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.