where were we? Professor Crane is teaching us about the psychology of fear. And I do mean us--not only does the composition of that panel up there put us right in the third row of the audience, but he deliberately points his lecture at us, the reader:

I love the art here. What an expressive face!

Professor Crane goes on to fire the gun (at a helpless, defenseless vase, too), startling everybody in the audience and, somewhere, the Dean. "Now you see what the gun can do," says Crane. "Before, you only guess what it could do. Now that you have seen... you are even more afraid! Simple psychology, gentlemen--"

After the lecture, we see that Crane is ostracized from his peers--he hears them around the corner, talking about them not inviting him to a party, because of his shabby clothes. The writers are deliberately evoking schoolyard memories here, playing on familiar experiences and transplanting them to a unique setting. Later, he sits and laments, repeating their insults to himself--how he looks like "a scarecrow", how he spends all his income on books instead of his warddrobe... and soon he decides that if he had more money, lots of it, he'd earn their respect. Crane is like every kid in high school who's desperate to earn the approval of those who bully them. This will either lead to Napoleon Dynamite levels of embarrassment and/or dancing (and certainly Crane's got the lanky, skeletal frame for it), or, you know, crime. First two guesses don't count.

I wish I could show you the whole next page, because it's really beautiful how the compositions of the different panels, the figures within the frames, mirror and balance one another across the entire page... Anyway, this little diptych will have to do.

No no no. The scarecrow is the perfect combined symbol of fear and corn. Fear and poverty, that's homeless people. Common mistake.

"I charge a dollar an acre or ten cents per crow, your choice."

I'm not sure what these mirrored poses mean, if anything; but they do lend a nice symmetry to the page. I suppose Batman has always traded in notions of duality and identity. And look at the way the artist has reinforced the notion of choosing a new self in order to gain power, simply by choosing a particular angle from which to draw. The tawdry professor at home is overshadowed by his own furniture; but Scarecrow is physically imposing, looming powerfully over the man behind the desk. Nothing impresses quite like crazy, as the man who dresses up like a bat can attest.

Moreover, there's a newfound confidence to the costumed Crane, a forcefulness we've only seen a glimpse of--and even then, during his lectures, where the setting naturally gives him some authority. Here, in an office which should give all the power to the man behind the desk, Scarecrow literally tells the man all about the man's problems, and nearly wills him into hiring Scarecrow to do a little work.

"Kendrick, you magnificent bastard, I read your Facebook!"

By the way, that art is fantastic. In fact, check this out:

"I am the Scarecrow! You are-- ...do--do we really need to do this again?"

Look at how evocative that is! Clearly whoever they got to draw this is a) better than usual and b) having a ton of fun with this iconic new character.

Anyway, you can see how Crane's using the costume and the supreme confidence it gives him to exert his will on others. He practically sounds like a hypnotist. "You're getting very sleepy! Your eyes are getting tired! You're feeling much less litigious!"

Unlike a hypnotist, though, Scarecrow has more than just words. He backs up his statement by shooting the business partner, and telling him next time he'll aim for the heart. "You have been warned by the Scarecrow!" he (I apologize in advance) crows.

Meanwhile, Batman and Robin! Remember them? They are in this story! Shocking. Anyway they hear the gunshot while on one of their nightly patrols (read: in the middle of filming some sweet parkour videos for the youtubez) and decide to investigate.

Batman appears deliciously nonchalant about the possibility of a walking fucking scarecrow. To be fair he did once travel into a book of fairy tales, wherein he wrestled a witch to death. So, you know. Not that strange, comparatively.

Also, I can't get over this artist. Look at the way he's using negative space to provide both literal perspective (they're watching Scarecrow from afar) and narrative perspective (somehow the space, the distance, the rough dark figure all suggest to me a sense of eerie surreality on an empty city night). Reminds me of this strip from A Lesson is Learned, in the way that it uses space to suggest a vast and unknown gulf.

Anyways, our heroes swing on over to check it out, because scarecrows are illegal? Or likely perpetrators of gun crime? I don't know. Regardless of what Batman might suspect, those suspicions are immediately confirmed when Scarecrow first runs, then takes a shot at him. Batman leaps at him, and a brief bout of action ensues. I noticed something fascinating here:

Panel 1: Batman slams Scarecrow's face into the lid of a trashcan.

Panel 2: A lesser man would be unconscious right now. Scarecrow, however, not only deals Batman a very respectable pistol whip to the head, but throws in a decent quip for free ("Pleasant dreams!", which I'll admit isn't exactly "I do bite my thumb, sir" but it beats Batman's disappointingly lazy "Hi, Pal!")

Panel 3: "Slug the Batman, will you?" Robin cries, chasing after the villain in the wide-brimmed hat.

Panel 4: Scarecrow answers Robin's question in the form of a trash can to the face.

What's fascinating about this (other than the fact that Scarecrow is rapidly earning my respect) is that in Panels 1 and 3, where Scarecrow is either getting hurt or running away--not on top, in other words--there are these funny lines, as if indicating fog or something. But Panels 2 and 4, where he's winning the fight, are perfectly clear--and he's given clean, sharp action lines. Now compare that to the diptych I posted above. Notice anything? It's as if the artist has given us abstract lines throughout the background as a way of contrasting Professor Crane's sense of shame and failure with Scarecrow's feeling of strong, confident action, and then used those to characterize the turns of this fight scene. Incredible.

So Scarecrow gets away, and events follow their course mostly as he told them they would. Batman and Robin flee the scene to lick their wounds; Frank Kendrick denies hiring Scarecrow to put the fear of God into his business partner ("Can I help it if this Scarecrow takes an interest in my affairs?" he says, barely holding back a victorious chortle)... and the one time his indomitable will is abrogated, he's right there, enforcing it with a bullet. "The Scarecrow only warns once!" he cries, shooting a decidedly foolish Paul Herold to death. (Foolish? Well, it's one thing to go to the papers and complain that a lunatic in a scarecrow costume tried to put pressure on you; it's another, even more foolish thing to neglect to get a security system to protect yourself from said lunatic.)

All these villains are big on these symbolic calling cards. I'll accept it in Joker's case, because his is an actual playing card, and that's funny. But a calling card should really have your phone number on it.

Meanwhile, Crane's tasted power, and that taste is sweet; by comparison, the rest of his old life is ashes and dishwater. The president of his university calls him into the office to fire Crane for his "entirely too fanatical" teachings, including firing a gun in the middle of class; but Crane is so far beyond needing the status in academia, which he used to desire fervently, that he waves a roll of ill-gotten dollars in the university president's face and yells about how he doesn't care how you feel! He's got money now! He doesn't need you anymore! You never understand him! He's going out! No he doesn't know where!

Ahem. Sorry, I went a little teenager there. He does basically do that, though. Leaves the office ranting and raving, talking to his giant sweaty fistful of cash about how he will get more cash, oh yes he will. Cue the montage of spinning newspaper head--

OH MY GOD HE'S COMING RIGHT AT US

Scarecrow is his own headline! He's got the money! He's got the straw! He'll make it rain like Rumpelstiltsk-ain! Now we see how well that first panel foreshadowed what was to come. There's no way to show us the glee that underlies Scarecrow's actions, the freewheeling sense of freedom and power with which he goes about his crimes. Not short of just awkwardly telling us through narration. But instead they offered that brief glimpse into Crane's childhood, and now we get it. It's not about the money; it's about running downhill, seeing the birds fly before you.

It's Scarecrow's next crime that brings him back into contact with Batman, but if we look closely, we can see the tide turning against him long before Wayne ever gets to him. First we see Scarecrow approaching a new prospective client. But no sleazy businessman is this; it's the owner of a failing department store. As Scarecrow offers to "start a reign of terror" in the competitor's store, the owner weighs the proposal while sitting in a blue armchair, looking much like Scarecrow's first victim. Subtle hints that Scarecrow no longer cares (if he ever did) who he offers his services to; again, it's not about the money, it's about the act of doing, of willing.

Then we get a dramatic panel--Scarecrow's shadow falling across the terrified face of a helpless woman. Not a thief; just an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can you feel your empathy for Crane slipping?

How about now?

And look, there are those wavy smoke trails again--presentiments of failure. In his arrogance and violence, Scarecrow has lost the humanity he had before. Fastest journey from invention of alter ego to consumption by same ever.

Batman and Robin rush in, putting a stop to Crane's violent shenanigans, but they aren't able to catch him. There's some dumb business (Robin trips Scarecrow with a bowling ball) and some neat business (Robin "William Tell"s a bomb Scarecrow throws at Batman right out of the air), but it's mostly boring. I do wonder where a psychology professor managed to find a bunch of throwing bombs. Were they having a sale in Hyrule?

Also, there is a funny bit where Batman and Robin have to punch out some cops, and it's not until Scarecrow makes his escape that this guy finally gets it:

"Really? You just now figured that out? Were the unmistakable costumes your first clue?"

You know, you'd think being honorary members of the police department would get them a "hold your fire" a little sooner. Maybe even no bullets.

There is a brief interlude here, where Batman solves the mystery via a series of coincidences and a vague intuitive feeling that he got from reading the script. (If you must know, Wayne is friends with the university president, who mentioned a man named Crane who worked there and looked like a scarecrow; and Batman found that at some point during the department store fracas, Scarecrow took the time to steal a couple of rare books. So yeah.)

The only possible way to top the epic fistfights we've seen so far is with a battle of wits, and our two adversaries do not disappoint.

An innocuous event...

"Well, alright. But you'd better not be Batman, I swear to God--"

Is actually a clever trick...

"And then maybe I'll return this old man's face!"

But not nearly clever enough, apparently...

Jesus, Batman. At least wait until you get around the corner to take off your disguise!

Or is it?!

Well, shit.

A delightful series of quick-paced reversals. I love how Batman uses Scarecrow's arrogance against him.

Unfortunately this game of faces cannot, by itself, conclude a Batman story. You need some kind of action sequence, if only because Batman can't actually trick Crane into locking himself up in jail. This isn't a Roadrunner cartoon.

But there's more at stake here than who's smarter, or better in a fight. The question is one that could only come up in Batman--essentially, whose childish behavior is more effective in the end? Poignantly, Scarecrow runs to a nearby public playground, and there he is defeated--brained by a swing, pummeled on the see-saw, and caught between Batman and his young ward. Their childness, the boundless energy, the unfailing sense of good and evil, right and wrong, the joy and playfulness they find in fighting--theirs is a purity that Scarecrow's petty desire to regain the sense of invulnerability he felt when young and lost with the passage of time cannot hope to overcome.

We're left with the images of our three characters: two campy icons of adventure, ignorant of the situations which led Scarecrow to turn to crime...

Batman: "Now who wants ice cream?"

Robin: "Me! I do!"

And one tragic figure, totally insane, maintaing his arrogant confidence even at his lowest point:

Oh, he'll be back. And if they're all as good as this one--not only one of the better written issues to date, but easily in the top 3 for art--then I can't wait for Scarecrow's return.

[Comics]: Batman #7, "The People vs. The Batman"

2011-03-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

Publication date: October/November, 1941
Author: Bob Kane

[Tonight's extra post brought to you by the generous Brenton.]

--

From lumberjacks to the legal system. Is there nothing Batman can't punch?

This one starts off with a poorly told, confusing opening sequence, so, yay. Batman is eavesdropping on a couple of gangsters, one of whom is named Horatio, discussing a "poultry racket." Yes. Chicken crime. We're already off to a bad start.

Even Batman is off his game. First the criminals see the shadow of his cowl peering in through the window in the door; then he stands in the doorway, more interested in posing and quipping than in, you know, not getting shot.

What the...? That's not even a good quip! Although I do like how the poultry racketeer is making chicken noises.

Then after two boneheaded mistakes in a row, Batman lunges forward, punching the brown-suited thug, at which time he has the gall to compliment himself on how well he has used the element of surprise. You've gotta be kidding me. Batman! You were not surprising today! You were not surprising when you punched that guy! Your picture is in the dictionary next to "this guy punches people all the time, look out for his fists."

To make a long story short, the thugs turn off the lights, fire their guns in Batman's general direction (but they miss, obviously), and escape. The police arrive ridiculously quickly, in time to see Batman dive off the fire escape.

Pretty normal, right? Boring, run of the mill, everyday non-adventures. And yet, the narration blares:

Ooo, is he finally going to meet the mother?

What actually happen is, the gangsters and their gangster buddies use Batman's intrusion as an excuse to start killing each other. Horatio tells Freddie Hill and Weasel Venner that Batman knows that the second man present at the earlier meeting, Delmar, is the head of the racket. Chicken crime in Gotham City is about to have a new leader: Freddie Hill, who has a plan that'll allow Weasel to bump off Delmar without getting caught.

Meanwhile, Batman is LOOK OUT BRUCE IT'S EATING YOUR FACE

"I'll just be your normal, everyday millionaire, nonchalantly buying some black-market chickens. What could be suspicious about that?"

The next day, there is a yet another confluence of coincidences. Specifically, Bruce Wayne happens to be in the office, talking to Delmar (who fronts as a tax lawyer or something?) at the same time that Weasel picks to carry out his dastardly plan. Weasel bursts into the room, shoots Delmar, puts a bullet through his own hat while shouting, "Drop that gun, Mr. Wayne!" and then disposes of the evidence:

A fool-proof plan?

The narration informs us helpfully that people will tend to catch stuff if you throw stuff to them, no matter what it is--a football, razor blades, battery acid, etc. Try it out on your friends!

Anyway things just go downhill from there.

Odds on Weasel surviving the issue before he punched Batman? Much, much higher.

Soon Commissioner Gordon has arrived to review the evidence.

Bruce: "This rat here did it and threw the gun at me! He framed me!"

Weasel: "He's lying! Look at the bullet hole in my hat!"

Random female witness: "I heard him shout 'Drop that gun Mr. Wayne!' and then when I got in Bruce had the gun in his hand! There's no way any of that could have been fabricated!"

Faced with overwhelming he-said/he-said evidence, Gordon has no choice but to arrest his friend. So much for the rich and wealthy getting preferential treatment! What the hell is this city coming to?

Bruce in his cell is all, this is so damned ironic! Batman, who never kills anybody, framed for murder! I don't belong in a jail cell like a common criminal! I belong out there on the streets, dispensing vigilante justice as I see fit! Oh, the irony!

Anyway, with Batman sidelined in a holding cell, it's up to Robin to save the day. Woo. Dick's initial reaction is literally, "Bruce! Bruce! Golly!" which isn't helpful, but it's funny. His next notion is a bit more practical: go beat the truth out of Weasel. I doubt that'll hold up in court, but at least the boy's resorting to some proper violence.

Coincidentally, "Robin Takes On a Man-Sized Job" is also the name of my fanfic.

Robin just happens to show up at Weasel's address (it was in the paper) in time to hear the killer's gangster compatriots deciding on a double-cross:

"See, we're gonna hold Father O'Malley at gunpoint and force him to give you absolution. Sound good?"

This new development puts Robin in the interesting position of being forced to act to save Weasel's life, so that his testimony can clear Bruce's name. The Boy Wonder dives in, tossing punches right and left, but Weasel takes the opportunity to get the hell out of there, and the gangsters follow.

Reading the next page is giving me plot whiplash. In short order, Weasel (and Bruce's chances of getting out of jail) is run over by the gangsters in their car, and seemingly killed; is revealed to be alive, but in a coma; and is targeted for death by the gangsters, who are worried he'll come-to and talk. And then there's this:

"Plus, Boss, those built-in costume abs look wicked sweet!"

If I was a criminal, and I had a Batman costume, I would go around beating up other criminals and stealing their money, not this. You know what's good for sneaking into a hospital? A doctor's outfit. Morons.

And given these morons in the driver's seat, it goes about as well as you'd expect:

"Who--? What the hell is a nurse doing in a hospital room? What kind of crazy shit is that?!"

The assassination is a total failure, Hill (in the costume) fleeing from the police, but there's a silver lining: he's made Batman look guilty now too. To Robin's... well, I was going to say "consternation" but his expression suggests joy and excitement:

Three days and thousands of dollars worth of property damage to Wayne Manor later, Robin decided that maybe prostitution was a risky business, after all.

Meanwhile in jail, Bruce is going quietly insane. He hasn't had a drink or said something smarmy in days, his hair is slightly askew, and there aren't any capes in jail, NOT A SINGLE CAPE! Did you hear that? It sounded like a clown! Like a clown laughing at me! I'll punch him! I'll find him and I'll punch him until his clown brains come out all over--hey, what's that noise?

"His name is Joey, he goes to my school and he's kinda slow. I told him I'd give him a cookie if he followed me, do you have any cookies?"

Robin explains that he looked through some old town maps and discovered that Bruce's cell happens to be over an old sewer system. He's brought Batman's costume, too, and soon our heroes are bounding heroically through the old smelly tunnels to freedom. It's not exactly disappearing through Raquel Welch but it'll do.

Once outside, Batman and Robin don't waste time, heading for Delmar's apartment to look for evidence that could clear Bruce's name. When they get there, the place isn't empty....

Iconic and awesome. Love the shadow on the wall, the fear on the goon's faces, and most of all Batman's "screw the quips, I am going to mess you up" look.

Batman and Robin take out the goons in some glorious splash panel action, and finally discover the missing evidence hidden in the leg of a table that Batman breaks by throwing a thug at it. The festivities come to a swift end, however, when Hill does something kinda smart for a change.

Batman, you are the worst negotiator.

He's such a bad negotiator that this is literally the very next panel:

"And Robin too I guess!"

Now that our heroes have been tossed into Gotham City's Whipped Cream Reserves, it's anybody's guess how they'll manage to escape. In the sense that anybody can guess and they'll all get it right. While the other plot threads are progressing elsewhere--Weasel wakes up and makes a run for it, Gordon discovers Wayne's absence--Batman is doing what he always does when the bad guys tie him up with rope and put him in a dangerous situation: finding a convenient sharp edge to cut his bonds. But how, you ask, will he find such a thing at the bottom of the river?

"Who could have left this here? That God in the Machine fellow one hears so much about? And how can I be talking underwaglubglub"

Batman manages to free his hands, and then untie Robin. Thanks, pollution!

You know, I was reading this and trying to think about why this scene, which we see again and again in Batman stories, is so profoundly unsatisfying. And I thought about Justified, this show I'm watching right now, which features this same sort of situation from time to time--the bad guys the drop on our hero, and hold him at gunpoint, and how is going to get out of it this time. Batman usually does it with coincidence (he found a tin can), or rarely with some kind of toy off his utility belt. Raylan Givens, the main character on Justified, usually talks his way out of trouble. I think that's much more entertaining, and I wish Batman would solve his problems with clever communication sometimes, instead of just relying on physical strength and good luck.

Anyway, once B&R climb back up to the dock, they find Hill and his buddies there, burning the incriminating records. Batman has but one response:

Strangest. Catchphrase. Ever.

Our heroes give the gangsters a good thrashing, and I assume Hill would pull a gun again and do the whole thing over, but there's no time for that because the comic's almost over! Quickly, boys!

Batman rushes over to the courthouse, where the overzealous DA (aren't they all?) is trying Bruce Wayne in absentia, and winning quite handily thanks to the whole "broke out of jail" thing. Batman presents Hill, loudly proclaiming that Hill knows who killed Delmar. This is pretty unorthodox but at least it's waking the jury up.

Batman still doesn't have any actual proof, and the roomful of citizens apparently makes Hill feel safe enough to deny everything Batman is saying:

"Yes, easy," said Daniel, looking warily out through the mask. It was working. They were buying it.

The DA, enraged, points a finger at Batman and accuses him of everything short of killing JFK, including "aiding and abetting Bruce Wayne to escape jail" (okay, that one's true), and obstructing justice (yep) with "infernal meddling" (sure) and "absurd crime theories" (sounds about right). Okay, maybe he's not overzealous. Maybe Batman does deserve to go to jail. He is a vigilante after all.

An unlikely person rises to Batman's defense, though--Police Commissioner Gordon! True, these proceedings no longer even resemble a trial, but Gordon makes a compelling case, which boils down to, "Okay, Batman breaks the law, but only against evil people." Here it is in its enjoyable entirety--ask yourself, would you acquit?

"I speak for the Batman--the friend of the people! Yes--he works 'outside the law,' as you call it, but the legal devices that hamper us are hurdled by this crime-fighter so he may bring these men of evil to justice. The eminent District Attorney calls him a meddler with a theory--Washington, the Wright Brothers, Lincoln, Edison and others, they were 'meddlers' too--who proved their theories. They made sacrifices so that we might enjoy the security and comfort we do. The Batman has done that, too!

This man who has saved a nation's gold reserve, fought Fifth Columnists and saboteurs, beaten the Joker, the Puppet Master, and other crime geniuses. This man who daily risks his life to save others--who never carries a gun--who is aided by his young friend, Robin. Fights crime with the courage and zeal born of love for his fellow man. This is--The Batman!"

If you didn't just wipe a tear from your eye and hear the Star-Spangled Banner swell within your heart, you sir are made of stone. Like most effective speeches, Gordon's is kind of nonsensical and ridiculously one-sided (Batman = Lincoln?), but it makes some compelling emotional appeals to the sort of American individualism that gave success to Batman comics in the first place--the notion that the best among us should have the freedom to act as they see fit, no matter what the laws are for the lesser people. Intellectually this is ridiculous, but hey, this is just an old comic book, so let's go with it.

Whoah.

See, it's continuity like this that really rewards what I'm doing. There is a progression to these comics, even if there isn't an overarching narrative. It'll be interesting to see how this changes Batman's work in the future. Or, you know, if it keeps Gordon from getting re-elected. And hey, I guess that narration from the beginning of the story was right--this really was a momentous issue, and not just because of the soap opera "Bruce Wayne on trial!" gimmick. But will it all be ruined by the missing evidence?

Happily for everyone involved, Weasel bursts in and recants his story with his dying breath, which really ruins Freddie Hill's day, lemme tell you. Hill goes to jail, and all is right with the world.

Gordon: "...who are you talking to?"

Bruce: "...nobody."

Gordon: "..."

Bruce: *wink*

[Comics]: Batman #7, "The North Woods Mystery"

2011-03-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Publication date: October/November, 1941
Author: Bob Kane

Aka, "Batman and Robin Go to Canada." This looks more promising than the last one, by far. Who wants to see Batman fighting lumberjacks? I do!

But first, an interesting little discussion of Gotham's upper class. Normally Gotham's wealthy are portrayed straight (as in "help, my diamonds have been stolen!") or satirically (as drunken, self-centered jerks). Guess which one this is:

"Money isn't everything, Bruce, it's the only thing! That's why Lurch here is fed solely on bread, water, and verbal abuse."

It's easy to see why Nora's a "society favorite"; just look at her waistline. She puts Holocaust skeletons to shame. What's harder to tell is whether Bruce actually likes her, or if he's just keeping up appearances as the Man So Douchey He Couldn't Possibly Be a Superhero.

At any rate, what's fascinating about this is seeing Nora's perspective challenged:

Bruce knows there's no sex like "There, there, I'm here for you" sex.

Nora and Bruce head back to his place. Along the way, she rushes through the five stages of wealthy grieving:

1. Suspicion

According to the newspaper, the Lumber King's adopted son, Jack, might have killed him for his money.

2. Rationalization

Nora recalls that Jack, an unimaginatively named lumberjack, was adopted after saving her uncle's life. She's never met him, but he couldn't have done it! She calls him up to offer her help.

3. Angling

Nora calls Jack up to "offer regrets" and tell him "if you need help with anything" and other phrases that mean "how much do you think I stand to inherit?"

4. Insults

"Thanks, but I don't need it! I'll send you a check every month for your share of the lumber profits, so that you can buy yourself some more fur coats and fancy gowns to wear around night clubs--click!"

Jack neglected to add "bitch" to the end of that sentence, but his biting sarcasm is clear from the way he said "click" before hanging up the phone.

5. Acceptance (of your own Righteous Indignation)

Note Bruce's expression of dubious amusement. That's the way you look at a cat trying to play the oboe.

All done grieving over her uncle's death, Nora invites Bruce along for a "vacation in the north woods", presumably to show Jack that she can screw playboys way better than him. Bruce agrees, partly because he figures Batman should look into this random death (why doesn't he just read the obits?) but mostly because he thinks "vacation in the north woods" is code for second base. Which just makes this even more disturbing:

[

Although I would have loved to see Bruce try to explain to Nora why he was bringing his young ward along on their romantic lumber getaway, Wayne's too smart for that, telling Robin to get a job selling candy on the train so he can ride separately. Or maybe he's just too cheap to buy the kid a ticket. Hm.

Anyway, they've barely gotten off the train and already the Ents have started a jihad:

Ent: "FOR THE TREEEEEES!"

The suicide squishing is unsuccessful, however, and our protagonists soon arrive in what passes for "town", ie., one cabin. There they meet Jack Clayton, who the comic says looks like "a violent storm" but I say looks more like a violent storm messed up his face.

Damn, that's some Deliverance-level city-slicker-animosity right there. "Out here in the woods we don't take kindly to strangers not wearin' plaid."

Meanwhile, a young boy enters the camp, asking for food. Clayton offers the kid some grub, which tells me he's not such a bad guy. Unless he means "serve the kid actual grubs", in which case, ew.

Nora wanders around the campsite, marveling first at how magnificent are the trees, and then at how magnificent are the buff guys cutting down the trees. Bruce remembers he's supposed to act like a dick and puts down the lumberjacks as "mere termites". Imagine that with a laugh after it, though, and it goes from mere dickishness to full-on villain-talk. Fine line, Bruce. Fine line.

I swear I'm not making this up.

Wondering if he's at long last found a kindred spirit, someone just as bored by women and as interested in young wards as he is, Bruce sets out with Robin to investigate. A promising lead--two men disappearing into a tool shed together--turns out to be a meeting of the North American Man-Boy Exposition Association instead. Damn.

"Let's hurry, Frederick. I can't wait to return to our bunk."

"I wish I knew how to quit you, Timothy! Oh, I know! I'll use these saws and axes!"

Batman still bursts into the room to fight them and everything, and there's what passes for witty banter these days ("I'll bathe ya in acid!" "I prefer water!"), but you can tell his heart's not in it. He's just depressed to be finding garden-variety scheming instead of sweet, sweet illicit lumberjack sex. He even fumbles the post-battle interrogation, accidentally backing the remaining crook onto a big ol' hook, killing him before he can reveal any more of his plan.

Our heroes decide they've had enough and dive out the window. Meanwhile, Clayton and Mr. Grizzly-Ate-My-Face discover the body:

"Well, you see Nora, he was just treating all the axes and saws with--uh. um. He was here for gay sex, I reckon. Yeah, that's it. Looks to me like an open and shut case of auto-erotic hooksphyxiation. Poor Woody Joe. Never was the same after that fishing inci--"

Bruce Wayne chooses that particular moment to wander in, nonchalantly whistling "I'm not Batman no sir no, doo-da, doo-da" to the tune of "Camptown Races." "I didn't kill that guy no sir no, oh, de doo-da day!"

You can tell he's a detective by his halo.

Actually, this is very smart. By saying "What's all this illegality? Perhaps some criminal lumberjacks have killed this man!" he gets Clayton to call it an accident, and thus gets off the hook for going a little too Jack Bauer on Woody Joe's head. Later he promises a worried Nora that he'll "be around to see that nothing happens to you!" Well, of course he will--so far he's the only murderer around.

I know what you're thinking, though. "Is Jack Clayton man enough to be evil? Where's the facial hair?" And you're absolutely right. Behind every oddly-dressed goon, there's an even more oddly-dressed boss character with a mustache or beard.

Clayton must do whatever he says when they're in the Yellow Cone of Coercion.

That dapper gent is Mr. Asher, of nearby Asher Lumber Company. His vague threats say "I'm evil" and his suit says "I'm fabulous", and neither statement goes unheard by Dick Grayson, dropping eaves outside the cabin window.

Later, Nora cuts short a discussion about her shares in the lumber company, which both Asher and Clayton have now offered to buy, by refusing to sell.

Bruce knows that "riding on the logger train" has nothing to do with the locomotive.

The "logger train" is actually a "log train", for transporting bundles of giant Ent corpses. These loggers are murdering Ents by the hundreds, and it's up to one man, dressed like a bat, to fall in love with a beautiful Ent princess and thereby unite the oaks and the willows and the junipers under one banner, the better to protect their unobtanium from--oh, sorry. Mixed up my stories there. Where was I? Oh yes.

Hey kids! Print this out and use it as your Scout's "Misogyny" merit badge!

The goon leaves Nora's unconscious body sprawled out on top of the logs, and then decouples the car from the rest of the train. His half heads up the hill; her car reverses direction and runs back down, picking up speed and heading for an inevitable derailing, not unlike this plot. Luckily, Batman is there to save the day:

Moments later, for no discernable reason, the crashing pile of metal and wood burst into flames.

Grabbing onto the tree, Batman inexplicably says "Now that's what I really call a 'leap for life!'" That's... that's not a thing, Batman. I think you meant 'leap of faith.'

Anyway, Nora wakes up with a headache and fuzzy memories of dudes and costumes and logs and a new definition for "riding the logger train." She goes and confronts Clayton, accusing him of killing his own father and trying to kill her. Clayton denies everything--with honesty, apparently, and then ponders...

"I wonder now if--if it was a mistake to have my chin surgically shaped to look like a butt. No! No," he cried, stroking his chin cleft lovingly. "That's the only thing I've done right."

Meanwhile, having accused the man who runs the logging company of murder and attempted murder of her, Nora decides to go and stand at the top of a log chute. Yes.

Look out, Nora! It's the Wolf-Man!

Shoved down the chute by the mysterious hands of a mysterious stranger in a mysterious purple suit (*cough it's the mustache guy! cough cough*), Nora breaks her arm and rides the "leaping logs, which bound down the chute like ton-weight, wooden kangaroos." Wow. Worst simile ever. This comic needs a new narrator.

But not to worry! Robin is right behind her!

You win, Batman writers. I've run out of gay jokes to-- No, wait:

"Looks like that's just too much wood for one boy to handle!"

Ugh. Now I just feel unclean. Moving on...

So Nora makes it to the river, and is able to hang onto a log with her one unbroken arm. Robin, on the other hand, has stumbled into the Olympic Logger's Decathalon, with such events as log jumping, log rolling, and log fisticuffs, which are like normal fisticuffs, but with more documentation. (*rimshot*) He's on his way to the gold medal when he realizes he's also on his way to the bottom of a waterfall.

Batman: "Easy, kid, I've got you."

Robin: "You've got me? Who's got you?"

Batman: "This silk rope."

Robin: "Don't ruin the moment."

Meanwhile, a couple of goons in ugly turtlenecks (damn fashion-challenged Canadians!) try to cut through the rope, saying, "This is our chance to get rid of both meddlers!" Which is silly, because Batman and Robin haven't meddled with anything yet. Nora, in fact, is on her way to certain doom. Doom I say! DOOOOOOM!

Dick Dastardly looked on with amusement. "I knew I'd get you someday, Penelope Pitstop!" he cackled. "Wait--you're not Penelope! What the fuck?"

Spoiler alert: Batman saves her. For the second time today he skips the obvious pun ("That was a close shave!") and goes with "Just in the nick of time!" See, cause a 'nick' is a small cut, and the saw blade was--never mind.

Anyway, there's a comically brief anti-climax, as Asher holds a gun on Batman and Nora, Clayton holds a gun on Asher, and Batman punches the distracted villain so hard his head goes all Exorcist:

"Batman's Fists" would be a very poor name for a relaxation spa.

Also, what do you mean, they "disappear into the woods"? What happens to the unconscious guy in the purple suit? It's not like there are police out here in the woods. And hell, they're still lumber-neighbors. Nothing's been resolved at all!

And yet we get not one, not two, but THREE panels of plot explanations. Turns out Clayton is an ex-convict (Bruce's fist twitches involuntary), and after Asher killed his adopted father, the purple-hatted son of a bitch threatened to frame Clayton for the murder if he wouldn't sell. Asher and his men (hired away from Clayton's company) tried sabotage and then violence to get Nora to sell, and it's unclear how much Clayton knew but whatever he did know, he was certainly okay with, because who cares about a drunken slut from the city?

"Miss Powell, I never knew you were a shadow person, too!"

"Actually this is just blackface."

Through inheritance, accusations, and buzzsaws, finally comes true love.... with our Mr. Wayne sadly left on the outside.

"I guess that cat learned to play the oboe after all. Ah, incomprehensibly sudden love. Well, I should head home and find some dick. Or maybe the other way around. Goodbye Canada!"

So what have we learned? Besides that the heady aroma of tree sap and lumberjack sweat is apparently the best aphrodisiac of all.

I think we've learned that a good Batman story (as opposed to bad or great) needs a gimmick, and some light-hearted silliness. Batman's formula is so strict that if you go generic (as we saw with the previous installment) you run the risk of boredom. It's hard to come up with new and interesting variations on "Batman punches gangsters", but when you change the entire setting and add in some interesting new characters, you can be cliche and obvious (log-fighting, corporate takeovers) and still be interesting, because the cliches are colorful and they're at least new to Batman comics.

I'm not saying this was a great story, but it was a solid "B" effort that rewarded in a dozen different ways. And any issue with this many unintendres is going to be fun to read. Plus, it was a happy ending for everyone involved!

Well, except for the Ents... Eh, fuck those guys.

[METAPOST] A Comics Primer

2011-03-01T19:12:00.000-08:00

I made this list for a friend of mine who asked me for recommendations, as he wanted to "get into comics". It's all stuff I've read personally, so this isn't an "accepted canon" but more just my personal favorites.

Anybody who gets their kicks reading Batman Completion (or even stumbling onto it via nude searching for Xbox unrelated Hilton internet florist keywords hentai) has probably read several of these, but I'm sure you'll find something new here to enjoy. Without further ado:

--

Start with the tools to understand what you're reading:

Understanding Comics
Reinventing Comics
Making Comics

Those are three books by Scott McCloud--discussions on the past, future, and present (respectively) of the art form, in the form of comics themselves. They are highly entertaining in addition to being eye-opening.

From there, there are several places you can branch off into.

There are the artistic and commercial giants of the field:

Frank Miller (Ronin, Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, 300)
Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Killing Joke)
Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Books of Magic [others soon took over, but the whole thing is worthwhile])
Grant Morrison (Arkham Asylum, All-Star Superman, The Invisibles, Flex Mentallo, WE3)

The "indie" types:

Brian Wood (Demo, Local)
David Mazzucchelli (Asterios Polyp)
Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim)
Daniel Clowes (Ghost World)
Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth)

The true to life, biographical types:

Art Spiegelman (Maus 1&2)
Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis 1&2)
Craig Thompson (Blankets)

And then there are guys currently writing just well-told, awesome stories:

Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Fell, N.E.X.T.W.A.V.E., Global Frequency)
Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Pride of Baghdad)
Ed Brubaker (Sleeper, GCPD)
Mike Carey (Lucifer [after Sandman], Crossing Midnight, The Unwritten)
Garth Ennis (Hitman, Preacher, The Boys)
Brian Michael Bendis (Powers, Ultimate Spider-Man)
J. Michael Straczynski (Rising Stars, Supreme Power)
Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead)
Mike Mignola (Hellboy)
Gerard Wey (The Umbrella Academy)

(and many more)

There're foreign comics (Tintin, by Herge, being the most famous), and manga, of which I know little (but I enjoy the trippy horror mangas by Junji Ito).

There are classic comics worth reading, particularly Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat (and others from the same time period, when a single newspaper strip would take up an entire sheet of newspaper), and stuff by Will Eisner (the father of graphic novels, also did The Spirit), and of course there's plenty of Marvel and DC superhero stuff that's probably worth delving into, but who has the time? (ha ha)

There are current newspaper strips, which are all pretty much terrible, although I recommend finding an archive of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, the last best strips of the past twenty years.

Finally there are webcomics, narrative (start at the beginning and give it some time):

Sluggy Freelance - Nerds, aliens, a bunny with a switch-blade. Starts out gag-a-day, and quickly becomes epic and dramatic. A decade and a half and counting.
Schlock Mercenary - Hard military s-f, highly entertaining, the author hasn't missed a day in ten years.
1/0 - Fascinating strip with no "4th wall". Complete.
Bear Quest - It's a comic! It's a videogame! Well it's mostly a comic.
Axe Cop - Written by a six year old. Drawn by his adult brother.
Alien vs Pooh - Should I feel bad for finding this hilarious?
Bad Machinery - Cheeky British children are funny.
A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible - Not really a narrative, but an "art strip" of unsurpassed beauty and depth; read it in order for full effect.
Gunnerkrigg Court - Magic, science, and children mix in this beautiful, well-written strip.
Minus - Lyrical, ended-far-too-soon Calvin-and-Hobbes-ish look at childhood imagination.
and Great (same author) - Bitingly satirical tale of failure and ramen.
Questionable Content - Danger; you'll read long after it's good.
Dr. McNinja - He heals with one hand, kills with the other, and vanishes, unseen, into the night.
Dresden Codak - Spiritual successor to the now-defunct "A Lesson is Learned...."
Rice Boy, Order of Tales, and the now in-progress Vattu - Epic, completely original fantasies all by the same incredibly talented guy.

And webcomics, gag-a-day (check the latest few, see if you like them):

XKCD - Math, nerd culture, stick figures.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Single-panel cruelty.
Chopping Block - Corny jokes, serial killing, beautiful sooty art.
The Parking Lot is Full - Long dead, but brilliant.
A Softer World - Like eating koan-flavored ice-cream.
Hark! A Vagrant - Historical comics from Canada!
Nedroid - He's a bear shaped like a potato. He's a bird shaped like a Reginald. Together they're in a comic.
Dinosaur Comics - The art never changes. The writing is always hilarious.

--

So! If you have any recommendations for ME, based on my taste as suggested above, please comment here and let me know. I'll toss a link to this up on the main page, so it doesn't get buried here in the winter of 1941, and update it as my readings expand.

[METAPOST] This can no longer be ignored.

2011-02-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

If you aren't watching "The Cape", you should be.

I don't mean "you" universally. I mean "you" as in "you people who keep reading this blog".

The Cape is a show on NBC about a costumed figure with no special powers (other than his escape-artist training and the eponymous nifty gadget), fighting against a deranged supervillain and a gaggle of oddities in a baroque city. It is uniformly terrible. But it is also the closest thing to the Batman comics covered here at Batman Completion that I've seen in quite a while.

There are some dissimilarities in the plots, but what strikes me most about it is the same mix of tones and genres that I once referred to in Batman comics as the "Batamari", a rolling, sticky metaphorical clump of culture, images and styles that get remixed and appropriated into the comic. That's really just another way of saying that early Batman has a really, really wide range of stories it can tell and ways it can tell them, such that the same comic can do a story where Batman fights a dragon inside a book of fairytales AND a social realist/gangster tragedy about two Gothamites whose lives tread parallel paths, one good, one evil. It can encompass gangsters, the gothic, propagandistic anti-Nazi stories, the utterly silly, the murder mystery...

I see the same things in The Cape, which has so far mixed in family melodrama, childhood nostalgia, foreign assassins, mysticism, conspiracy theories, an evil circus, a costume party on a runaway train, Tom Noonan, of course superheroes, and so on. It veers wildly in tone from scene to scene and episode to episode, and you never know quite what you're going to get when you tune in.

It is terrible, mostly because something that schizophrenic is really, really hard to pull off, and the writers (and most of the actors) are not even close to being capable of succeeding at it. At its worst, the show is insipid, but at its best, it's a loopy kind of crazy that's impossible not to watch. It is, perhaps, more fun to mock afterwards (I particularly enjoy reading the AV Club's reviews). Nothing wrong with that, of course.

I don't think it's suited for today's viewers, though. Even if it were a better executed show, the concepts are just too ridiculous and too varied to hold an audience. I think these days we're used to more "niche" entertainment--you don't really get the kind of Charles Dickens, all-in-one stories these days. Invent Batman today, and it wouldn't work at all.

Anyway, the Cape's already canceled, and there will only ever be ten episodes of it, eight of which have already aired. But if you like what you've read here, I urge you to check it out before it vanishes. At the very least, play the drinking game. (That's one shot every time somebody says "the cape". I am not responsible for any alcohol poisoning that may occur.)

[Comics]: Batman #7, "The Trouble Trap"

2011-02-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

Publication date: October/November, 1941
Author: Bob Kane

[Meta-note: Today's post is extra, and is bought and paid for via the generous donations of Martin, Steven, and Brenton! Thanks for your support!

And now, your irregularly scheduled post.]

--

Today's issue features the most generic and boring lead-in I could possibly imagine. This applies to every single Batman story I've covered to date. Check it out:

"Once again the mighty Batman and his laughing young aide Robin go forth on a chance trail and cross the path of a master criminal. Out of a strange medley of adventures, the Batman and Robin find the proof of an ugly and vicious racket that involves innocent men and women! With their usual disregard of danger to themselves, the Dynamic Duo ferrets out this evil crime-master and brings an end to the strange tale of 'The Trouble Trap!'"

And so, in my hedonistic search for entertainment within the pages of this ancient comic book, like the wealthy courtesans of old, I turn to innovation in an attempt to make the old new again.

So today we begin at the end!

We've already got a moral! And interesting questions. Is that nurse Batman's girlfriend, Linda? Did homework and respect really save the day, or was punching involved? Let's find out!

Earlier, Gordon apprehends the villain's henchmen, still tied up, presumably from an earlier battle, and explains what's been going on: apparently the villain has been hypnotizing people, asking them to reveal their secrets, and recording the results, to use as blackmail against the victims. The villain, by the way, is distinguished solely by his headgear, a turban, and his name, Granda, which I keep reading as Grandpa. Do we ever find out about Bruce's grandparents? Who's to say his grandfather isn't a vaguely Middle Eastern-looking evil hypnotist?

Anyway, what I want to know is, if Granda is blackmailing people for money, why doesn't he just hypnotize them and ask for their banking information? Hopefully we'll find an answer.

Like most Batman villains, Granda is taken out with one punch, following a car chase that is nicely drawn:

Lovely panel. Batman's car is tiny within the frame, but centered and pointed to by the symmetry of all the other elements--the bridge, the trees, the clouds, all drawing your eye to the center. Making this a "wide shot" means your eye takes longer to look through the picture, which in turn elongates the moment of weightlessness.

Since Batman takes Granda out easily once he catches up to him (diving through the window, fist-first? It's a little unclear), Granda must have had some way of slowing him down. What could it have been?

Part of the answer is readily apparent--once again, Batman declines to use the Batmobile, instead jumping into a green police car. Since all GCPD cars are required by city law to be slower than popular getaway vehicles (the Give Crooks a Fair Chance Act of 1935), it's no wonder the chase takes them all the way to the edge of town, where there is apparently a river or something. Gotham geography is still really loose at this point, and I'm not sure when (if ever) DC bothers to pin it down. I'm sure there's a map somewhere.

Anyway, the chase is set off when Granda, cornered, throws himself out a window:

"Not yet, you haven't!"

Batman, moments earlier: "Hah! I bet Robin you'd never throw yourself out of a window, and I've won!"

Silly Granda! No use escaping, your capture is pre-ordained! We've seen it!

Just prior to that, a tense stand-off. Gordon's men arrive to rescue Batman from Granda, whose thug has our hero at gunpoint. "Stand where you are, Batman! A bullet will end your life!" Oh, no shit.

Granda appears to have the upper hand, even though his giant sumo-wrestler-shaped henchman was just defeated by a small boy wearing no pants.

David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Batman Almighty, the God of the armies of Gotham, whom you have defied."

The big guy actually did have a sword, but dropped it when Robin used the crystal ball to reflect a bright light into his eyes. It just goes to show you, always do your homework and respect others! No, wait, that's nonsense.

Apparently there were two "Hindu giants" armed with swords, summoned when a cornered Granda pressed the secret "summon the two Hindu giants" button on the floor. Does Hinduism allow for stabbing Batmen and small children? Or working for somebody who is clearly an evil hypnotist? Either way I am amused by Granda holding them back in reserve. Were they just doing yoga in the other room? Did Granda really expect to have a good chance of taking out Batman, and so told his giant henchman to hang back, he's got this? I thought evil hypnotists were supposed to be smart!

I think we all know where this is going. Literally.

Uh-oh. This doesn't bode well. So far Granda's decisions have been questionable at best, and apparently he's about to get dumber...

Earlier, Batman was in another one of his ridiculously perfect disguises. Usually they strain credulity, because I can buy makeup, but a wig hiding Batman's pointy cowl is a stretch too far. This issue addresses my concerns nicely--not only did Batman turn the lights out in order to change (so I can pretend he had his whole costume folded up really really tiny inside his pocket), but in his disguise, "Joe", he wears a hat:

"On the one hand, it's going to be really awkward if I have to keep holding my girlfriend while this dude stabs her to death. On the other hand, my ninja thespian training demands that I not break character. Rock and a hard place!"

Why haven't the police arrived yet? For no discernable reason, they get into a huge head-on collision with a random other car. Without even checking on the occupants of the other car, Gordon and his cops dust themselves off and get going. Yet another narrative contrivance to ensure that this easy-to-defeat villain gets the deck stacked in his favor long enough for a fist fight and a car chase.

Meanwhile, while Granda threatens to stab Linda Page with his pointy, pointy beard--

Look at that thing! It's dangerous and majestic, like a lion with a gun.

--Robin is calling Gordon for help on what are clearly two fake phones connected by string:

Robin: "Commissioner! Granda's kidnapped Linda Page! And the treehouse is almost out of Oreos!"

Gordon: "Son of a bitch!"

How did our heroes let this kidnapping come to pass? As it turns out (or whatever the backwards version of that phrase is--as it were?), this was all part of their plan. Having captured the two of Granda's goons on their way to deliver the captive Linda, Batman decides to use makeup to impersonate one of them and sneak right in under Granda's nose. That part of the plan? That makes sense to me. The part where, instead of punching, he was going to sit back and wait for the police to arrive? Yeah, what? Since when does Batman need the police to do his crime fighting? I mean, we're talking about a man who strikes fear into the hearts of all criminals, which brings us to the best panel I've found in a long time:

Try not to think about this the next time you're driving alone at night.

So why do they have Linda Page in the first place? Apparently Granda has noticed what Linda's been totally blind to: that she bumps into Batman way too often for coincidence. Convinced she knows something he can use to get back at the Bat (who I'm assuming has already interfered with his master plan to hypnotize fashion icons and convince them that turbans are nouveau chique), Granda sends Joe to kidnap Ms. Page.

(His plan once he gets her, by the way, is "Twist her arms until she decides to talk." Dude! You're a hypnotist! As villains go, this guy sucks. He's not strong. He's not smart. He has one power, and he doesn't use it to his advantage. Other than the beard-blade, he's not even visually interesting. What a gyp.)

Earlier, Batman overhears Granda's kidnapping plan:

Note that Batman is actually leaning on a word bubble for support.

Wait a minute, who's "this mugg"? He's a generic crook in a brown suit and fedora, asking Granda the Mystic to look into his crystal ball and determine how to get rid of the Batman--or so it seems. In actuality, he is Batman, once again using makeup to disguise himself. Now I understand why Batman is reluctant to punch Granda--he's not interested in bringing the man to justice at all! He just wants to screw with him, becoming more and more fake people until Granda realizes he's living "The Truman Show." I'm pretty sure the sensation that you're being watched and that everyone you know is secretly Batman is in the DSM-IV. What a nightmare.

This wasn't Batman's first idea; he started off with a different plan, resulting in Commissioner Gordon showing up to Granda's place, looking for evidence of blackmail (he doesn't find any). Batman is apparently operating on behalf of this guy:

"If I wanted to do that, Batman, I would have had my butler call them myself!"

Dwyer, the man in the panel above, explains: He was at a society party, watching the Maid Races, like any other night, when somebody suggested that they all visit Granda the Mystic:

"What do you see there, in the crystal?"

"I see... I see... Aha! It's some douchebag in a blue suit."

As you can see, Granda's hypnotic abilities aren't spiritual in nature; they're probably not even due to him. Clearly it's his "incense", aka hallucinogens. No surprise, then, that Dwyer goes under and blabs about some embarrassing escapade he had in college. "It was a harmless prank then. Newspapers would play it up if they heard of it!" Yeah, right. Nothing harmless happens at college. It's all date rape, coke, and frat parties.

Anyway, Granda shows up later with a record (that's like an album--like a big black CD, with grooves--I mean, it's like if you took an iPod and... oh, never mind), a recording of the hypnotized Dwyer spilling his dirty, shameful secret. (I bet he was in an 'a capella' group.) Granda demands money in exchange for the recording. At his wits end, Dwyer turns to--the bottle. And that's where Batman finds him.

Batman, meanwhile, is hips-deep in a mystery. What connection could there be, he wonders, between "a swami, a hoodlum, a murdered man, two giant Hindus and Carl Dwyer?" (Answer: "I think I know, Brain, but where are we going to find a llama at such short notice?") We already know the connection; but I want to know how Batman came into contact with all these people.

Before Batman talks to Dwyer, he follows a hoodlum from Dwyer's place to Granda's. Earlier, Batman observed Dwyer paying the hoodlum off for a record. But why was he watching Dwyer's house in the first place?

God, that's pretty. Minimalist Batman, and framed nicely too by the doors. Has there ever been a Batman comic in this sort of style?

The clock ticks back from eight at night to that morning, when Bruce visits his old friend, Dwyer. Carl is worried, and it's easy to guess why: he's visited while Bruce is there by a thug, coming to collect. Dwyer begs off until eight that night. Meanwhile, Bruce recognizes the thug as a killer he ran into the previous night, and so vows to return, caped and cowled, to Dwyer's home to watch the payoff.

Finally we get around to explaining the moral of this story. Turns out the moral isn't actually "do your homework"; that was just Bruce being a dick. Before he heads out to visit Dwyer that morning:

Bruce Wayne: Model Parent.

The previous night, Bruce and Robin flee the scene of a murder. A man named Henry Abbot lies face down in the street. Bruce checks his pockets and finds evidence that Abbot's been withdrawing large sums of money at regular intervals lately. (Plus twenty bucks. What? It's not like the dead guy needs it.) Our heroes hightail it out of there to avoid coming into contact with the police. Yes, the police that both of them will separately call into the case. Those police.

Before the real killers make their getaway in a big ol' truck, Batman and Robin tussle with the two giant Hindus. The giants choke our heroes half to death before Batman is able to toss off some gas pellets. It's funny how Batman never uses gas in modern stories, leaving that to be iconically identified with several of his major villains--Joker's toxic gas, Scarecrow's fear gas, and so on. In fact, overall, these first few years have very few Bat-gadgets at all. Most of it's chemistry, punching, and puns. I think a few gadgets would have helped Batman's self-esteem in moments like this:

"Holy cats!" cries Robin. "That is one ugly-ass awning!"

Batman and Robin meet the giants while beating up two gunmen, who have shot and killed a man. And here we are at the beginning:

They watch--and act! Not, you know, fast enough to save the guy. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Well, that was a fascinating experiment. Sometimes looking at something backwards can show you it in an entirely new light. (Why yes, I am reading "Time's Arrow" right now. Why do you ask?) I found a lot of interesting ideas, particularly the inexplicably missed connections, like the fact that Batman has two random entries into the case, when the second one (Dwyer) is the main plot and would have sufficed. I assume the opening is in there just to conform to the "every story has to start with an action sequence" rule. And I suppose it makes Granda slightly more of a threat, so that he's not just a blackmailer.

There were also a lot of setups that didn't payoff, which I might not have noticed had I read this front to back. Granda not using his hypnosis, Batman and Robin calling the cops in for no good reason, the dead guy from the beginning only getting mentioned again in passing at the end, when Gordon tells Batman that Granda's men confessed to the murder of the victim, who was another blackmailed client about to spill the beans.

And then of course there was the fun of reading the entire story, wondering how "doing your homework" was going to get Batman and Robin out of this one. Well played, Mr. Wayne. Well played.

[Comics]: Batman #7, [untitled]

2011-02-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

Publication date: October/November 1941
Author: Bob Kane

Every Joker story ends with a "death", and every one since the first begins with a resurrection. It's like the old serial cliffhangers--they're very strict about going back and showing you how the Joker survived his last defeat without "cheating." If they didn't do this, the stories wouldn't have the same sense of consequence.

When we last saw the Joker, back in Batman #5, Robin threw him off a lighthouse into the icy waters of a turbulent sea. But how did he survive? Well...

Uh...

QUICK LOOK OVER THERE!

Spelling your name backwards as an impenetrable pseudonym? Fool me once....

So anyway the Joker's back in town. And alive. I mean of course he's alive, he always was. There was never any question about that. *cough*

So anyway, a number of practical jokers turn up at "Rekoj"'s office. He weeds out the losers ("I pull hats down around other people's eyes!") and keeps the ones whose pranks are "really harmful", as the narration characterizes them. This would make a good reality show, I think, especially the part that comes next, where Joker asks them all to pick up certain objects on a table:

"Don't bother to verify any of this! Take me at my word!"

And they do take him at his word, even though he looks as if Harry Roat moved from Scarsdale to Gotham in his old age. They believe him even after he removes the makeup, going from "meglomaniacal Colonel Sanders" crazy to full-on "psychopathic clown" crazy, and offers them the amusing choice of working for him (and earning money) or going to jail. "Perhaps death!" he adds cheerfully. The pranksters complain he's not giving them enough choice but I count three right there. Quit whining, pranksters.

So what is Joker's plan for these unfortunates? Why, they're to be back-up singers in his doo-wop band! It's a measure of how crazy these Joker plots can get that you probably rolled with that one. The weird thing about Joker as a character is that the writers allow him to have more important storylines than anyone else--he affects the city, the police, the politics, the people, our heroes, etc., he gets the hints toward legacy and looks back to the past (as the longest running continuous villain, Joker stories tend to take the pulse of whatever's going on in the comic as a whole), and so on... but sometimes he's just another silly Batman crook. I'd argue that the best Joker stories are both--deeper and more interesting than the rest, but still endearingly goofy.

At any rate, Joker starts out small with his gang of pet practical jokers. A few false alarms called into the fire department, switching the cold and hot taps in peoples' showers, tossing counterfeit money into the crowd at a bank--

"Coked-out Groucho Marx is right! This money is fake!"

Apparently Joker plans to get the pranksters "hooked" with these early jokes--they're like gateway pranks or something, and now they're all ready to move on to harder stuff, like carnage and murder. I'm not even sure heroin can do that, let alone an afternoon spent prank calling. And what's Joker's end-game here, anyway? If he's coming up for the ideas for the pranks, why doesn't he just order around some generic goons as usual? If he wants independent actors, that goes against his previous reputation for inventing effective, dementedly clever schemes of his own. I suppose we'll find out.

The next "pranks" cross the line between Improv Everywhere and random, objective-less terrorism: causing auto wrecks by taking down "one way street" signs; shunting a train onto the wrong track, leading to another collision...

"Looks like I picked the wrong month to let my malpractice insurance payments slide. Alright, nurse, I need a rug, some duct tape, and a ride to the dumpster behind Burger Towne, stat. ...no, the ugly rug."

Step 2 of the Joker's plan to do... something or other... is dropping leaflets across Gotham! No "this is the Zodiac speaking" letter-to-the-editor bullshit for the Clown Prince of Crime--no, this is New Media, bitches. (Well, newer.) In the equivalent of a city-wide Tweet, Joker sez:

Ha-ha! I'm responsible for the practical jokes that you have been the victim of lately. I laugh at you, and I laugh at the blundering police who will be unable to stop me from stealing a valuable gem! I laugh at the Batman, who will also try to stop me!

-The Joker

(A little on-the-nose, perhaps, but nobody ever excused Clowny McMurderface of being subtle.)

Soon, Bruce is hanging out in Commissioner Gordon's office, commiserating with him over the insults, when one Henry Verne walks in with another Joker note, this one informing him that his giant diamond is soon to be re-possessed. Gordon decides this is the perfect opportunity to set a trap, apparently forgetting that the Joker has already pulled this trick before, in his very first appearance--namely, the jewel has already been stolen and replaced with a fake. Unfortunately, Gotham City bylaws require all police officers to refrain from reading the script. That's what they need Batman for.

"A date?" thought Robin. "When did this happen? Is there something Bruce isn't telling me?" His brow furrowed with uncertainty.

"Dammit, I knew we shouldn't have stopped at Burger Towne on the way over!"

(Also note that these poor cops appear to have boneitis, in addition to their Joker grins.)

No time to lose! Batman bursts through the front door with a jaunty "H'ya, funnyman!" only to find the Joker holding Henry Verne at gunpoint. All this was apparently just to lure Batman to him, though, for a surreal little joke:

It doesn't really matter, Batman. Either way the only answer is to punch clowns until your fists can't punch no more.

Batman and Robin discover that these Jokers are just goons wearing masks. Meanwhile, the real Joker is across town, stealing an entirely different jewel from an entirely different person. A clever bit of misdirection--almost as effective as just not telling people about your crimes! But of course the point for the Joker isn't the jewel, it's validating his own arrogance.

Meanwhile, back at the increasingly clown-filled ranch, our heroes are tragically overwhelmed by the sheer mass of purple-suited pugilists. Luckily the horde is under orders to keep our heroes alive, so that Joker can laugh at them. Batman and Robin come to a few minutes later, next to Verne's diamond and yet another note.

Robin looks so sad, doesn't he? "Aww, shucks," he thinks. "I'll never own a diamond that big."

I knew it! Henry Verne was just one of Joker's aliases, a clever anagram for Never... uh... Nyrhe? Never Nyrhe? Is that a thing? I guess not.

Anyway the phone rings and it is time for some taunting. It is taunting time.

"You laughing hyena!", while redundant, strikes me as an excellent expression of outrage. Especially when bellowed with pompous indignation.

Interesting--the Joker, that schizoid character, is a little bit Riddler, too. Like everything else, though, his riddles are more narcissistic than clever: upon reading in the paper that Duke Micheal, visiting from some foreign country with starving people, will be given a valise containing $10,000, Batman realizes the answer. When is a Duke not a Duke? When it's the Joker! (Because, you see, the Joker is only an Earl.)

With a ridiculous gee-why-didn't-this-become-a-catchphrase shout of, "Get on your duds, Dickey, my boy!" Batman races out to catch the Joker. But he's too late! Resplendent in his purple and green duds (I love his wide-brimmed hat), Joker bursts his way into the Duke's hotel room, gasses everyone inside, and quickly assumes the Duke's clothing. It would have been cooler if he had Hannibal Lector'd the Duke's face, but I guess I'll have to settle for make-up. (Damn you, Frederick Werther, Time-Traveling Censor!)

hargle bargle is this what our foreign aid goes toward bargle unamerican murder-clowns hargle

As the Joker tries to leave the stage with his ten grand ($144,000 nowadays), he's confronted by our heroes, swinging in in the nick of time. "You see, I solved your riddle!" cries Batman, presaging Patton. B&R punch their way through the guards (who think they're out to steal the money) and then Joker's goons, also disguised in bizarre 1940s corduroy finery. And while they're busy goofing around--

This is the work of a DC writer who agonized for days but never managed to come up with a satisfactory pie pun. It's okay, buddy. For some moments in life, there are no words.

--Joker is getting away! Instead of using the Bat-Mobile, Batman and Robin just steal a god damn car, God knows why, and naturally it turns out badly for them.

Gee, if only you had access to a REALLY FAST CAR MADE ESPECIALLY FOR CAR CHASES

Luckily for these two knuckleheads, Joker abandons his car in favor of a train, I'm guessing because it's just more dramatic and exciting that way. Batman's shitty stolen car manages to catch up to the train just enough for our heroes to jump onto the back and enter, seeking their enemy.

Passenger: "Oh we know. Purple suit, clown makeup, evil grin, yeah, it was pretty obvious before you pointed that out."

Batman: "Then stop him!"

Passenger: "That's... kind of your job, isn't it?"

Caught between Batman and an approaching guard, Joker takes a hostage, threatening to blow their head off if no, wait, this is an adventure story. Instead he does this, which is just has guaranteed success written all over it:

This whole panel is pretty great, but I especially love the way Batman's drawn there, so clearly just having leaned out to see where Joker's going, cape drawn back in an arc by the wind. The narration is just superfluous, the image speaks for itself.

Joker's next trick is to decouple the train cars, but Batman and Robin leap easily from one car to the next, staying with him. Batman faces off with Joker on top of the speeding train, like you always knew he would. The two icons trade blows and generic non-quips ("This time you're going off, Batman!" "This is it, Joker!"), and Joker gets in a good punch, knocking Batman down. I've always enjoyed how, for no particular reason, Joker can always hold his own in a fight, unlike a lot of Batman's recurring villains. Usually for Batman the hard part is getting to them; once he's face to face, people usually go down easily. Joker always gives him a few good hits back, or a smashing kick to the head with his spat-adorned shoes. As I said, there's no reason for it, Joker isn't portrayed as being stronger or well-trained or anything. It's just something they have to do in order to make Joker the best all-around nemesis, and I can respect that.

This fight ends fairly soon, however, with Batman giving Joker one solid punch, sending him flying off the train, over a cliff, and into, yes, water below. Joker ragdolls out of view, and we're down to the denouement, as our heroes and our children's role models gloat about how they totally murdered that guy, but maybe not, but probably, but either way, awesome:

"That'll teach him to laugh at me! Also I guess he stole stuff too."

Overall, not a very good issue. There's a basic level of interest and quality that having the Joker around tends to ensure, but I think we were at that level. It didn't feel like one coherent plot, which is a shame, because the joy of these Joker stories is usually how each one is a single, intricate story. This one felt more like four or five generic ideas--Joker's prank war, Joker's army of doppelgangers, the fake diamond, the stolen foreign aid, fighting on a train for no reason--all stuck together. It was goofy, but not deep or important in the way that certain Joker stories have achieved (comparatively speaking). Nor was it all that creative. The pranksters disappeared from the story after a promising set-up, Joker's motivations seemed thin, and judging from Batman's reactions, the clown's real crime was being a dick to him over the phone.

That's the moral of this story, then: don't taunt Batman on the phone. It's just not a good idea. Trust me. You'll get punched.

[METAPOST] Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day, Bat-Lovers! (no, not like that.) Tell someone you love them with these special cards!

[Comics] Detective Comics #55, "The Brain Burglar"

2011-02-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

Take a second and read that again. The Brain Burglar. This probably won't be awesome as the image it conjures up: a museum in the dead of night, a silent, sneaky entry by a masked man who Solid Snakes his way into the brain room, carefully unscrews the lids from the jars, and lifts out the squishy pink brains from their telekinetic preserving soup in order to bag them, squelching, in his brain bag, before absconding off into the night...

But, you know, it'll have Batman in it for sure, so, uh, silver lining?

The opening crawl informs me that he's not stealing brains, he's stealing secrets, which I admit makes more grammatical sense. But he's doing so because he's, "worst of all menaces--worst of all criminals... the Fifth Columnist!" But how do you steal secrets? With evil Nazi technology? Of course not! This is the 1940s, when "total war" called for America's mad scientists to step up their game and really make some crazy shit:

"The police didn't want to admit how much they valued it, but then I put them in the machine, and..."

The "truth machine" is to be demonstrated to the public tomorrow afternoon. "I think I told you enough--the rest is a secret", says Professor Henry, which brings us to wonder why he invited a reporter into his lab in the first place. If he had just kept his mouth shut, he wouldn't be in this position later that evening:

"And hurry up! In an hour I have to go drop off my jacket so it can fight the Green Lantern."

Deker is the latest in a long line of evil sciency types to threaten Gotham City, a lineage that goes all the way back to Dr. Death, Batman's first recurring villain. My guess is, Gotham just has a shortage of SWFs seeking BGSs (Bald Goateed Scientists), and so they turn to a life of crime. Girls, see what you do! By choosing the jocks over the nerds, you endanger us all! No, I'm not bitter. What was I talking about?

Oh, yeah. So Deker's goons beat the truth-or-dare machine instructions out of Henry, and then they put the professor in the machine for further interrogation, presumably because Deker's thugs get paid by the beating. He should really just put them on salary, get some free overtime out of them.

Anyway Henry spills enough beans to fuel a Third Reich blitzkrieg--the secret principles behind his "atom destroyer" (what?), and... something. This mystery invention, which the comic so badly wishes to keep secret from us, is apparently able to "control an entire army" (newsflash: Napoleon already discovered that, it's called "medals"). I don't know how you could control an entire army with whatever it is (which I will call, oh, I don't know, the MacGuffin, oh look what a random word I just selected out of thin air for no reason at all, how strange), seeing as how they test the MacGuffin by performing a "mysterious operation" on their fellow enemy agents.

Pictured here: Heinrich, of Asskiss, Germany.

Seriously though, are you going to strap the entire Allied military forces down on the table? Where will you find enough doctors? They don't seem too worried.

Over the next few indeterminate time periods, numerous scientists, inventors and such go missing, just like Professor Henry. What man could possibly stop this anti-American menace? Bruce Wayne? Hell no, that guy's got a date.

"Sorry--" is what it sounds like when you rethink saying "Sorry bitch" halfway through.

Linda Page's uncle's bomber factory isn't the most romantic of places to take your distressingly lazy boyfriend, but total war requires sacrifices of all Americans. ...not sure how this helps the war effort, but at least it puts Bruce on hand for when one of the workers goes insane:

"HEAD... HURTS... RONALD REAGAN SMASH!"

Not to worry, though! The crates are fine. And Bruce takes this opportunity to change costumes, from dickish loaf to bat-shaped crime-fighter. (Hopefully nobody will question a discarded $4,000 suit in a plane factory.)

"That's for Reaganomics, you son of a bitch!"

More workers begin going crazy, some of them attacking Batman, some trying to damage the experimental bomber. In response, Batman totally murders them, via giant wheel:

Guess now they're all... TIREd out! Also, uh, dead.

To be fair, Batman respects the seriousness of his actions by not making any plane-related puns. Batman seems like such a respectable killer that Linda even yells at a pretending-to-have-been-unconscious-the-whole-time Bruce for not being more like him. Irony! It's like a giant tiiiiire on your wedding day!

1. How was that a success?

2. If there's a "viciousness" level, why is it not always at the maximum? This is mad science, not Spinal Tap.

Later, Bruce discusses his experience with Dick (no, not like that):

Been huffing the Bat-glue lately, Robin?

(By the way, I do like how Bruce and Dick dress in their respective costumes' colors. As a fashion statement it says "secret identity? what secret identity?")

Bruce is "positive" that the sabotage is related to the missing scientists, because, well, he's read the script. And the paper helpfully has an article about inventor Mason, who might be the next target. Batman acts decisively to save a man's life!

"I suppose I could have just explained the situation with you and let you in on my plan, but this is much more fun."

Later, men with guns come and take Mason to a "private hospital" on the edge of town--where all the missing inventors are currently chained to the wall. Deker questions Mason in the brain machine about the new type of gunpowder he's invented, but before he gets too far, Robin bursts into the room, fist-first. The stunning turn of events here isn't that "Mason" was actually Batman, but that Batman apparently beat the brain machine.

Also, where did he get a Mason mask on such short notice? And how did it fit over his cowl?

B&R knock out the thugs and strap Deker into the brain machine for a quick interrogation. I think he would have talked anyway, he responds to a yes or no question with a long, gloating monologue about how they induced madness (putting a sliver of metal at the base of the brain and then beaming in "jangled radio waves"), their plan for sabotage (get the agents jobs at factories and such, then induce madness), and the next phase of the plan:

"Can one of you guys invent something that'll make this guy stop talking?"

Also there's a giant dirigible from "the Fatherland" bringing more agents into Gotham tonight. Deker goes on for about eight pages, talking about his philosophy of life, his favorite color, and a really tasty-sounding recipe for bratwurst, but I'm gonna do you guys a favor and skip to the bit with the punching.

Something tells me these secret agents would be less easy to spot if they weren't all wearing identical Little German Boy brand overalls.

Unfortunately for our heroes, these men are so crazy they can't feel punches. Oh no!

"Got to... STEEL myself... Wait! No time for puns!"

Spoiler alert: he solves this problem with punching. No, the madman doesn't feel the punch. But he does fall into the cauldron of boiling steel. Batman apparently designates all unpunchables "Terminators" and disposes of them accordingly. Good to know.

Robin, meanwhile, has picked up one too many radio waves to the skull:

I've read erotic fan-fiction that starts exactly like this.

A bit more fighting, and the factory is once again secure for truth, for justice! and so janitorial can get in here to clean up all the bodies.

I don't think Linda would like you as much if she knew what you called her behind her back.

There's some kind of analysis to be done here on comparing the two uses of the word "date", and how the comic sets up a dichotomy between boring, judgmental femininity and exciting masculine adventure, and perhaps even how this mirrors the contemporary American disagreement over whether to join WWII or remain safely isolationist... but I'm more interested in laughing at this:

Gassing Nazis? Now that's irony.

Leaving the Bat-Plane double-parked, our heroes leap into the cabin and start kicking ass.

Disappointed that this fellow's monocle doesn't pop off in shock at seeing Batman and Robin drop in unexpectedly? Don't be.

Yes, that's right. Batman did this just for you, reader.

Batman chases two goons up onto the surface of the dirigible, eventually knocking them off; Robin, meanwhile, stays inside, where the zeppelin commander accidentally fires his gun. Our heroes leap off just in time to fly away from the resulting gigantic explosion in bad-ass slow motion. (Michael Bay, eat your heart out.)

Now that the action is over, however, I want to know what the moral of the story was! Let's ask the denouement panel, which, like someone subjected to the brain machine, always tells the truth:

...

That's it? Really? Not even a "crime doesn't pay"? How will our nation's children learn how to live right? I guess I'll have to step in. Kids? Don't be Nazis. You will get punched, gassed, melted, exploded, and then eventually mocked by a blogger.

[METAPOST] Welcome, new readers!

2011-02-03T18:12:00.000-08:00

Many of you are probably coming over from OverthinkingIt, wondering who the hell is crazy enough to go through 10 seasons of Law and Order. The answer is, somebody crazy enough to go through 70+ years of Batman media and, well, Overthink It.

So, uh, hi! I'm 22 years old, college educated, I make movies, I love comics, I hail from Austin, TX, and I started this blog a year ago.

The way it works here is, every week or so I read the next Batman comic story, in chronological publication order, and then digest, discuss, and mock it here for your amusement and edification. I will do this for a very long time, eventually rolling in movies, television, and video games, in an effort to understand and enjoy the totality of the massive pop culture phenomena that is Batman.

If you're wondering where to start, I naturally recommend the beginning, but here's a short list of some of my favorites:

Batman: Uncomfortably Racist Edition

Clayface!

The Joker: An Introduction

The best Joker story so far

The most absurd premise to date

Mexican Batman

The Man Who Couldn't Remember

I do this for me, because talking about these is fun and a necessary part of the process, but I also do this for you, so I dearly hope that you get some enjoyment out of these posts. (You can always show your appreciation through words; or, there's a donation button to your right. No pressure.)

Thanks again for checking this blog out, and I hope you stick around!

-Kyu

[Comics] All-Star Comics #7, [untitled]

2011-01-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

Publication date: Oct/Nov, 1941
Author: who the hell knows (not me)

In which "All-Star" is the best joke of all.

Look, it's the Justice Society of America! Essentially an early version of the Justice League; the difference being that the JSA is largely comprised of second-rate heroes. The current role call, as of issue 7, is:

The Green Lantern
The Spectre
The Sandman (classic "mad gasser" version, not Gaiman's Endless)
Doctor Fate
The Hawkman
Johnny Thunder
The Atom
The Hourman

I've never even heard of The Hourman, and know little to nothing about the rest, although obviously Green Lantern became more important in later years. Johnny Thunder is, I think, a Flash rip-off? Anyway, actually understanding these characters would mean starting an entirely different blog called "DC Completion" and that, my friends, would be a project destined to be unfinished. Batman alone will take 20 years, assuming I try and live at the same time (and assuming I actually, you know, post now and again). This is not to say I won't someday read these things, or some of them; but actually talking about them at length is out of the question.

Anyway, you may be reading that roll call list and wondering, then, why the hell is a story about the JSA in this blog at all? Because I've been tricked by 70-year-old marketing, that's why: the DC A-listers, aka, Superman, The Flash, and Batman, are all "honorary members" of the Society. In this issue, Green Lantern is elected to the same position, leaving the JSA a little light on Energy Fists, but that's neither here nor there. What do honorary members actually do, besides pose for pictures on the letterhead?

"I'm Batman, and I approve this message."

As it turns out (and befitting the nature of their abilities), they operate as deus ex machina.

The plot of the story (63 pages of which have no Batman, and I am so not covering them in detail) starts with the JSA around a giant conference table, waiting for Green Lantern because, and I quote, "Since the Flash has become an honorary member, the Green Lantern has been elected Chairman of the Justice Society." Endquote. This indicates three things:

1. Chairmen of the Justice Society are like drummers in Spinal Tap, only with more explosions. Presumably the task of guiding the efforts of a large group of absurdly costumed overpowered children is so Herculean that it doesn't take long before you go from leading to cheerleading.
2. The addition of bureaucracy has turned 7 independent crime-fighters into 7 people waiting to be told what to do.
3. Why doesn't Hawkman get a chair?

"Guys, what if he never shows up? HOW WILL WE KNOW WHO TO PUNCH?!"

Green Lantern luckily arrives, explaining that he was in "war-torn Europe and Asia," depressing himself with the plight of newly-made orphans. Come on, Green Lantern. You can come up with a better excuse than that for oversleeping. Maybe you were up all night with nightmares about the color yellow.

GL's conclusion is, of course, to use his literally infinite power to kill Hitler and stop the war. No, wait. That's crazy talk. His actual plan is the JSA to split up and use their superpowers to earn lots of money, which they can then give directly to children (minus overhead--they're actually just renting the conference table). Money solves everything! Right?

"Oh no," their horrified little mouths seem to be saying, "my 401k!"

They decide arbitrarily that they must earn 1 million dollars, and turn it over to the appropriate charities. A unanimous vote settles the issue. Green Lantern counters this proposal with math (see, this is why he's the leader), explaining patiently that $1,000,000 does not divide evenly between 8 heroes ("If we could each raise $100,000, that still makes only $800,000!") Johnny Thunder saves the day by promising to shame all the rest of them by bringing in 300 grand all by his lonesome. Then the gang splits up.

Green Lantern falls ass-backwards into money; in the course of saving a good buddy of his, he also happens to save a kidnapping victim, the twin brother of a wealthy magnate, who gratefully offers to donate 100 thousand to the cause.

The Spectre (who seems to be a normal guy, but sometimes a ghost, plus he has some non-specific "occult" psychic powers) earns the money a little bit at a time, first winning a boxing match for five thousand, then parlaying some psychically-gathered insider info into a profitable stock trade, followed by a long-shot horse race bet (what, did he read the horse's mind or something?). He takes some time out of his busy day to expose a Communist at some military factory, and then, 9 grand short of his goal, uses his mental abilities to find somebody's buried treasure. A scoundrel tries to steal the treasure by shooting the Spectre, but the bullet goes right through him. The Spectre, uh, murders him in return. He literally just points to the guy and the guy explodes in a puff of light and smoke. Okay...

Next up is The Atom, who goes to his college library to look up a book called "10 Ways to Make Money." What we're seeing here is a cavalcade of "supermen" so sheltered and isolated from normal life by their peculiar traits, backstories, and occupation that when given an ordinary task they simply don't know where to begin. The Spectre at least works semi-intelligently; but so far the rest of them are like particle physicists trying to fix a car. They get as far as "it's not going for some reason" and then luckily the plot drops a mechanic into their laps. For the Atom, it's a group of alumni donors to the college complaining that a group of racketeers are fixing all the local college sports. The Atom declares that he'll stop these hooligans--for a fee, of course.

His plan is simple, but hinges on a ludicrous premise. Al Pratt, whose superhero identity is the Atom, is also apparently college boxing champ "the Demon", who fights in a mask. "The Demon" is approached by a member of the racket, and agrees to take a dive in his next fight. Instead, he wins the match, and when the angry racketeers burst into his home, he confronts them, in the Atom costume. They're about to murder Al Pratt in his sleep--actually a dummy--and the Atom convinces them that Pratt isn't the Demon, he is.

Yeah, these are dumb thugs. But think about it. They have entered a room containing a person whose identity is unknown (hell, he's not even an actual person). A second person whose identity is ALSO secret tells them that he's the one they're looking for. What part of that is trustworthy? All I'm saying is, you've already got a gun on him, why not ask for some ID?

At any rate, the Atom punches them into submission (does this guy have no powers at all? why in God's name is he called the Atom, then, and not Captain Fist or something?) and then threatens them into signing a confession (cause yeah, that's legal). The two alumni give him his hundred grand (in fact, they offer him more, and bizarrely he turns them down, as if war orphans won't benefit from more money).

Dr. Fate ("master of mysteries") immediately discards the idea that magic could help him get money, so we already know he's a few Wands short of a Tarot deck. At a loss for ideas, he asks his wife, who shows him an advertisement for an essay contest--whoever writes the best article on "crime: how to commit it and prevent it" wins 25 grand. Turns out the contest is a ruse set up by a gang of criminals who are also short on ideas. To make a short story shorter, Dr. Fate realizes what's up, recalls that his essay's first example was "drill through the wall of a bank in order to get to the vault," and heads to the bank to deposit some pain and suffering. (All-Star Comics is disappointingly humorless. Batman would have made tons of bank puns.) Finally, the bank manager, ignorant of Dr. Dumbass's role in instigating all of this, offers a reward of $50,000. Sez Fate, "I don't like to sound greedy but I need more than that." That's heroism for yah.

Hawkman, meanwhile, has a completely boring adventure in which he beats up a group of thugs (led by a dude whose character development is "monocle") threatening a newspaper (to quash its calls for American intervention in WWII), in exchange for a big pile of money from the grateful paper. The real fantasy element here is not a man with wings but a newspaper with money. Zing!

Sandman, meanwhile, is the only hero so far who remembers that the government will, in fact, pay you for catching high-profile criminals. (Well, okay, his girlfriend tells him. He remembered to ask her, though! Doesn't that count for something?) Sandman runs around town, collecting three wanted criminals, wearing his trademark fedora and gasmask, and using his gas gun to knock them out and bring them to the authorities. I've learned nothing about his character, except this: he would make the creepiest rapist ever.

The Hour Man, who demonstrates no powers whatsoever in this issue, puts his mission on hold to deliver chemicals via plane to Mexico "for his boss." So he actually has a job? Can't he just donate his own money? Does he only fight crime on nights and weekends? I'm so confused! Luckily it has no impact on the plot, which is a confusing mess. Like any visitor to Mexico, Hour Man finds himself kidnapped; a bandit inexplicably called "The General" ties him up for interfering with their trying to dig up an Aztec treasure possibly stolen by a man named Killer Blaine who is possibly a gangster and who may or may not be Mexican? It's way too dull for close study; suffice to say Hour Man punches his way to the treasure, and then instead of giving the priceless gold artifacts to a museum for study and safekeeping, he hands it over to the nearby expedition, in exchange for a check. This appears ill-advised:

Those are the eyes of a man whose check will bounce, because he will spend 100% of the treasure on Mexican cocaine.

Meanwhile, remember Johnny Thunder, the green-suited kid who vowed to bring in three times the dough? Yeah, so, everybody else looks competent next to him. These are the things he tries, in order from dumb to stupid:

1. Walk into a bank and politely ask for a massive loan.
2. When the bank is robbed, offer to protect the robbers for three hundred thousand.
3. When the robbers laugh in his face (quite reasonably; they're already dues-paying members of a protective criminal association), he talks to his Bahdnisian Thunderbolt.

(Apparently that's a pink humanoid, made of lightning or something?--I dunno, he's drawn all scraggly. Anyway he shows up, like the alien from the Flintstones, whenever Johnny utters the phrase "Cei-U", which usually comes out like "Say, you guys won't get away with this!" Comically, Johnny has no idea that this is the trigger phrase, and assumes that the Thunderbolt guy shows up at random. This sounds like an idea for a comic that will stop being clever after one issue. It's actually something that, I think, only works here--in the context of a larger work, you don't need to take Johnny seriously. And he really does make every other hero look better by comparison. Even the ones not in this comic.)

4. On the advice of his Thunder-guy, he tries selling peanuts. PEANUTS. This is a superhero comic!
5. When that fails to immediately earn him a hundred thousand dollars, and upon noticing it is about to rain, he buys a hundred umbrellas and tries to sell them. But everybody has umbrellas already (last week was "National Umbrella Week"), and after a few hours of trying to sell nuts or umbrellas at what I can only assume is an absurdly large mark-up, Johnny goes home to sleep.

6. Johnny assumes first that he still needs to sell things, and second that his problem is, he needs to diversify his inventory. In his zeal to take advantage of all possible mini-zeitgeists on his little street corner, he buys up ice cream (it snows), coffee (now they want cigars), and before he's sold a damn thing (after having spent hundreds of dollars on inventory), a beat cop asks to see his street-selling license. He's too broke to pay the fine, since all his capital's tied up in inventory, and now he can't even sell it.

Luckily for him, Sandman and the Atom have decided to do what the JSA should have done in the first place and in general--pressured criminals to donate to the orphan fund. In essence, instead of policing crime, they should be taxing it, using the tax funds to offset the social costs of crime, and only beating up the really bad guys who step out of line. Our heroes happen to threaten the same bank robbers Johnny met earlier--so they decide to come take him up on his offer.

7. He decides to help them, under the impression that it surely couldn't be the real Sandman and Atom. And he's probably right. For one thing, they're off having other adventures; for another, they're not smart enough to come up with the idea. As it turns out, he exposes them as generic goons in Sandman/Atom costumes, with the help of his Thunderbolt, who can apparently appear whenever he wants within an hour of being called the last time? And who punches, but does not electrocute. How strange.

At any rate, the goons pay him a whole ten bucks, the stingy bastards, and the court system takes that to pay his ticket. Utterly broke, and ashamed, he returns to the JSA, and hides under the conference table while everybody else makes noise about how successful and smart they were. They find him and shame him, rightfully. (And I quote, "And you call yourself a man!" Ouch.)

Defensive, Johnny accidentally says his magic words again, and his Thunderbolt summons the three honorary members of the JSA. Look! It's Superman, Batman, and the Flash! And they're all clutching bundles of cash!

Okay, I recognize two of those guys. But who's bucket-head?

Johnny is so stunned by this sudden fortune (pun intended) that he can barely ask how the hell they did it so fast, and the comic can barely answer. Superman says "I went right to work, and that's all there was to it," Batman says he and Robin "got busy" (no, not like that), and the Flash promises to tell all when Johnny's "a big boy", proving once and for all that people who wear winged buckets on their heads shouldn't be douchebags, lest their glass house collapse from the weight of the irony.

The subtext is loud and clear, though, and absolutely hilarious--if the JSA proper looks competent next to hapless Johnny, they look like a bunch of weak-ass morons next to a few actual heroes. Batman didn't dick around finding treasure or helping criminals; he probably just withdrew some funds from his multi-national corporation. The Flash has an actual superpower, unlike most of the team, and clearly just ran through a bank or something, which is why he's just clutching two sweaty handfuls of cash. Superman has the same power, but other ones besides, which is why his contribution is nicely packaged in a handy "$" bag.

These guys accomplished instantly and easily what it took the rest of you at least a day's worth of retarded mishaps to do. No wonder they don't want to be full members of your little club.

Oh, and by the way, they also took the time to melt Hitler with their laser eyes. You're welcome, losers.

[Comics]: Detective Comics #54, "Hook Morgan and His Harbor Pirates"

2010-11-11T17:24:00.000-08:00

Publication date: August, 1941
Author: Bob Kane

Yarr!

We open with a dastardly, daring, very cartoonish heist, as modern gangster harbor pirates steal a pile of cargo by literally sawing a hole in the dock around it from underneath.

Having successfully stolen the cargo, the gangsters (Mobsterius Gothamicus) will now return to their nest, constructed with a special mixture of mud, saliva, and chewed cellulose.

The pirates speed off in their boat, crowing over their victory, but are soon spotted by the police. A pitched gun battle on the high seas! But the pirates manage to shatter the police searchlight, and while the cops are replacing the bulb, the bad guys run for it. The police give chase, but...

"A giant--Bill, are you back on the sauce again?"

"That's not what your wife said last night! Hah!"

"I thought we agreed you had a problem."

Mysterious, vanishing, wood-eating pirates? This looks like a job for Batman! Surely Bruce Wayne and his ward can put their heads together and--

"Look, harbor pirates sound cool and all, but a guy's gotta have priorities."

Bruce's attempt to have a normal life is swiftly foiled, however. Linda takes him to pick up some "rare and expensive cloth from that foreign country," cloth imported by the proprietor, a Mr. Sale, into an establishment that is almost certainly named "Store." Turns out the bale of cloth was stolen last night by, you guessed it, harbor pirates! Linda is more than a little miffed: "If I were a man I'd do something about those pirates!" (Keep in mind this comic was written a long time ago. Feminism has long since broken the glass ceiling in the pirate-hunting industry.)

Before Bruce can do more than mumble a few words of encouragement about the efforts of the police, he is startled to see that very same exclusive cloth in another store window!

Apparently the cloth is expensive because it's woven out of the wailing faces of damned souls. It's probably French, too.

Bruce runs off, with a scolding from Linda, who assumes he is off to kill time at a night club. In fact, he's off to go punch pirates, which I think we can all agree is an invaluable service to society.

But first, he has to find the pirates. And that means being a detective. And that means lots and lots of ominous looming.

First he looms over the proprietor of the store where the cloth ended up:

"Now gimme some answers or I'll get even angrier! What's the price of that doggie in the window--the one with the waggly tail?!"

Batman heads out for Conroy's warehouse, and befitting the man's greater economic stature, his looming is significantly friendlier:

"Seriously, I can't hear you. Come closer. This office used to be a football field."

Little does Batman know that while he was in transit (rooftop traffic's a bitch at rush hour), the first merchant phoned Conroy and let him know that "a masked man" in a "queer costume" was coming. Here we see the essential problem with Batman's dual personae; his girlfriend thinks him too boring to fight crime, and his enemies think him too gay to have a girlfriend. So tragic.

See that guy in the back? The one with the hook? They call him Hook. It is delightful.

Batman puts up a valiant fight, his fists "strik[ing] with the fury of twin thunderbolts!" before being defeated by his secret weakness: somebody sneaking up behind him and hitting him over the head. (It's like his Kryptonite!)

Like a dog chasing cars, the criminals don't actually know what to do with him once they've got him, so after a lot of brainstorming and giggling they simply tie him up and leave him in a walk-in refrigerator to die. It's not as crazy as it sounds--putting a cube of Batman in your drink keeps it cool for hours! Kids Try It At Home!

Batman has three crucial skills: punching, acquiring young wards no questions asked, and getting out of bizarre death traps. (This is why Christopher Nolan's next Batman film will also be "Saw VIII.") Sometimes the solution is as simple as "Robin, pick up the damn phone." Sometimes it is, well, this:

Batman thinks that's what you call snowmen. This is because when he was growing up, Alfred always made them for him, while he sat inside, sipping hot chocolate and yelling instructions over the intercom.

Who will win in this daring contest between The Batman and The Light Bulb? Tune in next week on oh no wait the bulb broke. Never mind. That wasn't even a bit suspenseful.

Anyway, he uses the glass to cut his ropes, and then the acid(!) on the utility belt(!) that the moronic pirates never took from him(!)! Although to be fair, it's probably hard to unbuckle a utility belt when one of your hands is a hook. You never think about what pirates must have had to go through, what with the state of prosthetics being a choice between wood and a cruel, razor-sharp implement. The next time you see a pirate you should tell him he's doing a good job. A real good job. Maybe buy him some ice cream.

"Who the hell do I know who blocks light and also looks kind of like a bat? ...is that you, Phil?"

Also note that, bizarrely, Batman calls "Hook," "Old Hook-Arm." What? He has an arm, Batman.

Anyway, after he's choked the location of the next pirate attack out of Conroy, Batman gets the wireless transmitter out of his boot and summons some help.

Poor Robin. He's just been sitting around in his costume, waiting for the foot-phone to ring.

He doesn't need Robin's help, you understand. He just needs somebody to bring the boat around. Maybe a valet.

"Quick, Carl! Go get my sequined life vest! We'll show these boys a time like they've never had!" "Aye aye, Captain!"

But just a few awkward minutes into the Captain's misguided attempt at ocean seduction, the "castaways" pull out guns and reveal themselves to be pirates. Hook even hooks somebody in the face!

"My face! My beautiful face!"

"Get that man's face, too!"

Did... did Robin forget what a boat is?

I do really like the way the propeller is colored there--the gleaming blades reflecting a sliver of yellow moonlight suggest motion in a very strong, elegant fashion. You can almost hear the drone. Also lovely is this composition, in which Batman demonstrates the proper way to exit a low-flying plane: fist first.

Batman casually ripped off the man's face and held it, dripping, in one hand. After that nobody felt much like fighting.

After a brief, predictable scrap full of the requisite nautical puns and sporting metaphors, Batman and Robin literally scrub the deck with these pirates.

Even modern pirates are filthy and unwashed. It's a job requirement.

However, there's one pirate missing from the soggy, concussed pile: Hook! He's already in the original launch, roaring away. Batman and Robin quickly follow in the Batplane, which, as a heavy fog rolls in, becomes a speedboat! (Now available wherever children's toys are sold.) After a high-speed chase through the foggy waters, however, they find that the boat has vanished!

Maybe his boat turned into a plane and flew away, Batman. Did you ever think of THAT?

Okay, so the brick is actually the activation button for the doorway to the pirates' secret hide-out. Time for the exciting action conclusion to our story!

For some moments in life, there are no words.

Robin takes out the side henchmen, while Batman trades retarded repartee with Hook:

Hook: "I'm going to tear your head off, Batman!"

Batman: "Maybe!"

Then they fight, in a surprisingly difficult and brutal bout. Hook makes full use of his artificial appendage, slashing Batman across the chest, digging it into his shoulder and dragging him in for a punch, and so on. Maybe this is actually the heartwarming story of a man learning to use his disability to his advantage.

"NOT VERY MUCH BATMAN"

Oh, right, I forgot. This is the heartwarming story of another man punching the disabled man in the face until he learns to be law-abiding.

Interestingly, this is a rare case of a Batman story so thin that it doesn't even require an exposition panel to close things up. No mysteries to be unraveled, no dramatic irony to be laid on thick. We didn't even learn anything! Except maybe "don't be a pirate." Which, I mean, what else are you going to do? If life gives you a hook, make lemonade one-handed, I guess.

[Comics]: Detective Comics #53, [untitled]

2010-08-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

Publication date: July 1941
Author: Bob Kane

It's the height of summer, and you know what that means--Batman and Robin are going to fight some poor window washer!

What did he ever do to you? And what does this have to do with Detectives? I'm so confused!

Ah, summer. When a young man's thoughts turn to guns:

Is it just me or is it weird to advertise an air rifle right before a Batman story, which is usually very anti-gun? Maybe this is the one where Bruce Wayne gets sick of pretending to be bored and goes postal on his high-society buddies.

No, apparently it's about one of my favorite subjects--cities.

Perhaps!

Our story opens with a declaration of theme. Bruce is having lunch with a friend, one Jim Daly. Daly believes that Gotham is a cold and heartless place, its citizens bustling but without empathy. Bruce disagrees. Our dialectic set, it is up to some gangsters or something to prove the point one way or the other.

Our next page is an interesting illustration. Normally one would think of Batman himself as a refutation of Daly's point--here is a man who dedicates his life to the service of others in his city. Yet here he throws himself off a pier in order to save a girl from committing suicide. Is this empathy, or a self-serving savoir complex, unable to afford others the same autonomy he demands for himself?

Anyway, having saved her, Batman suggests she tell him her tale of woe. Perhaps he can solve her problem with punching?

"If only the artist had drawn me more attractive!"

Ms. Vane (get it? get it? aw, forget it) goes on to explain that she's been deceiving her parents, claiming wild success on the stage in the letters she sends them. And in a shocking twist worthy of every sitcom ever, her parents are now coming to town for a few days to watch Viola's performance and exclaim how proud they are in person. And rather than face their disappointment, she's chosen to throw herself in the river.

Batman to the rescue! With his strong muscles, he's able to hold her head underwater for much longer than the required--

Oh, wait. He's going to help with his super-selfishness, instead.

"This is my chance to use her suicide attempt to a prove a point in an argument!"

Later, Batman shows up at a nightclub and outlines his plan to help Viola. Bizarrely, the rich assholes agree.

"Tell me again how good looking Bruce is."

Bruce "goes from nightspot to nightspot, telling everyone of Viola Vane," and thanks to all those two-drink minimums, he's pretty smashed by the time he gets to the next stage of his plan: media blackout.

Mack: "Here's to you, Mr. Robinson! Jesus loves you more--"

Mr. Robinson: "And someone's sneakin' round the corner. Could that someone be Mack the Knife?"

Batman: *backs out of the door slowly*

What Batman has set up here is actually very precarious. By making it clear that he's telling this to every news organization in town, both the papers and the radio stations, he's set up a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma. The first person to break the press embargo gets the scoop of a lifetime (I can see the headlines now: "Viola Vane Not Actually Famous! Batman Tries to Stifle Freedom of Speech! Read All About It!"), and everybody else gets screwed for toeing the line. So each individual's best move is to get the story out as fast as possible--which means that they all will, and thus get screwed, because nobody will have the story out significantly faster than anyone else. So what holds this embargo together? The threat of physical violence, of course.

His words say "I'll start a Senate investigation" but his eyes say "I will punch anyone you have ever loved."

Time for step 3--Miss Vane. Bruce shows up ("There's no need for you to understand. The Batman told me what you're to do. ...now take off that dress. That's right. Now dance a little.") and takes her to first the beauty parlor for a makeover, and then to her home for the duration of her parents' visit.

"Your stage name, Miss Ophelia Thunderstorme!"

Viola is so touched by the kindness of her betters that she starts crying tears of joy. Gee, this sounds like a crackerjack new reality TV show. "Famous for a Day", or maybe "We Help You Lie to Your Loved Ones".

Finally her parents arrive, stunned by Viola's apparent wealth and fame.

Here the letterer has helpfully bolded all the failures of imagination.

After the tour, Bruce and Viola take the Vanes to a nightclub (her father has never even seen one, outside of the movies), and everybody applauds her arrival.

The best idea Batman had here was convincing the MacGianthands family to participate in the scheme.

While Viola is soaking up all the charitable glory, however, a trio of gangsters has designs on the furs and jewels on loan to her in her penthouse. Oh no! How could she ever live without them?

"No, dis is a laugh: Hah!"

Robin is guarding the penthouse. Do I even need to tell you what happens next, or can I skip right to the Boy Wonder's embarrassing failure?

"I tried to fight, but I just suck so much! I'm sorry for being totally worthless, Batman." is what he should have said.

Inside the penthouse, Vane's borrowed furs and jewels have been stolen back, and her rented Rolls has turned into a pumpkin, too. Batman's only fear is that Viola's parents might know of the theft, because... uh... rich people never get robbed? I dunno. Vane suggests calling the police, but Batman doesn't want publicity. "Robin and I will handle this in our own quiet way," he says, a line which tells us that this story is finally going to start trending towards this:

"Then why did you enter by breaking our skylight?"

After panel after panel of Batman and Robin saying, "Please stop fighting so we can talk" while they beat the living crap out of these gangsters, the hoods finally decide to listen. At least, the conscious ones.

Batman actually appeals to their common decency, telling them it's a rotten trick that's been played on Viola Vane. Most of them still deny any knowledge, but one rat-faced fellow tells Batman, "I may be a crook, but I never pulled a doity stunt like Toothy done." He tells our heroes where they can find Toothy (who can be seen a few panels up in this entry).

Apparently, he lives in "The Shacks", a "crooked row of weather-beaten old houses" on the waterfront, home mostly to criminals. Even Batman and Robin tread softly here... but not softly enough.

"The Batman is here!"

"The Batman!"

"He'll ruin his surprise party!"

"We must stab him!"

"We must stab the Batman!"

With difficulty, Batman and Robin fight their way through the crook-infested house, and then sleeping-gas the lot of them. They make their way to Toothy's room, only to be greeted by a hail of bullets. (Man, nobody ever has anything nice to say.) Toothy goes down the fire escape, and in a fit of pique at his earlier humiliation, Robin launches himself out the window and into Toothy's car. The two of them end up driving right off the pier. Robin takes the opportunity to turn Toothy into Toothless (haha, childhood brutality!), and all's well that ends--

Goddammit woman, will you ever be happy?!

Ugh. Batman has to schlep down to the theater, and convince the star and director to let little miss entitled star in the play, too. Luckily they're amenable--it's the star's last performance before she leaves for Hollywood, anyway.

"You'll do it even if I have to beat up you and half the audience," growled the Batman.

And she does and it's a big hit, of course, and the play's director wants her to stay on to take over for the real star, and her parents are happy, and everyone applauds...

And she never sees Batman again, because he all he ever wanted was this:

"Deep enough and no deeper! Certainly not deep enough to find all the criminals, or the class system driving thousands of Viola Vanes to desperate, dashed dreams, or the selfish superhero who uses violence to enforce the status quo, or..."

[Comics]: World's Finest Comics #2, "The Man Who Couldn't Remember!"

2010-08-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

Publication date: Summer, 1941
Author: No Man Can Say

Summer heat, and World's Finest, formerly World's Best, is on the bookshelves. And with the heat wave comes another wave--a wave of crime. Gang crime. The war between rival gangs has been going on for two months, and frankly the Gotham public has had enough of this shit.

"I don't know why we keep voting for that guy."

The disastrous drive-by shooting brings public opinion from a slow simmer to a full boil (add in a little sage, remove from heat, serves 4), and the end result is the governor appointing a special prosecutor, William Kendrick, as an end-run around the crooked DA. Kendrick, we're told, is on the straight and narrow, and promises to get the racketeers. Our story does a nice round-up of bad guy reaction shots, which also has the benefit of introducing our cast.

There's "Big Tim" Bannon, Gotham's political boss, who is skeptical that Kendrick will follow through on his heated promises.

Added Bannon, "Nyah, see?"

Big Tim is played by a toad.

There's the ousted crooked DA Graves, who complains that getting rid of rackets is really hard (especially when the racketeers are paying for his summer home).

Fun fact: he once killed a man with his chin.

Graves is played by the creepy neighbor who won't stop watching you.

There's Mitch Mason, of the West Side mob, who isn't too worried;

Mitch: "I don't worry about anything, thanks to the opium! Wink!"

Mitch is played by Jude Law.

And his rival, Trig Cooler, head of the East Side mob, who makes oblique threats on Kendrick's life.

Trig Cooler is played by Frank Sobotka from The Wire (season 2).

Finally, there's a citizen's committee intended to give Kendrick all the support he needs, headed by wealthy businessman Ambrose Taylor.

Ambrose Taylor is played by Mr. Potato Head.

These are today's players in... "As Gotham City Turns"

Hey, I know what this plot is missing! A plot! Let's add a MacGuffin, shall we?

Kendrick is played by Vampire Charlton Heston.

The next day, Kendrick is having lunch with his friend, Bruce Wayne, who helpfully explains that Kendrick has signed his own death warrant.

Bruce Wayne is played by the stern face of justice.

Kendrick brushes off Bruce's fears, and invites him to dinner, telling him "It's the servant's night off. I'll be all alone!" He makes sure to yell it loudly enough so that the whole restaurant hears. Naturally, the creepy eavesdropping waiter (played by the reanimated corpse of Peter Lorre) wastes no time in taking the news of Kendrick's vulnerability to Boss Bannon. Bannon takes it to "a certain mobster", and later in a shadowy smoke-filled room, shadowy silhouettes plot the murder of the new prosecutor, invisibly.

But two unexpected elements will alter their plans. First, the Potato Head of the Citizen's Committee requests a meeting with Kendrick. Second, a worried Bruce puts on his costume and heads over to Kendrick's, where he sees a car belonging to Boss Bannon out front. Climbing silently up the fire escape, Batman finds himself confronted with a blood-drenched horror:

No jokes here--I just think this is a beautifully laid-out panel, and the surreal red coloring adds a very Dario Argento sort of macabre-ness to the scene. While Batman usually tries for mood, it rarely goes for expressionistic effects like this which key into emotion--here, Batman's shock and horror at finding his friend murdered (and Mr. Potato Head french-fried).

Batman's response is to get so angry that the narration describing his punches needs to use three exclamation marks!!! It doesn't help, though. Batman can fight a lot of things but he can't fight this graph:

Batman's fighting skill is inversely related to how many pages there are left in the issue.

Batman can fight anything at the beginning of the issue, but after that there's a severe drop-off as the true antagonists are introduced. After that, his prowess steadily increases, peaking with the climax and resolution, at which point Batman is so awesome he could punch through the fourth wall, hitting you, the reader.

You can also imagine a similar, but completely inverted graph showing the likelihood that at any given time, Batman will be easily knocked unconscious. Mathematologists are not yet sure how often that's going to result in him waking up just in time to hear a cryptic dying confession, but their computing machines are working day and night on the question.

Devil's Dungeon? Sounds like he's talking about a very different little black book.

With that, Vampire Charlton Heston crumbled into a small pile of fine dust.

Carrying Ambrose "My head was in Toy Story!" Taylor down the fire escape, Batman sees ex-DA (and now DA again?) Graves running away. The mysteries are sure piling up and holy shit:

"In the meantime, at least being covered in Taylor's blood will strike fear into the hearts of my enemies. So much fear."

When he gets to the street, Batman is shot at by a carful of gangsters with machine guns, who must be blind, because:

a) they don't hit him
b) they are shooting at Batman when he is covered in freaking blood

Batman's response is another one of those "I'm so glad I read these comics" moments:

Somehow the bizarre amount of useless "headroom" at the top of this panel just makes this funnier. Or maybe it's just that the brick has knocked his hat off.

Finally regaining their sight or sanity, the gangsters take off. Batman brings the wounded Taylor to Bruce Wayne's nurse girlfriend, Linda Page. She's able to treat him physically, but the bullet that creased his scalp appears to have given him--

*GASP*

AMNESIA!

With Batman's witness unable to give testimony, he falls back on the only other clue he's got--Kendrick's cryptic last words. Unfortunately, that clue is known to the conspirators, too.

Wait, what? Sounds like Kendrick had some bizarre hobbies. (Probably BDSM, but I'm not ruling out LARPing just yet.)

The bad guys ride up to Kendrick's house; so does Batman, Robin, Taylor (in case he suddenly regains his memory) and Linda ("I'm coming with you then. He's still a sick man and may have a relapse and don't argue with me I'm a nurse"), in the Batmobile. Because the Batmobile is an especially-designed billions-of-dollars crime-fighting machine, it goes very very fast.

If only it had GPS.

"Wow! The Batmobile must be doing at least 45 miles an hour! That's way too fast, even for our modern times!"

Rather than using the shortcut to get to their actual destination and find the black book without Batman's interference, they decide to set a trap for him. They put their two cars end to end across the road next to a curve, intending for Batman to crash.

Batman, rounding the corner and seeing the cars, realizes he can't stop in time, he can't turn aside.... There's only one thing to do: accelerate.

Go, Speed Racer! Go, Speed Racer! Go--oh, right. Wrong hero. Anyway this is still pretty awesome.

As it turns out, the Batmobile is made of reinforced glass, steel, and man.

Our heroes successfully get to Kendrick's house first, and spend a few panels wandering around a spooky Gothic house in the dark (the power's out for some reason), complete with those creepy paintings you'd always see in Scooby Doo that were actually disguised peepholes. Batman eventually finds a "Roussal" painting, titled "Devil's Dungeon", which for some reason is not actually in Kendrick's basement-slash-LARP-lair. Anyway behind the painting is the black book.

No sooner have they found it, however, than Bannon's men come charging into the house. Robin takes out a few of them, like a responsible crime-fighter would.

Hey, kids! You know all those lessons Batman and Robin are always trying to teach you? This is one of them.

Meanwhile, Bannon and Graves stumble around, unable to find a damn thing for lack of light. Batman puts on those ridiculously dorky night-vision glasses of his and starts throwing his voice around, ventriloqly.

Either that man is terrified, or his face is made out of cookie dough. Either way it's delicious.

By the time Batman's finished toying with them, thugs downstairs have found Linda and Taylor. In the ensuing struggle, Taylor gets a second bump on the head, which is of course the cure for Fictional Amnesia. His memory regained, Taylor delivers a startling twist:

dun dun DUHNNNNN

Taylor then pulls a gun out of his pocket. Really? I mean, come on, Batman. Everybody knows the first thing you do with an amnesia victim is check his pockets to see what clues he may have left himself. (Also mysterious tattoos.)

Anyway, it's clear that now that Taylor's realized he's a bad guy, he should probably be trying to kill Batman. On the plus side, he does have the gun, and Batman's so absolutely startled by Taylor's retarded confession that he's frozen for an instant. On the other hand, Batman's "instant" is shorter than you'd think. To be fair, Taylor is suffering from a pair of head wounds and isn't thinking clearly. But still, come on. Isn't it better to avoid fighting Batman, even if you're guilty? I mean, he'll beat you up pretty badly. Or, you know, this:

Damn, Batman. What did Mr. Potato Head ever do to you?

The tied-up crooks reveal the rest of the story. Apparently Taylor was publicly the head of the Citizen's Committee to help Kendrick fight the mob, and privately... Mitch Mason's superior and head of the West Side mobsters.

Batman pulls the appropriate lesson from all of this: he should have known the amnesiac was the killer. ...huh.

You're a grown man in a bat costume talking to his costumed ward and his nurse sort-of double girlfriend and together you fight the mob. Earth is a long way away.

[Comics]: Batman #6, "Suicide Beat"

2010-07-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

Publication date: August/September 1941

Author: Bob Kane

This melancholy story is chronologically mixed; the past and present fuse to create an enduring portrait of an early beat poet contemplating suicide in the wake of his mother's death, a story which I made up just now.

No, actually, this is about cops. So a word about the GCPD, before we begin.

I've mocked them before for being totally incompetent--early on, they declared they couldn't catch any criminals because it was foggy out--while at the same time acknowledging that the narrative of Batman required the police to be deficient in some manner, or Gotham simply wouldn't need a costumed vigilante in the first place.

However, there are ways to get around that, and a lot of Batman stories will eventually take different routes to the same conclusion. Nolan's Batman films have the police as competent, but largely corrupt, with the good cops outnumbered in a system that's turned against them. Other stories focus on the criminals being far too dangerous for the cops to deal with. The excellent series GCPD melts all of these concepts into a gooey, tasty concoction of a police department, where good cops are hindered by corruption, limited by their own human needs and fears, and traumatized on a daily basis by the need to live and do police work in a city populated by surreal monsters in human form.

Anyway, hopefully this story is the beginning of that trend toward realism and not more Keystone shenanigans.

To steal a phrase I read the other day on Aaron "Dresden Codak" Diaz's nascent blog, Indistinguishable from Magic, comics are a form of compression. Not just because sequential art can turn a long story into a very short one (panel 1: Boy graduates from high school, proud parents watching; panel 2: the same man now aged, bearded, and clothed in filthy rags sits glumly on the street, ignored by passerby, holding a sign which says, "Please Help, God Bless"). But because comics involve a very specific and deliberate symbolic language. Take a look at the panel above; is there any element of it, from top to bottom, that isn't short-hand for something else?

The city skyline, for instance, isn't drawn in detail, but we understand that a blocky set of silhouettes likely means "city". Guns don't actually make a puff of smoke like that when they fire, but in the absence of sound (or sound effects, which are their own comics language), the "smoke"--itself just a squiggly line in a rough circle, colored white--tells us that the gun has fired.

The gunshot and its effect are portrayed in the same panel, as if simultaneous, another form of compression that only comics can really do well. The characters are faceless and stand for Cop and Criminal, not themselves; body language indicates how criminals operate from a position of strength and audacity, and how the cops can't even keep their feet against them. Thus, although this is a singular event, the visuals tell us that it is iconic and indicative of the general state of affairs in Gotham City.

The dialog, finally, is also extremely stylized, from the way it renders non-verbal sounds (laughter, the cop's dying moan, itself a comics convention of the time indicating death) to the way the killer says precisely what he doesn't mean, ie., "Fancy Dan" is probably not as nice as his moniker would indicate, and he is certainly not sending "regards".

Batman does this sort of stylization and compression to a greater and lesser extent all the time; but it's interesting to see, through close reading, how an individual panel reveals itself as being almost entirely comprised of symbols and signals that tell us much more than what's literally on the page.

In conclusion, this Fancy Dan fellow is sure in for a punchin'!

Later, the cop's body is found by other police officers, who confirm what we've already come to suspect: this neighborhood is "the suicide beat", because Fancy Dan murders any cop who gets close to his local operations. Grogan is dead cop number three, and the brass is certainly going to take notice and take action against Fancy Dan's reign of terror. Right?

Well, shit.

After Mr. My-Desk-is-Taller-Than-You gives him his marching orders, Kelly, who is even more screamingly Irish than the rest of the cops in his precinct--are there no Protestants on the GCPD?--walks out humming "'tis the wearin' of the green", to the astonishment of his fellow officers. The explanation given at the time is that he's proud of his son, Jimmy, who has just become a police officer.

But I think he's just some kinda whistlin' freak.

This cannot possibly go wrong.

In short order, Kelly is executed on the street by another one of Dan's thugs. Now this is out of line. It's not as though he was trying to mess with Kelly; it was simply a pre-emptive murder based on there being a cop on that beat at all. It's nothing less than a declaration of war on the Gotham City police.

Problem is, nobody can do anything about it. Fancy Dan's gotten away with everything that's ever been pinned on him, thanks to his having low friends in high places (namely, the local political boss).

Jimmy Kelly won't listen, however. His dead father will not go unavenged!

"Suicide Beat? Why, that's suicide!"

(Is anyone else having trouble taking a story about a man named "Fancy Dan" seriously? Maybe it's just me.)

The next day, Bruce Wayne (remember him?) is in Commissioner Gordon's office, listening to Gordon and Jimmy's superior talk about the boy. Bruce is alarmed to learn that Kelly won't even have the support of the neighborhood--apparently Fancy Dan's silent partner, the politician, makes sure to spread the wealth around, supporting the local poor in exchange for their votes and their loyalty, even against the police.

"Not like that quiet thunder, you know?"

This is yet another case of these comics over-explaining. We don't need to hear that the people on his beat hate him; not only did we learn that from the meeting with Gordon, but it's clear just from the way this panel is framed, drawn, and colored. The strange afternoon light lends an air of eerie tension to the scene, but it's the silent gazes of the locals that speak of real menace. Their body language denotes a casualness (slumped shoulders, leaning against walls and trash cans) that their looks belie--especially in the way that all of them are focused on the same individual, whose straight posture, forward gaze and strong stride indicate bravery.

Suddenly Jimmy is hit in the back of the head--with a tomato. He chases the offending kid down the block and into "Pete's", a bar... and comes face to face with his father's killer.

"You ain't so fancy."

Ironically, Dan is protected here by the very institution he despises. Despite Kelly's need for revenge, he recognizes that it's not "a cop's way" to just kill him, no matter how easy or satisfying that would be. Instead, he vows to get Kelly without breaking the law.

In the next sequence, Kelly tackles a small girl out of the street, thereby saving her from a speeding car and also scoring six points. The car continues on without even slowing down, and a frustrated Kelly says, "The dirty rat is getting away!"

Not for long, however; Batman and Robin (remember them?) come out of nowhere, steal a car, and give chase. A bit of fisticuffs later, and...

That's not Batman! That's... Mexican Batman! "El crimen no paga, senors! Adios!"

(Look, I don't think Mexican Batman is a bad person. I just think it's another case of those people taking jobs from real Americans. Unfortunately no fence can stop Mexican Batman, so there's not much we can do about him.)

The point of this sequence, narratively, is that as soon as Kelly brings the speeder in, Alderman Skigg (Fancy Dan's politician pal) is there to get him out of court scott free. However, there's a more important issue here: this sequence of events also shows the differences and relationships between the cops and Batman. Here, Kelly can save the little girl, but he can't stop the criminal, because his perspective is limited (akin to one ant within a very bureaucratic hive) and he is bound by the law. Batman, on the other hand, as a vigilante, can react quickly or even pre-emptively against those he understands to be criminals, because he is one man and not an organization; and because he is free to break the law (here, by stealing a nearby car), he is able to do what is necessary in order to take criminals down.

Neither man, however, can make a lasting impact without the overarching systems of society (the courts and the politicans). Here, the corruption of those systems prevents either Batman or the police from getting criminals off the streets.

This isn't coming out of nowhere; it's significant that it's the very next thing that happens after we see Kelly vowing to get legal revenge. This elegant bit of foreshadowing suggests that Kelly will be unable to achieve his goals without Batman's help--and that without fixing the systems that support Fancy Dan, neither of them will be able to stop him.

The criminals, on the other hand, are bound only by public perception. Shooting yet another cop might bring the governor down on all their heads; so Skigg suggests putting Kelly in the hospital, instead. Cue the fight scene.

Man, that sign means business, doesn't it? "The first rule of Suicide Beat is there is no parking! The second rule of Suicide Beat is there is NO PARKING!"

This is a pretty good fight, mostly because of this:

This is awesome, even if Batman has gotten so smug with himself that his neck has disappeared in shame.

And because one of the thugs tells Robin "I'll moider ya!", a threat which made my old-timey-slang-loving heart burst with joy.

Their plan foiled, the crooks make a swift getaway, but one of them happened to drop, ZOINKS! a clue! during the fight. The clue turns out to be a message from Skigg to bet five grand (about $70,000 in today's money) on "Mafey", whoever he is.

Kelly explains. It turns out that Mafey is fighting the champ tomorrow night at the Milk Fund Fight, which is as it turns out is actually a charity fight whose proceeds are intended to fund the purchase of milk for needy children. Huh. I always thought that was a metaphor. I guess it turns out that... okay I'll stop.

Kelly theorizes that Skigg wouldn't bet unless he knew it was a sure thing. Together, he and Batman hatch a plot. They intend to bet Bruce Wayne's millions on this sure thing, thereby doubling their money, which they'll then use to simply buy off the crooks.

Or, you know, this insanity:

Batman's muscular, bizarrely smooth, nipple-less upper body vibrated intensely as he waited for the crowd's response.

I'm honestly not sure if it's funnier if I tell you how we got to this point. Suffice to say, there are only four panels between this and the planning, and one of those has Batman putting a sleeper hold on the champ.

Also you can't see it here but it is important to note that Batman's costume apparently can be reduced down to his cowl and a pair of tight little shorts.

Needless to say, the crowd wants Batman, or at least these two terrifying twins do:

"We want him to join our circus sideshow!"

And so the fight begins. The first words out of the boxer who has seen his opponent replaced by Batman are, I shit you not, "The Batman, eh? Well, here's where I make you look like a punk!" For whatever reason, the ratio of balls to brains here is unfathomably large.

I feel like Batman should start extolling the virtues of Hostess fruit pies, here. This is precisely that bizarre.

Anyway, Batman does pretty well at first, but then his opponent starts fighting dirty. He rubs his glove in the shoe resin on the floor and then rubs his glove into Batman's eyes, blinding him. (Look, I don't know anything about boxing, particularly boxing in the 1940s, and I don't know if boxing rings were normally covered in shoe resin, or even what the hell that is. I just report this stuff.)

After a few blows, however, Batman's vision returns, albeit blurred, and he's able to knock Mafey out with one fantastic punch. Batman is declared the winner, as the crowd roars--until the lights go out!

Don't laugh! Look, this is the most important thing Robin has done all day, and it's very important that he knows we're all proud of him and his valuable contributions.

Not ones to lose a payday, Fancy Dan and his goons make off with the fight's proceeds. (But the milk! Won't somebody please think of the children?!) Batman tells Robin to collect Jimmy while he hitches a ride on the back of Dan's car.

This is a very silly comic.

Batman wakes up just in time to see Fancy Dan get all gloaty and bad-ass. Our hero is tied up in a warehouse, surrounded by gasoline. Dan cooly lights a cigarette, delivers a perfect bad-ass one-liner ("I'm gonna make it hot for you--good and hot!"), and then tosses the lit cig into the puddles of gasoline on his way out the door. Batman's very silly response to the rising inferno is "I'm in a spot!"

Meanwhile, Jimmy and Robin are racing toward someplace they don't know where. Batman must be at Fancy Dan's hideout, but who the hell knows where that is? For once in this comic, somebody externalizing their problems actually leads to results, as one of the passerby decides to help them. I know what you're thinking. On Suicide Beat?! (Yeah I know that's not what you were thinking. Can you just play along for now? Thanks.)

That's right, a stranger helps a cop on Suicide Beat. And why? Because Kelly saved his daughter from that speeding car a few days ago.

I know the comic wants you to think that:
a) Kelly's heroic rescue matters because it'll lead them to Fancy Dan
and
b) Police are only effective if they have local cooperation.

And that may very well be true. And probably we'll hear something about it in the denouement panel. But I prefer to think the real lesson of this story is that a government must care for its people. Like Hamas, Fancy Dan is only able to maintain power because his ill-gotten wealth is shared with those in need around him. If the state or federal government had proper welfare systems in place, his reign never would have been possible.

At this point I would like to point out that I am almost certainly the only person in the world to have ever referenced Hamas and minor Batman character Fancy Dan in the same sentence. And now back to our story.

Man, Robin gets no respect.

Together, they take out Fancy Dan and the thug behind him. A crowd is drawn to the sound of gunfire, and then to the burning building, which was apparently not a warehouse but the basement of an apartment complex, because some woman's baby is in there.

Bwahahaha! Oh, man. The look on that kid's face! Priceless.

Jimmy runs inside the house next door, which is also on fire (probably unrelated) and up to the roof. He yells to Batman to jump across to him, but Batman won't risk the kid. This is plan B:

This is one of those "if I ever doubt why I do this" panels. Batman throwing a baby off the roof of a burning building. So good.

It all ends predictably from here. Jimmy catches the kid, and jumps off the roof into the firemen's net. Batman follows a moment later. Down below, Jimmy arrests Skigg for rigging the charity fight and helping Fancy Dan steal the gate receipts ("And those gate receipts would have bought milk for the kids of this neighborhood!" yells Batman, shaking the politician by the throat like a rag doll).

And from then on, all the people of Suicide Beat loved Jimmy. Hip hip hoorah!

Best of all, no moralizing from Batman. So I guess that duty falls to me.

When people read superhero comics, they're looking for escape. They enjoy watching godlike figures flying, being feared and respected, and beating the crap out of cartoonish thugs. They don't want to see a story where an ordinary police officer accomplishes more than the main character of the comic. Especially when that main character is Batman. I think the moral of this story is What Gives, People? Come On.

Okay, maybe the moral of the story is that not everybody in the GCPD is incompetent. Hell, a murdered parent, specialized training, strength and bravery--Jimmy probably could be like Batman, if he were a little crazier. And a lot less law-abiding. And much, much richer. But the point is, there are Gotham cops who can hold their own against criminals without Batman's help. So maybe there's hope for them after all.

Then again, maybe not. After all, even Officer Kelly can't stop Mexican Batman from dancing his way into our hearts.

"Vaya con dios, muchachos! Adios!"