Batman 229

Batman’s not the kind of guy that frightens easily, so when we find him wearing an expression of abject terror, we can be sure that <expletive deleted> has gotten real.

Such is the case on the cover of Batman #229.

Neal Adams evokes a sense of classical horror in this illustration. Whose meat-hooks are those manhandling the Caped Crusader? Who is that sinister-looking character in the background? And why isn’t Batman kicking the crap out of all of them, as he usually does in these sorts of situations?

Does the story within have, in fact, anything at all to do with the cover?

Let’s find out, shall we?

Our story, “Asylum of the Futurians,” opens with a young woman, clearly upset, running down a deserted road outside Gotham City. Headlights appear behind her, which, thankfully, belong to the Batmobile.

The woman, Laura Grey, explains to Batman that her husband Stephen, a famous photographer of “psychic phenomena,” disappeared from their home in the middle of the night. When she went out to look for him, what she found terrified her. When the Dark Knight asks her to elaborate, she leads him to an ostensibly abandoned house deep in the woods.

Batman looks in a window and observes a peculiar tableau inside. While it appears to be a normal dinner party at first blush, he soon realizes that the people involved are insane. Clad in strange raiment, the revelers enjoy music performed by a string trio with invisible instruments, imbibe “wine” from empty glasses, and ravenously partake of “food” from empty plates.

Stephen, seated among them and puzzled by their behavior, suddenly jumps up and exclaims that they are a bunch of freaks. They apparently drugged him and brought him to the house to take photographs of the soiree because of his reputation for being able to perceive things that others could not.

They are looking for the “Seventh Futurian,” the one person on Earth deemed worthy to command their “cell” (of which there are reportedly many worldwide), and believed that Stephen might have been he, but finding that he is simply bemused by their silent music and invisible food and drink, their leader, the only female member of the group, proclaims that he must be destroyed.

Batman takes this opportunity to leap through an open window. He is immediately set upon by the Futurians but manages to dispatch all of them except the female. Impressed by his fighting prowess, she suggests that he might, in fact, be the Seventh Futurian. She explains that the members of their group, born with ESP powers that allow them to hear, taste, touch, and smell things that other people cannot, are destined to rule the world.   

Deciding to play along until he can find out more about the attack they and the other cells around the globe are plotting, Batman allows the woman to place a crown on his head. The crown, however, begins to tighten around his skull, disorienting him and causing him to pass out.

For the final test of his mettle, the Futurians lock the incapacitated Dark Knight in a casket and toss it into a lake. He awakens and realizes that the humidity inside allows him to remove the crown. He uses the prongs to pick the lock and, with mere seconds of air left in his lungs, emerges from the depths.

The Futurians are duly impressed by his escape, but Batman wastes no time in subduing them. The authorities, summoned by Stephen, pick up the group of madmen and take them to prison.

So, does the story reflect the cover illustration? Not really.

But this is actually not an uncommon thing in the world of comics. The purpose of the cover is, after all, to sell the book, and sometimes artists take liberties in order to draw the attention of potential readers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as covers of this sort typically capture the “spirit” of the stories within. I believe this is the case here.

“Asylum of the Futurians,” written by Robert Kanigher and illustrated by Irv Novick and Frank Giacoia, is an interesting story that, I believe, should have been longer. The concepts that were introduced were intriguing, but the length prevented them from being more thoroughly explored. The main story only occupies the first half of the book (the other half is, unfortunately, taken up by a Robin story).

I’m not sure at this point whether or not the Futurians made any other appearances in the pages of Batman or Detective Comics. It would be nice to see more of them.

Novick’s art is, again, very effective here. You can see the madness in the leader’s eyes, and the sense of danger is almost palpable. The more of his work I see, the more I lament the fact that he was such an underappreciated talent.

Batman 227

I started collecting comics in 1989, the year Tim Burton’s Batman came out.

Prior to seeing the film, Batman was a character in which I had virtually zero interest. As such, as I was trying out various titles to determine which ones I liked, I never even entertained the idea of picking up Batman or Detective Comics.

This seems surprising now, but my conception of the Caped Crusader was, at that time, based on his characterization on Super Friends, a show I had watched religiously as a youth. In the show, he was always teamed up with Robin and seemed to be nothing more than a guy in a bat costume with reasonable detective skills, a belt full of gadgets to extricate him from almost any conceivable situation, and several bat-themed vehicles. I’m willing to bet that the words, “To the Batcopter!” appeared in every episode. What a freaking snore.

Of course, this “Batman” was just a modified version of the one from the campy 1960s live-action television show. No one told Hanna-Barbera that he had changed as the ‘70s dawned. Or maybe the studio just didn’t care.

Anyway, I went to see Burton’s movie, for some reason, and suddenly Batman became very interesting. (The fact that the movie also failed to depict Batman properly is beside the point.) I realized that I had been misinformed and immediately started buying both of his monthly books and began picking up the graphic novels and trades that were available at the time (The Killing Joke, Gotham by Gaslight, A Death in the Family, et al.).

For Christmas that year, my parents bought me The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, a collection of yarns that spanned Batman’s career from 1939 to 1983. It was my first exposure to Neal Adams and Jim Aparo, who became immediate favorites. In the back, there were short biographies of the artists and writers featured in the book, surrounded by pictures of various covers. A few of these covers got my attention, particularly Batman #227, which sports an awesome illustration by Adams. A small cutline underneath told me that it had been published in 1970. Even though I knew nothing about the inside, I realized that I had to find a copy.

In those days, the Internet didn’t exist, or at least not as we know it today. If you wanted to find back issues, you had to look through the ads in Comics Buyer’s Guide, check the bins in numerous comic shops, and frequent trade shows and conventions. It was hard slog, as they say. After a few years of diligent searching, I had just about given up on finding a copy.

But then, in ’95 or ’96 (I can’t recall which) I went to a trade show in Atlanta and dug a copy out of one of the longboxes (a really nice one, too). I can’t remember how much I paid for it ($20?), but it wasn’t much, especially for something I’d been desperately looking for.

Last year I discovered that it’s currently one of the hottest Batman back issues around. It seems that everyone likes the cover, which is an homage (not a swipe) to Detective Comics #31 (I think we can all agree that Adams’ is better). I had it signed at Dragon*Con last year, effectively increasing its awesomeness by 1000% (or something).

Now that I’ve thoroughly bored you with the story of my personal connection with the issue, let’s examine the issue itself.

“The Demon of Gothos Mansion” is similar in some ways to “The Secret of the Waiting Graves” (from Detective Comics #395). As the title suggests, it’s a gothic tale, complete with all the trappings you’d expect to see: an eerie-looking manor house surrounded by dark forest, a damsel in distress, a dangerous madman, a healthy dose of the supernatural, and an ancient evil.

Alfred’s niece Daphne, first introduced in Batman #216 (one issue before the start of Batman’s Bronze Age), has taken a job as a tutor in an unnamed location, presumably somewhere in Britain. A letter she sends to her uncle suggests that something is amiss, and Alfred asks Bruce to investigate.

Batman discovers that Daphne’s employer, Clifton Heathrow, is planning to resurrect a demon called Ballk by sacrificing her. He has dressed her in a gown identical to one worn by a woman in a painting hanging in the tower where she is imprisoned. The woman, who also looks remarkably similar to Alfred’s niece, was sacrificed by Heathrow’s family centuries before for the same purpose and now supposedly wanders the manor and its grounds as a ghost.

It turns out that Daphne was born on exactly the right date (October 31) and at exactly the right time (midnight) to be the perfect offering for the demon. It’s pretty corny, I must admit, but I can’t get enough of stuff like this.

Batman gets captured by Heathrow but manages to escape the fate the madman planned for him. He encounters a woman he believes to be Daphne, but she is, rather, the ghost alluded to earlier, although she does appear to possess some level of corporeality. For unknown reasons, the Dark Knight is overwhelmed with feelings of love for her. She leads him to the chapel where the ritual is taking place, and, just before entering, he asks her to wait for him, to which she agrees.

The Caped Crusader, naturally, succeeds in stopping the ceremony and frees Daphne. Heathrow, his plans thwarted and abandoned by the other members of the coven, suffers a heart attack.

When Batman goes to look for the spectral woman, he finds her in the forest. She explains that his defeating the coven has freed her of her curse, and she vanishes. Batman, overcome with emotion, weeps as he looks upon her portrait, which hangs on a nearby tree.

Irv Novick and Dick Giordano really undid themselves here. Giordano, who worked with Adams extensively throughout the Seventies, managed to absorb a certain amount of his partner’s innovative, dynamic style and carried it over into his own work, as well as the work of those he inked, which created a desirable uniformity in the art of the Batman titles of the time. Novick, already a noteworthy artist prior to Adams’ arrival at DC, took his work to another level during this period, and you can really see it in this issue.

This book is quite pricey these days, but if you don’t mind black-and-white reprints, you can find it in the recently published Showcase Presents Batman Volume 5.

There’s also a Robin solo story, but we’ll just ignore that fact.

Batman 224

Sporting a compelling cover by Neal Adams, Batman #224, “Carnival of the Cursed,” takes the Dark Knight to The Big Easy to solve the murder of jazzman Charles “Blind Buddy” Holden.

It becomes clear early on that the murder was motivated by the fact that Holden, last and greatest of the horn-men, owned something of great value, something that the thugs who assaulted him expected him to have on his person.

A longtime fan of Holden, Batman travels to New Orleans to attend the man’s funeral and to find his killer. During the lavish procession, a brace of masked men appears, intent on reaching the bier. The Caped Crusader easily dispatches them but is knocked down by a menacing figure from above, a deformed assailant of great strength who calls himself Moloch.

Batman finds Moloch to be unusually formidable and determines that his only hope of defeating him is to hammer him with blows. The funeral-goers, however, incensed by the attack, pursue the demonic foe en masse. He flees toward a dead end but, even as capture seems imminent, vaults twenty feet straight up, grabs onto a balcony, and manages to escape.

At the burial site, a man named Maxwell Dill plays a song on Holden’s horn before the instrument is, fittingly, placed atop the coffin before it’s lowered into the ground. Dill, Holden’s best friend of sixty years, invites Batman to join him and his fellows at Reservation Hall, an old building in the French Quarter that serves as their hangout.

When they arrive, a mysterious, wheelchair-bound man named Rufus Macob is trying to get Holden’s friends to sell him the dead man’s possessions for a large sum of money. They refuse, even though he had previously acquired the effects of another jazz musician, Mose Burton, from them, citing the fact that they didn’t personally know Burton but that they were close to Holden.

Batman is convinced that Macob, who hides his face with sunglasses and a handkerchief, is somehow connected to Moloch. He sends the strange character a hollowed-out book on the history of jazz with a bat concealed inside, along with a note urging him to contact him through Dill.

Things take an unexpected turn when Macob kidnaps Dill and lures Batman to a recently restored paddle steamer. Batman realizes that he’s walking into a trap and attempts to thwart Macob by taking an indirect route onto the boat. Onboard, Macob convinces Batman to surrender by threatening to shoot Dill, and the Dark Knight is knocked out with a chair by Harry Harnet, one of the criminal’s henchmen.

When Batman awakens, he has been tied to the paddle wheel, where he will certainly drown once the engine is fired up. He manages to escape, however, and finds Dill, who tells him that Macob is planning to dig up Holden’s grave to retrieve the horn.

At the cemetery, Macob explains to Harnet that the original owner of the horn, the aforementioned Mose Burton, had found oil in the bayou and had scratched a map of its location onto his horn before he died. He bequeathed the instrument to Holden on his deathbed without revealing the secret.

Batman arrives just as Harnet has found the instrument. The henchman flees, believing Batman to be a ghost (since he should, by all rights, have drowned), and Macob throws off his disguise and rises to his feet. It comes as no surprise that Macob and the demonic Moloch are one and the same.

The villain attacks Batman with a shovel and is about to deliver the killing blow when he hears the sound of Mardi Gras revelers, believing them to be the police, and flees. A merrymaker on a motorcycle accidentally runs over one of Moloch’s feet, preventing him from being able to leap over a nearby parade float and allowing Batman to apprehend him. The horn, meanwhile, is flattened by the parade, the map rendered unreadable.

During the early Bronze Age, many of Batman’s adventures took place outside of Gotham City, and his foes were usually criminals created for the specific issues in which they appeared. Such is the case here. The nature of Moloch’s great strength is a bit mysterious, although his verbal exchange with Batman suggests that his deformity, repelling men and women alike, drove him to become powerful and to use that power for the pursuit of wealth.

Irv Novick, the penciler of this issue, is one of comicdom’s unsung artists. He illustrated many of Batman’s Bronze-Age adventures with masterful storytelling and excellent action sequences. Along with Adams, Dick Giordano (who usually, as in this case, provided inks), Jim Aparo, and Ernie Chan, he guided the Dark Knight through the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

This issue is a strong entry in Batman’s Bronze-Age canon. While I figured out pretty quickly that the wheelchair-bound Macob and Moloch were the same person, the mystery surrounding the horn’s true value was a surprise. The New Orleans setting was interesting, as well, and the veneration of classical jazz appealed to me greatly.

A fun issue all around.

Batman 217 / Detective Comics 395

It would be hard to conceive of an image that could more effectively convey the ending of an era than the one that graces the cover of Batman #217.  Illustrated by Neal Adams, who would soon become the most influential Batman artist of the 1970s, it shows the Caped Crusader exiting the Batcave and instructing his trusted butler Alfred to close it up forever.

What must readers of the time have thought when they espied this cover, mixed in among the other comics on the wire rack at their local drugstore? The Batcave had, after all, made its first appearance all the way back in Detective Comics #83 (1944) and had since then become an indispensable part of Batman’s mythos. How could he leave it behind? What on earth was DC up to?

Batman #217, titled “One Bullet Too Many,” is the issue that sets the stage for the new era of The Dark Knight and makes it clear in no uncertain terms that the campy character of the 1960s was gone forever. As the story opens, we find that Dick is headed off to college, and Bruce and Alfred are pretty unabashedly broken up about it. Dick tries to play it off as if it’s not a big deal, but as soon as he’s in the back of the taxi that will whisk him away to the airport, a tear rolls down his cheek.

His ward gone, Bruce, standing at the base of the stairs in the foyer of his palatial digs, declares that everything is going to be different now and that Wayne Manor will no longer serve their purposes. Alfred, who, as Batman’s assistant, has proven invaluable too many times to count, agrees that it’s “too big” for just the two of them. With this, Bruce announces that both he and his alter ego will be moving elsewhere. He and Alfred take one last look at the Batcave and then climb into Bruce's sports car and head for the city. (The actual egress is far less dramatic than the cover would lead us to believe.)

Their new home turns out to be the penthouse of the Wayne Foundation, which, Alfred admits, provides “better bachelor accommodations.” It also puts Batman right in the heart of Gotham, where he can “dig [criminals] out where they live and fatten on the innocent.” Bruce realizes that much of modern crime is less overt, often taking place behind closed doors and perpetrated by men under the guise of respectability. Two-bit hoods’ breaking into jewelry stores is still a concern, of course, but corrupt businessmen and underhanded politicians, who have the potential to do greater harm to the public, are now on Batman’s radar, as well.

It’s not at all surprising, from a narrative point of view, that Dick would eventually grow up and move out, and, in fact, Bruce remarks that he always knew the day would come. But when considered in context, Dick’s separation from his guardian was a necessary plot device. If Batman were to be returned to his darker roots, as the writers intended, Robin had to be taken out of the picture. It gave both Bruce and Batman room to breathe, to spread their wings, if you will, not to mention the fact that Robin’s colorful attire would be decidedly out of place in the shadowy world into which Batman was about to journey.  

Robin was originally introduced because the writers grew tired of Batman’s always talking to himself, but, unfortunately, his inclusion succeeded in softening Batman’s character. Despite the fact that both men suffered the tragic loss of their parents at a young age and chose to become crime fighters as a result, the Dynamic Duo became a unmistakably lighthearted team, and by the mid-1940s, Batman’s “creature of the night” persona was all but forgotten. No one was afraid of him anymore, not even the criminal element. Batman was designed to be the opposite of Superman, not a non-super-powered version of him with a belt full of wacky gadgets.

It is blindingly obvious that the main objective of Batman #217 was to establish Batman’s new idiom. In fact, it’s rather meta-fictional. As Bruce explains to Alfred how everything is going to change, he is actually talking directly to the reader, indicating the flaws in the previous approach to the character and outlining the comic’s new direction. Rather clever, to my way of thinking. Well played, DC.

Once all of this is established, Batman embarks on his first case, an investigation into the murder of a local doctor. It’s a fairly forgettable story, though not a poor one. The issue ends with a man forcing his way into Bruce’s office and pulling a gun on him, a plot thread that continues in Detective #394, but that doesn’t concern us. Without even reading the issue, as I haven’t, we know that he survives. He’s the <expletive deleted> Batman, after all.

What does concern us is the issue that comes after that, Detective #395.

 What’s so remarkable about this issue? Well, for starters, it introduces the creative team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Although Adams had been allowed to draw a host of Batman and Detective covers in recent years and had drawn several issues of The Brave and the Bold (featuring Batman team-ups), he had never illustrated a story in either of Batman’s main titles. Fans had expressed their fervid approbation of Adams’ work, which led to his finally being given a shot. (Apparently there was a bit of friction between Adams and editorial, though it’s not entirely clear why.)

The story, “The Secret of the Waiting Graves,” is, admittedly, a fairly unremarkable one, which seems to have been inspired by DC’s line of recently revived “mystery” titles (House of Mystery, House of Secrets, et al.). It takes place, strangely enough, in Mexico, and concerns a husband and wife, the Muertos (what a giveaway, eh?), who have unlocked the secret to immortality. Bruce is there because he was invited, along with “every social butterfly in the Western Hemisphere.” There are, not surprisingly, dirty dealings afoot, and Batman gets involved in short order. As the purpose behind the lavish “shindig” is revealed, the true evil is laid bare, and Batman takes strides to vanquish it.

Adams stated in an interview featured in The Batcave Companion (Twomorrows Publishing) that it’s “not even a Batman story. It’s a horror story, a surreal story.” Despite this, it does contain many of the elements that would define the Dark Knight’s Bronze-Age adventures. It takes places at night, for one, and also features a “sterner” Batman (this is not a Caped Crusader who smiles) who accomplishes his brilliant detective work through reflection captured in the thought balloons and then unleashes his fighting prowess on unsuspecting villains.

With these two issues complete, Batman’s new crime-fighting campaign could commence, and even though it took Hollywood a long time to get the memo, I think everyone would agree that a darker, more brooding Batman is the way to go.

Introduction

A couple of years ago I made a monumental decision: I was going to collect every issue of Batman and Detective Comics published from 1970-85. I was fully aware that it was going to be a long and expensive process, but it seemed like a worthy goal. Whether the issue was in its original form or was a reprint didn't matter. I just knew that I wanted them all.

My reason for selecting this range of years is that they comprise, more or less, what is called the Bronze Age of Comics. There is a lot of debate surrounding what exactly the "Bronze Age" is and what its beginning and ending dates are, but it's generally considered to have started around 1970. By the end of the '60s, comics were changing, becoming more relevant, more complex, and more daring. The stories reflected the changing social climate and explored deeper subject matter. Comic-book illustrators were willing to take more chances, drawing on a host of artistic influences and techniques.

The Bronze Age didn't begin for every character at the same time. It took some longer to catch up than others. But Batman was in the vanguard. Having been rendered campy by the pall of the infernal television show, Batman was on the verge of cancellation (again), and the fans were eager to see him returned to his darker roots. In his initial appearances during the early Golden Age he was, after all, a creature of the night, not a guy in a costume who parked the Batmobile in broad daylight and in clear view of everyone downtown, as if he were picking up his dry cleaning.

A handful of writers and artists at DC were on the same page and decided that it was time for a change. Batman was, after all, too good of a character to lose. He needed to be used to his best potential. So the decision was made that a major overhaul was on the horizon. Fans waited with bated breath as the change approached.

The new Batman was revealed in issues 217 and 395 of Batman and Detective Comics, respectively. (These two issues will be the subject of the next post.) With these, Batman embarked on the fifteen-year journey of what I consider to be his greatest era. The stories were strong, the art was fantastic, and, perhaps best of all, the Masked Manhunter did his work in the dead of night.

It only makes sense that I, having made this determination, would want to collect and read every issue from this period. And it occured to me that I should blog about it so that any and all interested parties can follow my progress. The issues will not occur in publication order; rather I will write about newly acquired issues or those I already own that I find noteworthy.

I've made huge steps toward my goal since I began, but I've still got a long way to go. And you, gentle reader, can enjoy each newly acquired issue right along with me.