Single Issue Review: Detective #331

For its first 330 issues, Detective Comics had always published multiple stories, but this issue provides a book-length tale combining the two features that the mag was publishing at the time: Batman and the Elongated Man. It's the fifth issue into the New Look, and the interior (and cover) artwork is by Carmine Infantino, while the story is by Gardner Fox.

As the story begins, Bruce Wayne is visiting a wax museum dedicated to American history, that was funded by the Alfred Foundation (see ending for a discussion of the Alfred Foundation). But when he poses for a picture at the Matthew Brady exhibit something odd happens:

Yet another reminder that Julius Schwartz didn't get rid of all the science fiction elements of the Jack Schiff years. Bruce has temporary amnesia, and around the same time as he's stumbling around the city in a daze:

As you can probably guess, it's a phony Bruce Wayne, who's well-prepared and cons the bank VP into letting him withdraw $500,000 from his account.

Later that night, Robin is forced to battle some jewel robbers on his own. But fortunately for him, Batman recovers his memory and helps out. Now they have to figure out what happened during his amnesia. Robin tells him about the withdrawal from the bank (apparently the bank officer was a little casual about Bruce's privacy).

Meanwhile, Ralph and Sue Dibny have arrived in Gotham and visited the wax museum themselves. Ralph gets curious when he notices a few pictures that his wife took:

Realizing that the man's face had changed dramatically, Ralph smells a mystery. As it happens, about the same time Bruce and Dick have visited the bank, where it turns out that the man in the photograph has been robbed in a similar fashion to Bruce. When they learn that before being robbed he had visited the Matthew Brady exhibit at the wax museum, they change into their fighting togs and head there, meeting up with the Elongated Man inside. The three are attacked by invisible enemies, as shown on the cover. When Batman makes it to the Brady exhibit:

We learn a bit about the "science" involved here from the crook, Boss Baron:

Fortunately, the Elongated Man sticks his face in front of the camera to protect Batman's secret identity. This works, but at the cost of Ralph losing his memory temporarily. Batman and Robin start wiping up the crooks with a little sluggish help from the Ductile Detective:

And in the end, Batman shares a secret with the Elongated Man:

But it's okay, because Ralph will lose his memory of Batman's secret identity when the face-change wears off.

Comments: An interesting and fast-paced story. I confess, however, that the plot device of the face-changing machine (electrofaciograph) seems rather far-fetched.

Postscript: The Alfred Foundation was a charity that Bruce Wayne set up in the aftermath of Alfred's (apparent) death in Detective #328. After he was brought back to life (discussed here), Bruce changed the name of the charity to the Wayne Foundation.

Single Issue Review: Detective #374

(Cover by Novick)

The Batman series was nearing the end of its run on TV, and DC had bought out Bob Kane, so Julius Schwartz was free to hire new artists for Batman. And one of the first he brought in was Gil Kane. Kane had done one earlier issue of Tec (#371), and this was his only other appearance as Batman's penciller to my knowledge.

The story starts out with Robin taking a brutal beating:



We learn that Batman and Robin had been tackling a gang at their hideout. Batman went in through the front door, while Robin guarded the rear. But at the last minute Batman remembers that this gang had the rear exit sealed up. So there was really no need to send Robin away, and when Batman defeats the gang he's stunned to discover that someone has savagely attacked the Boy Wonder.

Batman leaves the youngster at a hospital, while he goes out raging in pursuit of the attacker:



Okay, now at this point I am pretty sure I have the inspiration for this particular story figured out. Remember the conversation from Batman #200 between Biljo White and Mike Friedrich? Well, that issue had come out one month before this one, and Friedrich reminisced about one of his favorite moments from Batman #5:

During the course of the sotry, the mob beat Robin nearly to death and left him lying alone in a dark tenement house. When Batman found him he took him for dead and went on a wild rampage. You should have seen the scene he left behind him! Smashed doors, broken furniture....

I'd say it's pretty obvious that this is meant by writer Gardner Fox as an homage to that story. Batman does the necessary detective work:



He locates a suspect fitting that description down to the smashed knuckles and after beating him senseless, he drags the villain to Commissioner Gordon. But Gordon has an alibi for the man; he had seen him in a boxing match that evening while Robin was being beaten. Gordon even got the man (Jim Condors) to autograph his program. Condors demonstrates that it was indeed his signature on the boxing program and Commissioner Gordon is forced to release him. Condors leaves with a threat to sue Batman.

But Batman figures out eventually that Condors has a twin brother who actually boxed for him that night. The program was pre-signed (apparently Condors knew Gordon was a fight fan and might ask for an autograph). So while Condors' twin was fighting in the ring, Jim himself was attacking Robin, who had put Condors' twin in jail.

We close with one of Kane's patented punches:



Comments: A satisfying and entertaining story. Kane mostly gets the art right, although he does overdo the expressiveness of Batman's mask:



I would really love to have seen Gil Kane do more Batman, but as far as I know, the two stories in Detective #374 and #371 are all there is (see update below). This story marks the beginning of the real Batman turnaround in the Silver Age.

There's one nice and interesting twist. Batman notes that he has trusted the doctor with Robin's real identity, but the doc simply observes that he doesn't recognize the boy; after all in a city of eight million people....

The Elongated Man story is about the Amazing Crook-Gatcher. A young man has invented a gun that will fire a tranquilizer bullet that seeks out a fleeing criminal by the speeded-up heartbeat and nervous sweat of a man when he commits a crime.

Charles Bryant wants to become a police officer, but he's too short for the position. So he became an inventor, hoping to impress the local chief into letting him join the force. As it happens Ralph Dibny is present when the young man explains his invention. They discuss the implications of the gun when they come upon a bank robbery in progress. Charley aims his gun at the crooks even though there's a girl in between:



And sure enough the bullet avoids the girl and hits the crook. Ralph subdues the others and the newspapers report about the spectacular success of the new invention. But when Ralph visits his wife, Sue points out that Charley is now in great danger since the local hoods will probably stop at nothing to prevent the cops from getting his Crook Gatcher (I guess the idea is a combination of "catcher" and "gat").

When Ralph visits the young man's apartment, he discovers the young gal who had been in the middle of the shootup. She turns out to be Charles' girlfriend and reveals that crooks have kidnapped her boyfriend and that the Crook Gatcher doesn't really work. Fortunately some of the gang members return for some of Charles' equipment, and Ralph is able to track them to their hideout. The crooks have kept him alive because he has promised to create a Cop Gatcher.

Ralph, knowing that the Crook Gatcher was fake, bursts in and fights the gang, but Charles is dismayed that the Elongated Man is ruining his plan. It turns out that in the equipment that the crooks brought to Charley were tear gas and a cattle prod that he could have used to subdue the gang. As for the Crook Gatcher, it was a magic trick:



The cops agree to hire Charley for their crime lab, where ironically one of his first assigments is to create a Crook Gatcher for real.

Comments: An entertaining story. Sid Greene does a great job of inking Mike Sekowsky's pencils.

Update: There is at least one more Batman story drawn by Gil Kane; Batman #208 was a giant-sized comic with a continuing story of an elderly mystery woman who introduces herself and the rest of the women in Batman's life, and reveals that she herself is the most important woman. At the end it is explained that she's a Mrs. Chilton and that she raised Bruce after his parents were killed. Even more shocking is that her son had changed his name slightly, to Joe Chill, the murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Single Issue Review: Detective #337

Julius Schwartz, Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino get and deserve a lot of credit for the wonderful comics they produced in the Silver Age. Many stories that these three creative geniuses collaborated on are among the finest of that era, including Flash of Two Worlds, Planet that Came to a Standstill and Planets in Peril.

And so an absolute clunker like this story sticks out among their work like a green barn in Kansas. This is easily one of the most ridiculous Batman stories of the Silver Age, an era that did not lack for contenders.

The story starts out 50,000 years ago, as Klag, a caveman, spots Brugg stealing food from Klag's tribe. They battle and Klag seems about to kill Brugg at the edge of a cliff, when Klag falls into the bottomless pit. We learn that Klag was frozen in a block of ice and hidden in a cave and that minerals dripped on him for 500 centuries until a recent earthquake jarred him loose:



Flexible ice? But that's only the beginning of what we're asked to believe:



A caveman in a block of ice that can fly? When he shows up in Gotham City, Batman treats the news like it happens every other week:



"We'll be there right away?" How about, "Are you sure you haven't been drinking, Commissioner Gordon?"

They encounter and battle the caveman, who calls Batman "Brugg". At first they're even worried he said "Bruce". Klag kayos Batman and removes his cowl, but then realizes it's not Brugg and takes off "over big water", while Robin quickly covers Batman's face again. Some of the ice-coating melted and Batman and Robin retrieve and analyze it, and deduce that it's the source of his powers.

They follow him to Spain, where he is attacking a matador that looks a lot like Bruce Wayne. While Robin battles him, Batman sprays Klag with a plastic sealant which prevents him from moving (but not apparently from breathing), and the story closes with this:



Comments: Good Lord. I didn't think anything could top Bat-Baby for sheer absurdity, but this has to be considered nearly as wacky.

The Elongated Man story, The 20 Grand Payoff, is delightful. Sue Dibney is waiting at the airport for her husband when she sees him getting on a plane with a look-alike. She barges onto the plane after him:



But he denies that she's Sue and they takeoff leaving her behind with a mystery to solve. Meanwhile the fake Sue and Ralph alight at the next airport and:



It turns out that three mob hitmen are planning to kill the Dibneys, but Ralph and the fake Sue (who turns out to be a policewoman) foil the plot. And in the end, the real Sue gets revenge on her hubby (as hinted in the title):



Wow. Let's remember that this story was 1965, back when $20,000 bought a nice house in the suburbs.

Comments: Cute little twist on the usual Elongated Man story, with gorgeous Infantino and Greene artwork.

Zatanna and Zatara

There were two major stories in the DC Silver Age that crossed over into several titles. Nowadays these "events" are commonplace, but back then it was something very new.

Zatara had been a mainstay of DC comics in the Golden Age, actually appearing alongside Superman in Action Comics #1. He even made two cover appearances in Action #12 and #14. He appeared regularly in Action and World's Finest right up until 1949. His shtick was that he was a magician who could cause amazing things to happen by commanding them. But the key was that he had to speak his orders backwards:



In 1949, Zatara was eased out of his roles in Action Comics and World's Finest. In the former, it does not appear that he was removed to make way for a new character, but rather he was dropped and some of the existing features (notably Vigilante and Tommy Tomorrow) picked up some extra pages.

So things stood for almost fifteen years. Then, in Hawkman #4 (Oct-Nov 1964) we got an update. While investigating an oddball appearance of two items at the museum they run, Carter and Shayera discover a pair of women speaking very strangely:





In their spaceship, they do some detective work and:



Zatanna explains that she's looking for her missing father, Zatara. We learn that before he disappeared he was trying to capture an evil Oriental lama, and also that he battled against a "sinister being called the Druid."

Using the Absorbascon, a Thanagarian device that can learn any knowledge on Earth, Hawkman discovers that nobody on the planet knows the whereabouts of Zatara. Zatanna thanks them for their help, and continues on with her quest.

Her next encounter with a superhero went unannounced at the time. I have previously discussed Detective #336, which featured "Batman's Bewitched Nightmare". In the story Batman faces a witch who is helping some crooks with their larceny. At the end it is revealed that the Outsider was using them for his own purposes. But it turns out that the witch in the story was Zatanna, minus the fishnet stockings and good looks:



She returned in Atom #19 (June-July 1965). She believes that her father has vanished into a microscopic world inside his book of magic. Zatanna and the Atom shrink down to subatomic size and encounter the Druid mentioned in Hawkman #4. He captured Zatara by absorbing all his magical energy. Then he banished him to another realm.

At first, it appears likely that Zatanna will suffer the same fate:



But the Atom gets the brilliant idea of Zatanna tricking the Druid by using fake "magic" (i.e., a simple card trick). The Druid absorbs the fake magic and it sends him into a catatonic state. Unfortunately this means that Zatanna still can't find out where her father is.



The series continued in Green Lantern #42 (January 1966). Zatanna has discovered the secret entrance to Ys, a mirror world of Earth that is "steady-state", where nothing ever changes. A warlock on that world has tired of the lack of excitement, and decides to bring Green Lantern there so that he can steal the power ring and conquer our world. They defeat him, but he refuses to reveal where Zatara is unless GL hands over the ring. GL agrees and we learn that Zatara had been in Ys, but he had escaped by taking a crystal ball that the warlock intended to use to travel to Earth. Fortunately before GL hands over the ring, Zatanna places a hex on it, causing the warlock to freeze in place. Her quest continues.

Zatanna next appeared in Detective #355 (September 1966), this time popping into an Elongated Man adventure. She is looking for a missing tripod which was stolen from a store. She forces the thieves to come to her, not realizing that they were engaged at the time in a battle with the Elongated Man. The pair of them team up against the crooks and the storeowner (who turns out to be a criminal as well). At long last, Zatanna is ready for the final battle:



The saga ended in Justice League of America #51 (February 1967). Zatanna summons Batman, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman to their JLA headquarters, along with the non-member Elongated Man.

We learn that she wants to thank them for helping her rescue her father. This creates a complex plotline as the story shifts back and forth from the present to the past. And of course it sorta gives away the ending, which makes it an odd plot design.

We learn at last that Zatanna was actually the Witch in Detective #336, thus tying her into the Outsider series in Batman. She got into trouble here:



It's a classic "Don't do it!" moment if ever there was one, but driven by her desire to find her father, Zatanna does. The spirit delivers Zatanna to "the land of Kharma", where she is beset by magically created creatures. She summons duplicates of the five heroes of the story to help her defeat them. But still the hordes come, and Batman figures it out:



Wow, pretty risky maneuver there, but we know he's right, and even if he isn't he's just a duplicate of Batman. With the spirit banished from Zatanna, we discover that the magic user fighting her was her own father. You see, Allura had cursed Zatara for imprisoning her in that sword, with a spell that would have destroyed both father and daughter should they meet. Hence Zatara's disappearance and attempts to prevent Zatanna from reaching him. But with Allura defeated, the curse no longer exists and we get the happy ending:



Obviously way ahead of its time, the series suffered from crossing over into many titles (as do all such stories) despite the continuity of editor (Julius Schwartz) and writer (Gardner Fox). The odds of a significant portion of the comic-reading cohort of the time having a complete collection approach zero, and of course at the time the idea of compiling the story into a trade paperback never occurred to anybody.

And the gimmick of saying your words backwards is annoying to readers, who have to stop and translate. The evil Oriental lama never appears in the story (after the mention in Hawkman), and although there were hints that the story will crossover into the Flash (at the end of the Atom tale), that never happened.

Still, a very entertaining saga.

Coming up next: Yet more fishnet stockings!