Batman
has a relationship with the Gothic that goes all the way back to Detective Comics #29 (1939).
Around
that time, seminal horror films such as Frankenstein
(and its sequels), Dracula, and the
various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories (The Black Cat) and poetry (The
Raven), all of which have strong Gothic elements, were immensely popular at the box office. Horror as a distinct genre
did not yet exist (the work of its practitioners at the time, which included such
writers as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and August Derleth, was lumped
into the category of “weird fiction”), but audiences clearly responded
enthusiastically to its tropes. Terror is a powerful emotion, and filmmakers
lined their pockets again and again by enticing moviegoers with the dark
romances of nineteenth-century literature.
Horace
Walpole’s novella The Castle of Otranto
(1764) singlehandedly laid the groundwork for Gothic fiction (mystery, the
supernatural, dark secrets, curses, svelte females in nightgowns), and authors
have used its motifs in various ways ever since. The one thing that almost all
Gothic stories share, however, is the building,
be it manse, castle, or office block. The evil needs somewhere to set up shop,
after all. In many stories, the building itself is a character (Shirley Jackson’s
1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House
being an excellent example), although the source of its sentience may be
obscure. These things don’t always have to be explained, and it’s actually
often more effective if they’re not.
It
makes perfect sense that comic-book writers would recognize the value of the
Gothic, as well.
As
I’ve mentioned before, Batman was originally designed to be the antithesis of
Superman. His early adventures pitted him against vampires, madmen, zombies,
and other characters we associate with horror. Many of his cases took him away
from Gotham City (even though “Gotham” is an alternate name for New York City,
I’m sure the creators’ decision to use this name was no accident) to shadowy
locations and cobwebby castles filled with hidden passageways, spooky statuary,
and chandeliers dripping with the paraffin of blood-red candles. Like the
winged mammal from which he took his name, Batman mostly stayed out of sight
during the daylight hours. Unfortunately, this didn’t last long, and by the early
1940s his “dark avenger of the night” persona was scrapped. Thankfully, he
regained it in 1970.
Several
of Batman’s Bronze-Age stories take place in creepy residences, but Detective Comics #408, “The House That
Haunted Batman,” puts an interesting spin on the concept. Writers Len Wein and
Marv Wolfman immediately draw the reader into the story by “talking” directly
to him, via the captions, as if he were the main character. This technique had
been used in comics before, notably in Stan Lee and Bill Everett’s “Zombie” in Menace #5 (1953), and there are probably
instances of it in earlier superhero comics, but, regardless of its originality
or lack thereof, it elicits a visceral response from the reader because rather
than just reading about Batman, he
has become Batman.
As
in Batman #246 (see previous
article), Robin has been kidnapped by an unknown party from Hudson University
and is being used as bait for the Dark Knight. The story opens with Batman’s
arrival at a “dusty old mansion” on the outskirts of Gotham City. What makes it
particularly strange is that it wasn’t
there last week. How the hell does a huge house just appear out of nowhere?
You can be certain that the situation is only going to get weirder.
Soon
after entering, Batman finds his ward standing alone in a darkened corridor.
The Boy Wonder collapses, and when the Caped Crusader catches him, Robin
immediately decomposes into sand, which runs through Batman’s fingers. Before
he can deal with this, Batman is compelled to rush up the stairs to locate the
source of a piercing scream. It turns out to be a phonograph recording, but as
he lifts the needle someone fires on him. Pursuing the assailant, Batman finds
Robin holding the gun.
Falling
backwards to avoid the bullets, the Dark Knight slips into a hidden chamber and
complete darkness. When he lights a match, he beholds a bizarre scene: his own
body in a coffin, surrounded by his friends and allies (Superman, Commissioner
Gordon, Robin, et al.), who take turns proclaiming how Batman was a worthless, fraudulent
crime fighter, which greatly upsets him. His match goes out, and when he
manages to light another, he finds the deathly tableau gone and the walls closing
in on him.
At
this juncture, the visions he has been experiencing fade away, and he finds
himself trapped in a glass tube. Robin is likewise encapsulated nearby. On a
monitor in front of them, Batman recognizes the face of Dr. Tzin-Tzin, the
master illusionist, a villain he originally faced in Detective Comics #354 (1966). This is noteworthy because prior to
this point in the Bronze Age, Batman had never encountered an established supervillain
(though it’s arguable whether one previous appearance constitutes
establishment). All of his foes were one-off criminals that met their ends at a
given issue’s conclusion. The Joker, Two-Face, Catwoman, and the other members
of his rogues’ gallery would not show up until later. (Tzin-Tzin appears again
in Batman #s 284 and 285, but we’ll
examine those issues in a future article, I’m sure.)
In
any event, Batman manages to escape and takes out the illusionist’s goons.
Disgusted with whole situation and accepting the fact that none of his schemes
have succeeded, Tzin-Tzin descends into the chamber, intending to take the Dark
Knight out the old-fashioned way: with a bullet. Before he can fire his gun,
however, Robin subdues him from behind. The reunited partners restrain their foe
and take him to the Batmobile, but he distracts them with one final illusion and
gets away. Then, without warning, the mysterious house bursts into flame.
In
Batman’s earliest Bronze-Age adventures, ghosts were, by all appearances, real,
but as time went on the writers changed their minds about this and decided that
the supernatural elements in the stories should be explained away in some
fashion, perhaps to make things more believable (as if a man battling criminals
in a bat suit is plausible). In the case of this story, Batman’s bizarre
visions are illusions created by Tzin-Tzin, which is reasonable enough,
although I personally have no problem with the idea of actual ghosts. I’m
reminded of the fiction of American author Henry James (which was itself
Gothic); some of his stories, such as The
Turn of the Screw, feature spectres, but literary critics have suggested
that they are either metaphorical or illusory. (Whatever, says I.)
In
any event, the “source” of the visions isn’t really important. What matters is
that they are, by nature, Gothic. The house is labyrinthine, and the pervasive
darkness operates as a disorienting, almost tangible, presence. The unsettling
image of Batman’s corpse lying in a coffin and his subsequent “entombment” (Poe’s
“The Premature Burial” comes to mind) are, arguably, about as Gothic as it
gets. At one point, a suit of armor is even used as a shield (bear in mind that
Walpole’s inspiration for Otranto was
Medieval Romance).
Neal
Adams’ art in this issue is, of course, dynamic. That almost goes without
saying.
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