I know, I know. It's been over a year since the last post. And I know I've promised no long breaks between posts before. Guess I shouldn't make promises I can't keep. But here we are again, in Fall of 1943. I am excited to be back, hope you'll join me again for Golden Age Batman goodness, because this one is excellent.
"A Thief in Time!"
Writer: Bill Finger
Penciller: Jerry Robinson
Inker: Fred Ray
Synopsis: Our story begins in the Gotham City of the late 21st century! Yes, it's the future, complete with rocketships and Flash Gordon looking fashion. A laboratory worker named (no shit) Rob Callender comes out of a Batman Museum, wishing he was in Batman's time, because then he could be a millionaire!
And then he's so absent minded about that at work, he accidentally mixes some chemicals and BOOM, space-time warp to 1943! It's just that easy.
He realizes he's in Batman times, and promptly sets about getting some new old clothes, then "borrowing" (read: stealing) some vacuum tubes and other equipment to start assembling some future technology! Good thing he has the knowhow. If you sent me back to 1916 and told me to make an iPod with shit lying around, I'd have to just shrug.
Anyways, he manages to make a gun that shoots a light absorbing ray that creates an area of total darkness ahead of him, and with the aid of infrared goggles, he's totally ready to just straight up rob a bank. But, oddly, he makes a point of saying that if he's taken more money than he needs, he'll return the rest to the bank by mail... Weird.
Using the money he's stolen, he hires a bunch of criminal thugs, but makes a big point of there being absolutely no violence. They then proceed to dark-ray rob an elementary school for a third grade reader book, and an obscure woodworker for a random table lamp. The thug are understandably perplexed, but as long as he's paying, who cares right?
About this time Batman and Robin take an interest, because this weird shit is definitely up their alley. Luckily, Batman already has infrared goggles (he's used them before in the comic), so they're well prepared to fight these guys.
My favourite moment in this comic has to be when they head out in the Batplane, and two dudes spot them overhead and say "Here's where some gangsters get what's coming to them!" It's a great little moment showing normal people reacting to living in Gotham City.
Anyways, the crooks are robbing an unknown author who lives in a waterfront shack (jesus, I guess things could be worse for me), and steal an entire manuscriot from him.
Batmn and Robin show up for the fight scene, while Rob Callender exclaims "Dear, dear! This is so unnecessary and painful!"
Rob shoots the Dynamic Duo with a goddamn paralysis ray he whipped up somehow, but he won't kill them. Instead, he tosses them in a rowboat, rows them out to a derelict ship beached on a reef that heknew was here then dumped them in the hold, where the paralysis ray will wear off once the crooks are safely away. After all, he can't let anyone be killed... but he can leave clues, dude knows from going to a Batman musem how to be Batman villain afterall, and taunts the Dark Knight with a reference to "art in a textile mill".
However, once he's left, water begins pouring into the hold -- when the tide rises the ship goes under and fills with water through holes in the hull, ironically putting Batman and Robin in an unintentional death trap!
Batman figures how to get free of course -- the walls of the hold are covered in barnacles which they use to cut through the ropes -- but then the question is how to get back to shore! Luckily, the ship is a light ship, with it's own light tower! They light up the beacon, with Batman sticking a Bat symbol on the glass to form a makeshift Bat signal, which alerts the harbor police to come and rescue them.
Back on dry land, they ask the robbed author about the manuscript, who tells them it wasn't valuable, and in fact he was super dissatisfied with it and wanted to tear it up. The two look for clues, but all Robin finds is a penny... a penny minted in 2043!! (Goddamn it, America, you're really gonna hold on to pennies that long??)
The two hop back in the Batplane and head to the textile mill, where the night watchmen paints in his spare time, and of course Callender is there to steal the painting. Batman figures out that he's from the future, stealing seemingly worthless items that only become famous in a hundred years, after the unknown craftsmen become famous after their deaths.
Callender reveals he got the idea from seeing all of the items in a collection of Batman's trophies in the Batman Museum, which is certainly a weird place to see them unless...
And then SWISH! The space-time warp closes, and Callender is back... to the FUTURE!
And then Batman and Robin are like "well, shit, what do we do with all this stuff?" None of the people who it was stolen from want it (despite now having certifiable knowledge it will be valuable one day?) So Batman and Robin put it in their growing trophy collection...
...and thus Rob Callender sees it in the Batman Museum over a hundred years in the future!
~~~~
My Thoughts: I love time travel stories, especially when they are simple enough not to be aggravating, but clever enough to actually make sense. I am delighted this is a Bill Finger time travel story. I'm sure I've mentioned this, but Finger was always collecting weird story ideas from stuff he'd read -- odd facts, interesting gimmicks, and this is a story that seems fueled by those. But the mention of stuff like "space/time warp" and the pretty good looped time travel logic really makes this a surprisingly good time travel story for a 1943 comic! Very enjoyable. Also, I just love that Callender refers to the 1940s as "Batman times". Like, fuck World War II, Batman is the thing about the 40s that will be most remembered.
The Art: It's Jerry Robinson. This is the good stuff, but Fred Ray's inking makes it even better, just solidifying the work a little more so it looses some of Robinson's loose scratchiness and looks nice and polished. But it's top notch Golden Age Batman, just a joy to be looking at again. The best single panel is on the first page, with Callender shaking his fist in triumph in an utterly classic villain pose.
The Story: The fact that Callender won't let anyone be killed (he's not such a bad guy, and it would cause paradoxes), the trick of everything he's stealing not being worth anything in the present, the little clever details like the waterline in the hold alerting Batman to danger, using the barnacles to get out, and figuring out how to light the DIY Bat signal, these are all great clever details you expect from a class act Bill Finger script -- but the bit about how the reason those items are in the Batman museum for Callender to get the idea to go back in time and steal them is because they are from the case where he goes back in time to steal them? That's some A+ classic time travel storytelling there. Love it.
Up next on Bat to the Beginning? It's time to keep on with the Batman serial, guys!
"Destiny's Auction"
Writer: Don Cameron
Artist: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Judy O'Casson is an aspiring young actress who hopes to break into broadway. She visits a gypsy fortune teller named Madame Calagra who tells her that her name shall be written large for all to see and she will move from humble lodgings to a great palace. Judy thinks this means she's gonna get her big break, but actually it means she's behind on her rent and getting evicted. The landlady won't even let her into the room to get her trunk until she pays what's owed! That's cold.
Tremaine Wentworth is an over-the-hill character actor who visits Madame Calagra and is told that he will take on a new role in which his past will be overshadowed. So Tremaine walks home thinking he's gonna have a big comeback, glad he hung on to his trunk full of momentos of his stardom days, and gets hit by a car and wakes up in hospital without any memory of who he was. Truly, Madame Calagra is from the douchey ironic school of fortune telling.
Diamond Pete Ransome is a diamond thief (don't say?) who visits Calagra and is told that strong fighters will follow him and help him enter a heavily guarded place. Ransome figures this means his hoods will help him break into a jewelry shop and steal some diamonds. The goons are still shook up because they had to kill a night watchman on their last job and haven't even been able to fence the diamonds from it yet because they're too hot, so they're stored in Ransome's hidden trunk. But Ransome's confident because, after all, he got a fortune told by a gypsy
Anyways, turns out the strong fighters who follow him are actually Batman and Robin, and after they beat up him and his mean they help him enter a heavily guarded place, which is to say - jail! So now we've got three people, and three trunks. We can all see where this is going, yeah?
A whole year passes, and Ransome's getting released from prison. Bruce and Dick decide to check up on him and follow him from the prison to see if he leads them to the still missing diamonds from the earlier heist. Ransome drives back to his old digs, but of course his trunk is gone, after being unclaimed for a year it's been turned over to be offered up for public auction!
As it turns out, Judy has just returned to Gotham with the money to buy her trunk back from that landlady - but the landlady has also turned the unclaimed trunk over for auction!
And golly, what a coincedence, but Tremaine Wentworth has undergone an insulin shock treatment that's restored his memory! And he's also got a trunk he needs to get that's up for auction!
Well, I think we can see where this is going.
Judy shows up first and wins the auction on the first trunk, with Wentworth getting the second and Pete the third. Of course, they all get the wrong trunks. Batman and Robin have been following Pete and bust in for a quick fight before it turns out they have Wentworth's trunk full of old costumes and disguises.
Things get hilarious when the Dynamic Duo realizes they have no grounds for arresting or harassing Pete - technically, they're breaking and entering, and Pete purchased the trunk and its contents legally! So they have to leave him alone!
But they figure if Pete has Wentworth's trunk, maybe he has the one with the stolen diamonds. So they hightail it to his place, but all Wentworth got in his trunk was the typescript of a hitherto unknown play by a master playwright - which is cool, but not stolen blood diamonds, y'know? They realize the real trunk therefore MUST be with Judy, and head off to get her - but they've been unknowingly eavesdropped upon by Pete and his goons who've used Wentworth's old stuff to disguise themselves.
Pete makes it to Judy first, but just as he's about to straight up just throw her out a window to her death Batman spots her in time and swoops down on a bat-line and rescues her. Hot damn! Wentworth recognizes the disguises and Batman puts two and two together and we get our climatic fight scene.
Turns out the famous dead playwright wrote his greatest play just for Judy, but could never find anyone to produce it (maybe it's not so great then?) and then died. She carried the script around to everyone in town but no one would bite (maybe it's... not so great then?) So Batman offers to get BRUCE WAYNE to put up the dough!
The play opens with Judy starring and Wentworth in a supporting role! It's a hit, she becomes a star and Wentworth's career is reignited! And with Pete in jail, about to get the electric chair for murder, it looks like all those old gypsy prophecies came true after all!
Curious, Bruce and Dick visit the fortuneteller, who tells them all she sees is a swirling mist and a bony finger pointed in warning -- for they are the hand of fate!
They are understandably freaked out by this.
~~~~
Thoughts and Review: So this is another entry into what I've started thinking of as the "literary" genre of Golden Age Batman. These stories try to be about "real" people, try to present a cast of various characters all pulled into the "drama", try to talk about social issues or perhaps just be a bit more sophisticated in their storytelling. They try to be more complex and clever than the standard bank-robbers-with-a-gimmick plot. They're cool - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes thirteen pages is too little to try to write in a "novelistic" manner, sometimes they're too few to drag a weak plot across.
But they always seem like they're trying to hard. Like a writer trying to prove he's better than the series he's writing for.
I don't know where I stand on this one. I love the art, but the story's a big bag of meh.
The Art: It's all Jerry Robinson, so of course it's gorgeous. I mean, I love this guy's unique blend of cartooning, realism, light, shadow, detail, grit, grime and bravura. The thin line work isn't always very well reproduced in modern reprints, but it's still some really fantastic stuff. I've compared it to the work of George Freeman on Captain Canuck before, and that's still what it reminds me of, except of course that here's Robinson doing it forty years earlier. The art saves this story. It's great.
The Story: The story itself, thinks too highly of itself and is based entirely on one forced dramatic contrivance after another. It's all coincedences and happenstance masquerading as plot. Of course, it also suffers the number one problem of these "literary" stories. Without fail, they're always based around some new random characters we've never met, investing them with character development and pathos and all that, and we're never going to meet them again. Batman and Robin become observers and guest stars in their own feature. They can never get character development, they must remain static, two-dimensional, cardboard cutouts to facillitate more stories.
It's not that I don't like the writing or I don't appreciate these kinds of stories, but I've seen Bill Finger write better and I know better is possible - if maybe not on the kind of demanding schedule Batman demanded of approximately forty-five stories per year. Granted, I think Batman appears in just as many if not far more comics at once nowadays - but I also feel quantity over quality wins the day now, just as it did then.
Another patriotic cover, this time courtesy of artist Dick Sprang - who we've yet to see any interior work from, but who's time will come soon enough (and I couldn't be more excited for!)
"The Secret of Hunter's Inn!"
Writer: Joe Samachson
Artist: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Bruce and Dick are off on one of those sporadic vacations they take whenever the writers feel like putting them in a new locale. They have been driven to a little inn in the woods called The Hunter's Inn by Alfred (still looking ever much like Arthur Treacher's Jeeves than like William Austin's Alfred) in their limousine.
Bruce has an ulterior motive for this visit though - the Hunter's Inn has recently been the scene of a serious of disturbing robberies of its wealthy patrons, and the rural police haven't got a clue. Upon arrival, the boys are greeted by a cheerful looking fat man in a ridiculous wax moustache and goatee combo. And Bruce Wayne isn't the only millionaire staying there, there's also John Gottorox. Nobody else, though....
Strangely, the inn's famous Hunter's Stew is awful, the rooms are shit, but there's still no sign of wrongdoing anywhere -- well, until Bruce and Dick hear a call for help from one of the other rooms. So, transformed into Batman and Robin, they burst through a window into Gottorox's room, where he's being accosted by some "rough men".
They fight off the men, but the fat man from the front desk appears again and toss a bomb made of bees at them, to whose bite he's immune!! Batman and Robin run from the room, down the hall, but bump into another identical fat man! Quickly our heroes deduce that they must be dealing with the Tweed Brothers - Tweedledum and Tweedledee - recently escaped from jail. The Tweed gases them with poisonous coal gas and trots off to get Gottorox's money.
And it's Alfred who comes to our heroes' rescue, having heard the commotion in the hall he finds their prone forms and takes them out to the car and departs quickly.
Batman and Robin wake up in the car the next morning, Alfred having driven them out to the woods to hide. They thank him for his assistance, then head back to the inn to investigate.
There they meet Soup McConell, an ex-con. Batman accuses him of working for the Tweeds, but McConell denies it, claiming he has only hired a few other ex-cons to keep them out of trouble - he's gone straight, running the Inn himself. Batman is also confused by the large number of guests at the Inn who weren't there last night, but McConell claims they've been there for a long time.
However, Batman spots two of the thugs they fought the night before, so he and Robin attack them. McConell's men, very confused, try to stop the Dark Knight and Boy Wonder from assaulting random people in the inn, which is full of guests. Soon, Batman and Robin are outnumbered by employees, and kicked out! Soup says he doesn't want any trouble, but if the heroes bother him or his guests again, he'll call the cops!
Batman and Robin walk back off into the woods, very confused, until Batman notices that the hotel entrance faces south... and last night it faced west!
Walking through the woods, they come across another Hunter's Inn, identical except it's in a different place, facing a different direction! And so they ener the other inn to investigate, finding a copy of the Hunter's Inn reservation book!
Robin figures out that the scheme is that the Tweeds steal the real Inn's reservation info, and then when a particularly wealthy guest is arriving, somehow lure them to the fake inn and steal their money - then, when the police investigate all they find is the real inn and no evidence!
Having figured this out, they soon fall into a trap - cornered by Tweedledum and Tweedledee! But Batman buys some time with a smoke bomb and he and Robin beat feet to the elevator. Inside, they find a switch whereby the Tweeds could control a set of fake trees to be placed over the road to the Hunter's Inn, revealing a second road to their own Inn, thus luring in their victims and keeping away the cops!
Batman flicks the switch to lead to the Tweed's Inn, and the police headed to answer to Gottorox's report of the previous night find the Tweeds and surround them. They're arrested, and Bruce and Dick head back to Gotham with Alfred.
~~~~
My Thoughts: This is a fantastic Golden Age Tweedledee & Tweedledum story, and like their first appearance, it really helps me understand these villains and their place in Batman's Rogues Gallery in a way their modern day appearances (mostly cameos) don't manage to. It's a creepy tale, one that is truly unnerving in the way it makes no sense at the start, but comes together in a way that really reinforces the themes of doubling and duality present in the twin villains, which of course also reinforces those themes in the character himself. It's very smart and well done.
The Art: Jerry Robinson must've had an affinity for the Tweeds. He drew them in a delightfully creepy manner in their first story and does an equally effective job here. They're an unnerving pair, and Robinson gives all the scenes an effective, almost expressionistic touch, while still keeping everything in his usual fine realistic style, with his unique "scratchy" light linework. Really great stuff here.
The Story: Samachson delivers a really smart mystery plot here. As said before, it reinforces the themes of the characters, but it's also just really smartly done. Seeing Batman a step behind for a part of the story is really cool, and Alfred is also used in a very effective and competent manner. The detail that the crooks running the real hotel really have gone straight is great too, to see that not all of Batman's enemies remain criminals is a great way to speak to the character's effectiveness as a crimefighter.
"Robin Studies His Lessons!"
Writer: Joe Samachson
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Dick comes home and tries to sneak past Bruce to his room without saying hello. Bruce picks up that something's wrong and confronts the boy. Turns out Dick is flunking his subjects in school, despite promising Bruce he'd study. It's probably because he's out every night being a crimefighter, Bruce. Bruce comes to the same conclusion, and places Dick on temporary suspension - Batman's a solo act until Dick passes his classes!
Dick's all upset, but what can you do? Batman goes out alone, and quickly ends up fighting some robbers. After a two page fight scene, they bop Batman on the head and scam. After running a ways, they realize Batman was alone, and that perhaps that now that he's without his partner, perhaps he'd be easier to bump off! They make a plan to trap Batman!
Batman trails after them, and finds a clue that they'll be hitting the treasurer's office of Consolidated Fisheries next. Thing is - it's a planted clue!
He shows up, and finds some weird blocks on the ceiling. No time to figure out the clue, so he heads inside, and sets off some odd noisemakers somehow accidentally. Odd, but he heads into the next room, and is plunged into darkness. His hands are glowing though, and in the darkness the crooks pistol whip him over the head. Turns out the blocks on the ceiling were coated in phosphorescent paint, and the noises were caused by unstable chemicals left on the floor. The lead crook used to work in a lab, where he learned this stuff.
Meanwhile, Dick's feeling sad and lonely at home, so he uses his belt radio to contact Batman just to see what's up. Batman's tied up at the crook's hideout at the "Consolidated Fisheries" building, and the crooks tell Rbin to come alone and try to rescue him (figuring they can take out both of them). Batman warns Robin to "stay home and study!" but Robin disobeys.
Robin figures out the phosphorescent blocks, and figures Batman fell into a trap. He doesn't go intothe next room and instead finds a big electric refrigerator and smashes the coils with a hammer. The fumes fill the building, but Robin avoids them because he recognizes the gas is sulphur dioxide and thus heavier than air, so if he stays up high he won't breathe it in.
The gas gets to the crooks, allowing Batman to escape, but despite the handicap the criminals manage to beat feet. Although Batman is happy Robin saved his life and is pretty impressed with the refrigerator trick given Dick is flunking chemistry, he believes in discipline and thus tells the Boy Wonder to go back home and get back to studying.
A tearful Robin decides to go after the crooks himself to show Batman up, and figures out they'll have phosphorescent paint on their shoes from those blocks. He follows the gang and throws the blocks at them when he finds them.
Batman follows Robin, finding the Boy Wonder engaged in battle with the crooks. The moon moves behind a cloud and it gets very dark on the rooftop but Batman can see them fine thanks to Robin throwing the blocks at them.
After they're beat up, Robin explains he threw the blocks at them so he could identify them, but Batman one-ups him by explaining that the sulphur dioxide gas would've acted as a bleach on their clothes that would've identified them. But them Robin outgeeks Batman explaining that "well, actually..." the effects of sulphur dioxide disappear very quickly.
After the thugs are turned over to the police, Bruce goes to Dick's school to investigate, because how is this kid flunking school? Turns out it's not because he's up all night every night getting knocked over the head, it's because his report card was mixed up with some dumbass named Richard E. Grayson instead of our Dick (who's Richard John Grayson, for the record!)
~~~~
My Thoughts: A fun little "focus on Robin" story that's obviously supposed to be relatable for kids who feel their parents are too hard on them for telling them to do their homework. I do feel sorry for that kid who had a really good report card for like a day before the mistake was discovered!
The Art: The art's a good serviceable job from Kane/Robinson, in particular a lot of the fight scenes in the dark are cool, and there are a lot of great silouhetted "Dark Knight" evocative images of Batman that surface in the "solo" sequences, images that we haven't really seen that much in the series since the early days.
The Story: Joe Samachson was clearly reading a book of chemistry trivia or something the day before this story was due. Oh, phosphorescent paint glows in the dark? Fridges use sulphur dioxide gas, which isn't good to breathe, and can bleach things? Cool, what kind of story can I base around these little facts? A very Bill Finger way of working.
"The Good Samaritan Cops"
Writer: Bill Finger
Artist: Jack Burnley
Synopsis: Bill Finger's decided to do a series of stories spotlighting the true-to-life work of real police services, in which Batman and Robin will meet various types of police officers. The first story will be about the "men in the green trucks", the "police emergency squads". These guys don't really exist today the way they did then -- this old Popular Science article kind've explains the idea though, and I think nowadays they've evolved into these guys.
Anyhow, one day Batman and Robin decide to head down to police headquarters to basically do some ride alongs to learn more about the police department of which they are honorary members. They decide to start with the Emergency Squad because they are "hand-picked and specially trained" and "roll only when the regular force is stumped".
Sergeant Mead introduces the Dynamic Duo to his squad - Bressler, who's obsessed with pics of his kid (if this was a movie, he'd be marked for death; Brannigan and Flannigan, a couple of Irish stereotypes always arguing over a girl; and Richards, the rookie who's looking for some action. Of course, there's also their truck - Suzie.
A call comes in, and they roll out! They rescue a cat from a telephone, and then rescue a man stuck in a quagmire. But Sergeant Mead is going to retire and is sad about it - age limits, he can't even serve in the army! Retirement after a lifetime of service is truly the worst thing.
Then an ammonia pipe bursts in a refrigerating room at a meat packing plant, so off they go! They put on gas masks and head into the plant to rescue the workers, but Batman and Robin find some gangsters in the refrigerating room - they burst the pipe on purpose so they could steal the meat for the black market! (Food rationing, wartime, all that).
The next call is a hostage situation - a madman has a pretty girl and a gun in a high rise apartment. Flannigan gets shot trying to save her, but the Dynamic Duo manage it cuz after all they're names are on the strip. Brannigan is all upset about Flannigan, but it turns out the bullet ricocheted off his badge and he's fine (that happens so often in fiction, ever in real life?) and soon the two are back to arguing.
The next call comes through, and it turns out the cops have "kill-crazy Two-Gun Foley and his mob" bottled up in a building but can't smoke him out! So in comes the emergency squad to storm the place with tear gas!
After the successful raid, the rookie apologizes for complaining about the lack of action, and Commissioner Gordon decides to defer Mead's retirement because too many young officers are going into the army -- hooray, more high tension risky physical work into old age!
Batman and Robin finish their ridealong, and before they can even say goodbye, the emergency squad is off again on another call!
~~~~
My Thoughts: So, obviously this is another Bill Finger Public Service Announcement type story. It basically lays that all out in the splash page. It's also probably a "Bill Finger was reading about this in a magazine or newspaper and filed it away in the idea drawer" type story as well. Ultimately, it's also really not a Batman story. It's a "day in the life" tale, with our heroes as witness-proxies for the audience. And what a weird little snapshot of time it is!
I guess modern SWAT teams and the currently heavily militarized police of the US have kind've evolved from these sorts of squads, but the whole sight of these men in blue hanging off a green truck that basically looks like an old school fire truck and just jetting around on call seems so strange to me. Then again, I've lived my life in a large Canadian metropolis that nevertheless has a population about a seventh of that of NYC. So, y'know, my relationship to and awareness of police is a little bit different. But from my perspective, this whole thing seems weird and quaint.
The Art: Very very polished looking art, but then of course it is! It's Jack Burnley for cryin' out loud! Very slick inking and an all around excellent looking story, with many elements clearly taken from photo reference. Now, Burnley always turns in good art, but I wonder if perhaps he was selected for this assignment because Finger clearly had high hopes for this "series" or if he was just up in the rotation. It is hard to know the ways of Whitney Ellsworth.
The Story: It is what it is. It's a day-in-the-life PSA piece about police in which we see the emergency squad do a wide variety of tasks in a single day, do them all well, and make it home safe. What semblance of story there is revolves around the group of stereotypes who make up the squad - the two guys who argue but really care about each other, the rookie who grows up, and the sergeant who doesn't have to retire. They all have one personality trait causing one conflict which is easily solved by story's end. It's not a bad thing - it's all done so painlessly and smoothly that you don't really mind - but it's hard to really call it a story.
"The Crime Surgeon!"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: An escape attempt leaves a prison warden shot and the prison doctor unskilled enough to operate. And so a convict is called in! It's Doctor Matthew Thorne... the Crime Doctor! He operates, but uses ether to gas the guards and make his escape!
Soon enough, he's right back to his old tricks, operating a "crime clinic" to assist crooks in planning and executing their schemes, for a percentage of the loot. But this time, the crime clinic is moving across country!
Batman and Robin analyze the pattern, and find the doc is moving in a straight east-to-west line, stopping along the major cities. So the crime-fighters head to the next logical city, and Robin adopts a cover as a street urchin shoeshine boy. He overhears some crooks and confirms Thorne is there.
The heist involves disguising the thieves as a construction crew working on a sewage system, using the dynamite blasts to cover the dynamite blast used to get into the bank vault. But Batman and Robin dive in right before the blast, and we get to have a cool dynamic two-page fight scene in a construction site before the doc makes his getaway to the next city.
In the next city, Thorne sends his accomplice to drum up business, and he meets a crook who needs a job planned. The crook is blindfolded on the drive to the doc's hideout, and we get five panels of nothing but blackness and sound effects: the sounds of a train, clanging and bonging, rumbling, cows, and then roaring water.
But after they arrive, Robin is discovered following the car and the crook is revealed as a disguised Batman (doing that weird human face make-up over cowl over real face thing that I always find suuuuper weird).
In the ensuing fight scene, Robin is shot and the doc freaks out ("You're working for a doctor, not a killer!") He's not dead, but Thorne will need to operate -- and so once again Batman finds himself assisting Thorne in an operation, this time on Robin!
The two enemies call a truce, and after the operation, Thorne allows Batman to leave and take Robin to a hospital. Because the boy's unconscious, Batman still doesn't know where Thorne's hideout is -- but it doesn't matter. Batman counted his pulses and thus was able to time his journey with the sounds he heard, which were a train junction, a blacksmith's, a wooden bridge, a farm, and a waterfall.
But there's nothing there! Just some extra wide tire tracks... then Batman realizes that the Doc took his practice on the road by operating out of a trailer! Luckily, the trailer back into a mud bank and left a perfect impression of the license plate (ha!) and so Batman has an APB put out on it.
They spot it by a gold field in California, which allows for a suitably dramatic industrial area to have a climatic battle in. Thorne plans to steal the gold from the mine... but then the wife of one of his goons gets sick and needs an operation! The doc intends to help, Hippocratic Oath and all, but then the timetable for the gold job gets moved up and he has to choose... crime or medicine!
Thorne chooses crime, and so on the day he's one goon short since the guy has stayed home with his sick wife. Batman busts in, and takes off after Thorne, who leads him on a chase through the mine, of course ending up on a high platform where things are most dramatic.
Thorne's about to stab Batman with a scalpel, but SUDDENLY! He's shot! Yes, it's Mocco the goon with the sick wife, all pissed off and vengeful because she died! And so Doctor Matthew Thorne dies in Batman's arms, and finally seems to achieve a sort of peace in death which he never had in life.
~~~~
My Thoughts: This story is so strange on so many levels. On the one hand, it's strange to see the story of a Golden Age villain end. Heck, it's strange to see a Modern Age comics character get an ending, unless he's a "created just for the arc" type, and even then. I mean, the Crime Doctor was locked up and sent to jail in his last appearance, which is generally code for "will be a returning villain", and yet here he is, dying. And we know it's a real death because it's all dramatically appropriate and such.
And speaking of drama, wow is this story all over the place with it in just twelve pages! It has the kind of noirish feel that the best Bill Finger dramas do, evoking both the Warner crime dramas of the period and also previsioning the tone of some of the best stories of the seminal 90s Batman animated series. It's really unique and well done and definitely my favourite story in this issue.
The Art: Robinson and Kane bring the dark drama in this one. Noirish shadows, dramatic poses, expressive lighting, it's really all quite well done, starting with the amazing splash page which draws you to Thorne's crazed eyes. Many panels are mostly darkness, with a hint of a figure. It's really cool and well done in the dramatic moments, even if the panels of Batman driving around figuring out what noises he was hearing are super bland filler.
The Story: Finger was obviously fascinated by the duality of the Crime Doctor character. Like Two-Face before him, the Crime Doctor is a villain who is not fully evil. He has compulsion to do evil, as explored in his last story, but he also feels compelled to do good, as we see here. Ultimately, evil wins out and so Thorne pays the ultimate price in dramatic terms. Yet in death his soul is reconciled, no longer tormented by his split moral code. It's interesting and deep stuff for a 1943 comic for children, and the examination of Thorne's character is what makes this top notch stuff, not the ins and outs of the robberies.
Notes and Trivia: The death of the Crime Doctor.
P.S. - If you're wondering where I've been since August, I've mostly just been very busy with work - both film/television work and otherwise, but in terms of reading comics I sucked myself into reading all of Jack Kirby's work and from September til now made it from his earliest Golden Age work on Blue Bolt through to now being fifteen issues in to Fantastic Four. Considered blogging about it, but that would've slowed down the progress immensely and besides the internet doesn't need me to tell it Jack Kirby was the King.
An interesting cover here, with the different characters featured drawn by different artists rather than one unified penciller. Superman is by Fred Ray the Boy Commandos by Joe Simon, Green Arrow and the Star Spangled Kid are by Hal Sherman, and Batman and Robin are by an artist we will be seeing a lot more of in the future... the legendary Dick Sprang!
Sprang's art has yet to appear in this feature, for a variety of reasons, but once it does it's gonna change the whole ballgame.
"The Man With the Camera Eyes"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Jerry Robinson
Inks: George Roussos
Synopsis: Oliver Hunt is a man with a photographic memory (an eidetiker, which is something that probably doesn't exist). He works a vaudeville routine called "The Man with the Camera Eyes" where audience members pick a letter from the phone book and Hunt recites it all from memory (although how would they know his accuracy?)
Bruce and Dick are at the show, and Dick thinks the whole thing must be a fake. Bruce, however, vouches for Hunt's legitimacy, as he's been famous for his memory since he was a boy. Hunt instantly memorizes anything he reads, and scientists verified his abilities. Bruce claims Hunt left college with "every possible kind of degree", which shows a) a vast misunderstanding of how long it takes to get a degree, fantastic memory or no and b) the common misunderstanding of memorization of facts as being intelligence - just because Hunt can memorize a book doesn't necessarily means he can understand it. Either way, it does beg the question as to what the man is doing in a vaudeville show when he should be able to make a better living doing, like, anything else.
And it just so happens that the gangster Dude Fay (which is just might be the gayest name for a gangster possible in the 1940s) has realized this as well, and offers Hunt a job working for him. Hunt himself wishes to devote himself to psychological research, but can't afford it with the money from his vaudeville shows (again, if he has all of the degrees why can't he work for a university?).
Anyways, Hunt is confused as to what use he'd be to criminals when his only skill is remembering things, but it turns out that Fay has hit on the brilliant idea of the value of intellectual property theft fifty-six years before Sean Parker ever did.
So Fay's gang creates distractions and heists that allow Hunt to do things like get into the record rooms of music publishers and memorize the sheets for hit songs before they are recorded, then sell them to rival publishers. And there's no way to prove any theft because the "loot" is all in Hunt's mind. Soon the gang is "stealing" prosecutor's records and book manuscripts, making a killing selling them to the competitions.
So of course one day Bruce and Dick happen to see the "Man with the Camera Eyes" coming out of a publisher's office and Bruce realizes that the connection in the recent rash of crimes is that what was stolen was ideas and then they see Hunt get into a car with Dude Fay's men and so on the next page we find Batman and Robin have swung into action and followed Dude's men to their hideout at a... carpenter's workshop? Huh. Guess all the good hideouts were taken.
Anyways, fight scene time, but a page and a half later the crooks have gotten away, however the Dynamic Duo knows the name of their next target - a patent attorney named Arthur Medwick.
Sure enough the gang is at the patent office with Hunt memorizing blueprints for patents currently under review. Batman and Robin swoop in and try to reason with Hunt about how what he's doing is wrong and that stealing ideas violates individual rights and is the same if not worse than stealing property but Hunt takes them about as seriously as the average user of PirateBay. So Batman punches Hunt in the face and the heroes take him captive in the Batplane. Does anyone reading along not see where this is going?
So Hunt Vulcan Neck Pinches the Dynamic Duo (because he read an anatomy book once) then lands the Batplane and memorizes it's every detail of design (he read an aeronautics book once).
Returning to his criminal cohorts, Hunt gives them the plans to build their own Batplane, explaining that he did not kill the heroes because despite all the intellectual property theft he's still firmly against violence. Once the plane is built, the crooks are off to steal dress designs from Henri Longvieux (props to Finger for the faux-French name there).
What Hunt doesn't know is that Dude has made one alteration to the Batplane's design -- the addition of mounted machine guns to blast the real Batplane out of the sky when it comes after them. The crooks intentionally set off the burglar alarm to draw Batman and Robin into the trap, and soon the two Batplanes are engaged in an epic dogfight over Gotham!
In a somewhat confusing panel layout, the OG Batplane realises a smokescreen but the Faux-Batplane scores a few hits. Batman dives intentionally to trick the crooks into thinking they've finished them off, then pulls up and follows them to their next target.
It's a government weather station and Dude wants Hunt to memorize government weather reports so he can sell them to enemy U-boat commanders. Hunt refuses to participate in treason, and runs off when the Batman and Robin burst in and start pun-fighting the villains. They try to escape but Hunt has cut the feed line and set fire to the gas. Dude shoots Hunt and leaves him in the plane to die, but Batman rescues him just as it explodes.
Hunt believes he can never make up for his crimes against his country, but Batman offers him a chance at redemption by joining Military Intelligence! Yes, apparently a masked vigilante's word is good enough reference for Uncle Sam, and soon Hunt is helping the war effort stealing Nazi secrets!
~~~~
My Thoughts: Pretty clearly this another story from Bill Finger's Fact Files - which is to say that Finger probably read an article somewhere about photographic memory and figured it would make a unique ability for a villain. Finger was right, and the idea of stealing intellectual property rather than just jewels or money gives the story a unique flavour that is quite refereshing. Of course, while popular science and pop culture love discussing photographic memories and the possession of one is often an attribute of brilliant fictional detectives on TV, actual science posesses very minimal evidence that such a thing even exists.
The Art: Decent stuff from Robinson and Roussos this ish, with good facial caricatures on the various characters, but the standout sequence in terms of penmanship is the one-page dogfight between the Batplanes, which is gloriously dark and moody and atmospheric -- unfortunately it's just a chore to read because the panel layouts are hard to follow -- any time you're reading a Golden Age comic and the panels have to be numbered and feature arrows to guide you, the penciller has just flat-out failed at his job.
The Story: Despite some leaps of logic and some plot contrivances, I quite liked this one. I liked Hunt's attempt to straddle morality by agreeing to steal IP (since that's not really stealing, right Internet?) but refusing to do violence, murder or treason. It's great because the idea that intellectual property theft isn't a real crime and doesn't hurt anyone is one that has continued to this day and spread quite a bit, there are so many people who believe it's their right to steal from artists and creators because, after all, they're rich enough already right? However Hunt finds out that corruption is absolute - he can't just "sort've" be evil, once you've corrupted some principles you've corrupted them all, theft is theft and you can't just ignore the consequences of it. The redemption ending is predictable but still well done, and I liked it better than Hunt just simply dying to save Batman.
"Slay 'Em With Flowers"
Writer: Horace L. Gold
Artist: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: The Joker and his men have taken over an old florists' shop, using it as a front for buglarizing wealthy patrons. The flowers are delivered, release a gas which knocks out the guards and inhabitants of the building, and then Joker and his men bust in wearing gas masks and steal the loot.
The cops can't figure how it's being done, so the Bat-Signal calls the Dynamic Duo to police headquarters, and the next day Bruce Wayne is taking Dick to a "flower show" based on a hunch from the case.
Of course the Joker and his men are robbing the place and so Batman and Robin appear for the fight -- but the gas gets them, and once unconscious the Joker's men place them in an elevator car and cut the cables (rather than just, y'know, shooting them).
The masked manhunters manage to wake up and hit the emergency stop lever in time, and escape. Batman recognizes there must be a connection between the gas and the flowers and does some detective work. Batman and Robin stake out the Florist shop, and then follow millionaire Percy Fillmore from the shop to his penthouse apartment.
They arrive in time to find the Joker's men robbing the place, but Joker shoots them in the face with gas. The crooks stick our heroes in a closet and run gas from the kitchen into the room to suffocate them. Once again they wake up in time, and bust out. Robin suggests raiding the flower shop, but Batman feels the Joker is keeping the loot at a second location.
So Bruce Wayne goes to the flower shop to set himself up as bait. Upon delivery of the flowers to Wayne Manor Bruce notes that the soil is rigged to release a spray of chloroform on a timer.
Alfred suggests fighting the Joker's men when they arrive, but Bruce explains that they must pretend they've been drugged otherwise the Joker and his men would surely kill them. Alfred, an upper crust British guy in 1943, doesn't understand a policy of non-resistance. Oh-ho, contemporary events joke!
After the Joker's gang robs Wayne Manor, the Batmobile follows them to a greenhouse on the outskirts of town, where our climatic fight scene begins. Joker holds up in the greenhouse, but Batman instructs Robin to wet their capes and wear them as gas masks while the Dark Knight pumps chloroform into the greenhouse air intake!
And so with the villains heavily drugged, the police are called and everyone sent to jail.
~~~~
My Thoughts: This is a basic Batman tale. Boilerplate stuff. Joker has a scheme involving robbing folks. He does it once successfully, once again fighting Batman, then the third time is the bait and switch ending with a chase and a climatic fight. This is formula. But "Slay 'Em With Flowers" is still a good read for a few reasons, even if as a Joker story it is uninspired.
The Art: The absolute best thing about this story is the art. Jerry Robinson hits it out of the park here, drawing in a dark, rough style that really feels noirish and pulpy. People's suits and baggy and get wrinkled. Joker is thin and wiry and his hair get messed up. Batman has a chin so big and square that it makes the art of George Freeman looked restrained. It's really lovely to look at and it's a big element making the story feel better than it is. For a long time Robinson was an unsung hero of Golden Age Batman (just like most everyone else), and it was great that before his death he finally got some recognition, even if it was usually accompanied by an exaggerated "creator of the Joker" title. Still more than anything Bill Finger got when he was alive.
The Story: That the story is so formulaic is mildly disappointing considering who is writing it -- H.L. Gold, the classic Golden Age science fiction author who transformed the genre with his magazine Galaxy Science Fiction in 1949. However those days of innovation are a few years away and in 1943 Gold was simply another stuggling sci-fi author making ends meet by slumming it in comics. That being said, Gold slums it quite well, following the formula, constructing the tale in a coherent manner, and wrapping it up nicely. It does the job and does it expertly, even if there's no real innovation on display here.
"Crime of the Month"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Jerry Robinson
Inks: George Roussos
Synopsis: The top crime bosses in Gotham are all invited to a "literary tea" at Mystery Castle, the home of best-selling crime novelist Bramwell B. Bramwell (wanna bet the middle initial stands for Bramwell?). For some reason despite being experienced criminals they all decide to go (I wonder myself how Bramwell got their addresses).
Arriving at Bramwell's Castle (I bet Stephen King wishes he lived in a Castle) Bramwell explains that for years he's been writing crime novels in which criminals outwit the police and he thinks he's so good at it that he himself can commit crimes with impunity. The criminals (rightfully) laugh at him, but Bramwell proposes a contest -- whomever can pull off the "smoothest" theft shall be declared the Crime of the Month, and win the loot from all the jobs!
For some reason the crooks agree to go along with this instead of just shooting Bramwell or walking away laughing, and so Gotham experiences a new spree of overly elaborate robberies (such as a gang that robs a bank under the guise of exterminators dealing with a rat problem -- that they caused!). Somehow Bruce, by listening to accounts of the thefts on the radio, deduces the entire "Crime of the Month" contest and which gangs are involved and thus that they must follow "Slim" Ryan's gang next.
In the Batplane, they tail the gang to a wooden bridge where the gang is setting up dynamite to blow the bridge and capture an amored car. Batman and Robin foil the attempt, butt Ryan escapes. Batman follows Ryan's car in the Batplane and leaves Robin to turn the rest of the gang to the police.
Of course Ryan drives back to Bramwell's castle and so Batman enters in, deducing that Bramwell is "obviously connected with the Crime of the Month in some way!" But Bramwell immediately drops Batman into a fiendish deathtrap (because of course the best-selling author's castle has built-in deathtraps). Batman is locked in a sealed room with an induction furnace, which melts his utility belt and it's gadgets -- luckily Batman has no metal fillings in his teeth or "they'd heat up to 3000 degrees and cook my brain!" I admit this is so far one of the most impressive death-traps I've seen.
Robin figures Batman must be in trouble because he hasn't checked in on the radio, and drives to Bramwell's castle in the Batmobile -- only to be immediately locked in his own death trap room where a dynamo is building up a ten million volt charge in a metal rod which will eventually strike Robin with a bolt of artificial lightning!
Batman has no way out of the furnace room, where he will slowly suffocate, until he pulls a suction cup out of his utility belt (wait - I thought the belt and it's gadgets melted??) and uses that to pull the door open. He hears Robin's cries for help and saves him by smashing the dynamo.
Bramwell escapes, but not before gloating that his Crime of the Month will be the "social event of the year" and involve the "most tedious movie ever made!"
So of course from those two vague phrases Batman figures out that Bramwell is planning to rob a War Relief Drive being put on by high society by hypnotizing the audience with an experimental hypnosis film (which honestly just looks like the kind of Stan Brakhage/Andy Warhol/Michael Snow films I had to watch in my Bachelor's program).
Just before Bramwell robs the transfixed audience, Batman switches the film with some Batman & Robin newsreel footage which snaps the audience out of it because that shit is dope and then captures Bramwell in between panels because we've only got three of them left.
Turns out Batman had read the phrase "most tedious movie ever made" in a book of Bramwell's where a crook pulled off this exact same crime and figured the author was just egotistical enough to plagiarize himself.
In jail, the crooks tease Bramwell by remarking that he ought to be used to pens.
~~~~
My Thoughts: There's not much to say about this story except that I really like the deathtraps. They're very clever and deadly and a cut above what we've seen so far in the strip. Too bad Batman gets out of his through bad writing.
The Art: It's an interesting combo. Robinson's style shines through here, with his superior grasp of anatomy and slightly more realistic style than Kane's simplistic cartooning, but unlike in Detective #74 he's got Roussos inking him, which settles his linework down a bit and stabilizes things to look less "sketchy" and the faces look more on-model with Kane's style. It's still good art though, even if he can't decide from panel to panel whether Bramwell has glasses or not.
The Story: Safe to say I've missed Bill Finger -- we haven't seen a script of his since Detective #71 instead Don Cameron seems to have taken over the lion's share of Batman writing. Finger's story for this issue is very simplistic -- it follows his formula of coming up with a simple gimmick and then using that mostly as a wraparound springboard for over-the-top action scenes and setpieces. That being said, at least this time he sticks with the gimmick all the way through to the end, and man does he do deathtraps and action better than anyone else writing this book. I mean it's really fantastic the imagination he applies to this stuff. Unfortunately, Batman gets out of the trap by Finger just conveniently forgetting the melted utility belt from a couple of pages ago -- which I have to blame Whitney Ellsworth for as well since an editor's job is to catch shit like that. A bad point in an otherwise good story.
"Tweedledum and Tweedledee!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Artist: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Late at night a truck pulls up at a fur warehouse and a gang of crooks begins raiding the expensive furs. Their leader? An extremely creepy looking rotund man in a bowler hat and suit. Batman and Robin spot the robbery and show up to foil it, but during the fight they are caught in wolf traps (ouch!) and so the crooks get away.
After freeing themselves, the Dynamic Duo are back in the Batmobile when the police dispatch reports another robbery lead by a fat man at a jewelry store fifteen minutes away. How could the guy have gotten there so fast?
Once again they confront a batch of crooks, and this time the fat man is wearing a top hat and suit, but otherwise is identical. He zaps them with an electrified walking stick, and by the time Batman and Robin are up they've gotten away with the diamonds.
The next day, Bruce and Dick look into the identity of the fat man by visiting the "Fat Man's Emporium", the only fat clothing store of its kind in Gotham City (how times have changed!) and questions them about whether they have any fat twins as customers. Well, there are the Meeker brothers, but they hate each other (one's a Republican, the other a Democrat) but that's about it -- oh, there is the Tweed brothers: cousins who look so alike they are often mistaken for twins. They always have plenty of money!
Bruce and Dick canvas the Tweed household and after seeing the cousins Dumfree and Deever decide these are indeed their crooks, deciding to raid the place after dark. However the cousins have figured that Batman and Robin will be playing a visit, and rigged their house with deathtraps!
The Dynamic Duo burst through the skylight, as is their custom, only to find themselves ensnared in a net and facing Tweedledum and Tweedledee, accompanied by henchmen in March Hare and Mad Hatter costumes (with the Hatter also portrayed as a rabbit for some reason, looking much more like the White Rabbit character).
The Tweeds are able to keep the heroes subdued by firing an "electron gun" at them which paralyzes them! The crooks head off to the "Grand March", leaving the heroes frozen and alone.
Luckily, through sheer strength of will, Batman breaks free of the paralysis enough to toss his utility belt at the electron gun, "short circuiting" it and allowing them to break free.
The Grand March is a high society masquerade ball which the Tweeds hope to rob. However Batman and Robin surprise them there and trap them, taking down the gang and the cousins -- who can't even fit in a regular paddy wagon!
~~~~
My Thoughts: Tweedledum and Tweedledee are a pair of B-list Batman villains whom I've been aware of, but never really read a story about. I've read stories where they've appeared as cameo characters at Arkham Asylum or as henchmen to other villains (usually Joker or Mad Hatter, sometimes Two-Face) but I've never actually read a comic featuring them as primary adversaries until now. Interesting that they're so obscure and yet they debuted in the same period as many of the A-list rogues gallery. They're fairly creepy and effective in this opening story, but as with other interesting characters like Professor Radium or Scarecrow, it's less important how you debut and more about whether anyone's interested in you after that.
The Art: Jerry Robinson's pencils here are half of this story's effectiveness. Tweedledum and Tweedledee's designs are of course based on Tenniel's Through the Looking Glass illustrations, but they are much much creepier here. They are often drawn underlit, with bulbous noses, gleaming smiles and wide eyes that just make them very unsettling characters to look at, desite all the jokes about their size. Unfortunately Robinson's art here is very, very rough -- it looks like he just quickly inked his own rough pencils and then sent it in without really cleaning things up all that much. DC Database and The Batman Chronicles trade paperbacks give Bob Kane credit for pencils on this issue, and I usually trust their credits to sort out who did what in an era when the only official credit on the issue is Kane's signature, but none of the art in this story looks anything like Kane's style -- whereas Robinson's is all over it.
The Story: Cameron writes a very effective script -- it's very moody and dark in tone despite the potential silliness of the two new villains. The Tweeds are depicted as being very smart, mastermind style villains, and Cameron gives them really unsettling and creepy dialogue to match Robinson's art. It's very clear Cameron wanted to create a pair of recurring villains, given the ending where they are sent to prison and Robin wonders if they've seen the last of them. And in a way, he did -- while the Tweeds have never achieved the prominence of The Joker or Two-Face, they've still managed to stick around for quite a while simply on the strength of their visual I think.
Notes and Trivia: First appearance of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
"The Case Batman Failed to Solve!!!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Artist: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: A gathering of the world's greatest detectives is to be held in New York City at the behest of the great Dana Drye. Invited are "Sir John" of Scotland Yard, America's greatest "country" detective Sheriff Ezra Plunkett (who seems to live in one of those Old West towns Bill Finger seems convinced still exist west of the Appalachians), Grace Seers (a *gasp* woman!), Dr. Tsu the great Chinese (racial stereotype) detective of San Francisco, and finally of course the Batman and Robin (invitation delivered by way of Commissioner Gordon).
Batman exposits to Robin that Dana Drye is the "dean of detectives", greatest of them all and so on, and so the Dynamic Duo is greatly honoured to attend and meet all the other stereotype detectives.
Dana Drye, a very old man, comes out to address the group to announce his retirement... and is promptly shot and killed. The detectives all rush to the window but find that the building there in is on the river, so no one could have fired the shot... it's a mystery! Rather than notify the authorities, Batman suggests they all compete to discover the murderer and meet back at midnight (rather confident of their abilities, aren't they?)
Right away they see someone running from the scene of the crime and chase after him -- they would've gotten him too, but Dr. Tsu trips them and lets the man get away so that Tsu can question him instead himself (because he's a treacherous Chinaman, you see).
Grace approaches the Dynamic Duo and lets them in on her theory that clothes are the essential clue to solving crimes (because she's a woman, you see), and tells Batman the clue that Drye's pockets were empty, which Batman is convinced is utterly essential to solving the mystery.
Finally, Sir John reveals he's taking Drye's body to the crime lab to be examined because science is the only way to solve a murder (thank you!), while Sheriff Anachronism explains that he believes all he has to sit and think on it because common sense is all you need for detective work (because he's a time traveler from 1888, you see).
Batman and Robin head to Drye's apartment (drawn as a house) to follow up the vital "HIS POCKETS WERE EMPTY" clue, but upon arrival end up fighting a bunch of crooks who were searching the apartment for... something. Batman tries to indicate to Robin to let them go so they can follow them back to their superiors but Robin can't take a hint because he's eight, so they all end up unconscious and Batman is left to pick up the pieces when he notices that a weapon is missing from a display shield that fell down from the wall. The crooks already got what they were looking for!
They head off to police headquarters but none of the detectives there can identify the missing weapon. Sir John rushes out of the crime lab to inform Batman that the bullet that killed Drye is perfectly smooth, with no rifling marks of any kind. Batman identifies it as an old musket ball -- but why would the killer use such an out of date weapon?
Then Ms Seers runs into them again, informing them that she discovered that Drye's suit was made by a tailor who specializes in making suits for magicians! At that moment, some gangsters show up and start a big fight!
They capture the heroes because it's that point in the story, bringing them to their boss, the notorious Red Rip. Rip explains that Drye had a lifetime of evidence on him that he never turned over to the cops, because Drye solved crimes just for the fun of it. Rip's men were searching Drye's place for where he kept the evidence, not the missing weapon, meaning they didn't take it!
Dr. Tsu rescues them from the crooks, and informs them that the missing weapon was Drye's antique flintlock pistol. There's a fight scene where the criminals are defeated, and then the Sheriff tells Batman that he found an odd mark on the windowsill of the window the shot was fired through.
Batman then goes to search the bottom of the river for the final piece of the puzzle, which he finds. Now he can explain everything to Robin:
"We all assumed it was murder... it was not! It was suicide! Drye knew he was to die shortly of an incurable malady, so he staged this mystery to baffle us all, hoping we'd never be able to solve it!"
Drye had set the flintlock on the windowsill, because the powder could be ignited by heat from the sun after being set long enough, then the recoil would knock the gun off the windowsill, leaving no murder weapon. The evidence of Rip's crimes was in a box attached the to gun, weighing it down. Drye used a magician's suit with secret pockets to smuggle the apparatus into the room.
Then Batman and Robin discovers Drye's diary amid his papers, which reveal that Drye had figured out that BATMAN IS REALLY BRUCE WAYNE way back in 1940 (presumably because it was obvious within a year of his first appearance!) and chosen not to reveal it to the world out of respect for Batman's wishes.
With this in mind, Batman decides not to reveal the truth of Drye's suicide either, and so when midnight comes the world's greatest detectives all just collectively give up on solving a murder because they failed to do so by an arbitrary and somewhat ridiculously short deadline.
~~~~
My Thoughts: "The Case Batman 'Failed' to Solve" is a good entry in the "Batman-as-a-detective" genre, stories which are always a good change of pace from "Batman-as-a-sentient-pair-of-fists" stories. But while I like Detective Batman, he's not very well serviced by the 13-page stories of the Golden Age, often resulting in resolutions that come out of nowhere. But at least this time the guys remembered to include clues.
The Art: Jerry Robinson's artwork in this story may, may, be the best art ever featured in a Batman comic up to this point. It's not the moodiest, it lacks the noir shadows of a Roussos inked story, and it also lacks the peculiar drama Kane brings to things, but on a purely technical level it is just gorgeous to behold compared to everything that's come before. Figures actually look somewhat three-dimensional, Batman and Robin's faces no longer appear to be cardboard cut-outs, individual faces are well defined and individualistically drawn. The draftsmanship here is just amazing, a real cut above everything we've seen so far, even the work of Jack Burnley (although it does admittedly lack Burnley's sense of drama).
The Story: Cameron's script is a step above Finger's usual efforts in that it's almost possible to figure out the mystery on your own with the clues given (although how did Batman deduce that Drye had an incurable illness?), however it's biggest problem is that it's too busy. There are a ton of characters and subplots and clues introduced over the course of the story and it makes the whole thing feel very fractured and haphazard. It doesn't help that all of the other detectives are rather hack stereotypes (and what was the point of the Old West Sheriff character?). The entire gangster subplot is very tacked on and obviously just there to give us some action because we couldn't possibly have a Batman story without at least two fight scenes, right?? That being said, I won't knock Cameron too hard because at the end of the day this is a good story that holds up and even competence of story structure is impressive sometimes in the Golden Age of Comics.
"Prescription for Happiness!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Doc Chalmers is a pharmacist on Gotham's Lower East Side who is basically the nicest guy ever. He gives candy to children, free medication to poor people, offers kind words to the beat cop who comes in for foot powder, tries to keep the fat balding guy's self-esteem up, refuses to give steroids to the down-on-his-luck prize-fighter who just needs to believe in himself, gives advice to the young doctor trying to build his practice, etc. etc.
One day a woman comes to his shop wanting prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) so she can kill herself. Chalmers takes her to his young doctor friend for help with her "hysteria". Meanwhile, across the street a gangster named "Pills" Mattson is conducting a robbery.
Batman and Robin show up to fight him and his gang but during the brawl "Pills" is banged on the head and an explosion knocks dust into Batman's eyes, allowing the crooks to get away (no, really).
"Pills" is something of a hypochondriac and demands they stop at a pharmacy so he can get some aspirin for his head, and of course they end up at Doc Chalmer's. They end up taking Chalmers, the young doctor, and the girl hostage and decide to use the place as their new base. But then BATMAN shows up there as well, to get his eyes cleaned out! In a tense moment, Chalmers helps the Batman while he cannot dare reveal that he's got gangsters and a hostage situation going on in the back! The Dynamic Duo leaves, Robin eating some liquorice and making the odd remark that he hasn't had candy like this since he was a kid -- Dick, you're eight years old!
Anyways, the crooks use the druggist's as a base of operations, getting their messages out to their men in pill bottles, which the men have to steal from the people they are normally prescribed to in a uselessly convoluted scheme. This series of bizarre crimes in the Lower East Side make Batman realize they are operating out of Chalmer's shop, and he goes in to investigate alone -- and is promptly chloroformed and tied up for his troubles.
Dick realizes Bruce has been gone too long, and decides to investigate by getting a job at the store as a soda fountain boy. He manages to smuggle some tubes of toothpaste to Batman in the back, and the Dark Knight manages to cut through his bonds with the jagged edge of the toothpaste tube!
A fight breaks out, but the whole neighbourhood hears it and soon enough Batman and Robin are being assisted by the prize-fighter, the beat cop, etc. and all the crooks are defeated. The beat cop gets a promotion to a car so no more foot pain, the prize-fighter gets his self-confidence back, the doctor gets a new nurse and girlfriend in the person of the troubled young girl, and the crooks go to jail.
Unfortunately Doc Chalmer's shop was smashed up good in the fight and he doesn't have enough money to cover the damages. But with the encouragement of the Batman, the neighbourhood bands together to help not only cover the damages but actually improve the shop so it's better than ever (even though Bruce Wayne could probably have paid for it all himself without much trouble).
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My Thoughts: Another street-level, man-of-the-people, average-joe morality play type story of the kind that Bill Finger is a big fan of telling. It comes off well even if Chalmers is a little too saintly to be believeable and most of the story relies on a whole ton of coincedences. I find it amusing how revered the local druggist is here, with a pill or a tonic for every problem, since I've been playing Red Dead Redemption lately, where medical science is not nearly as well thought of.
The Art: Robinson's inks do a lot of good here, but you can tell this is Kane's work. Batman and Robin are back to their 2D selves, Chalmers looks like every old man Kane has ever drawn, etc. None of this is bad, and Robinson's inks keep the quality pretty high, with good detailing in the panels, but it's a noticeable step down from the previous story.
The Story: Another Don Cameron script! It's a pretty standard story, the most notable thing being the bizarre choice of focus for a comic book (what ten year old cares about his local pharmacist?) and the story's rather coincedence driven nature. That being said, Cameron keeps things admirably focused and on track, with the story developing fairly naturally and moving from A to B in a way that, while predictable, at least makes sense.
"Swastika Over the White House!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Jack Burnley
Inks: Ray Burnley
Synopsis: Young Fred Hopper is trying to get a job as a newsreel cameraman at the Gotham City newsreel company. The chief, Mr. McCoy, will only give him a job if he can get footage of the reclusive millionaire J. Peerless Morton. The other cameramen at the company take a liking to Fred and help him get the footage, and so he gets the job. The successful company's next assignment is taking footage of war production factories, footage which of course will be properly censored by the war department before appearing in newsreels.
But what the others don't know is that young Fred Hopper is in actuality young Fritz Hoffner, a Nazi spy taking his orders from a spy ring led by Count Felix (of course the German nobility had been abolished in 1919) and operating out of an antique store (they have a swastika shaped chandelier!) Anyways, this whole thing was a set-up so that Fritz could take photos of the US war production unhampered -- he will have a secret spy camera within his main camera and the footage it takes won't be censored.
However Count Felix is no fool -- he also realizes that Batman and Robin must be dealt with, and so when the Dynamic Duo happens to arrive the next day at the newsreel company to do some footage for the war bond campaign the Count springs a drive-by shooting on them! It is, of course, unsuccessful, but even though our heroes capture the Nazi would-be assassins, they refuse to talk.
Suspicious, Batman decides to begin shadowing the newsreel men, while Fritz begins to bring the first of his espionage footage to his superiors. They decide to attack the factory, but Batman decides to patrol it the same night, and so the Nazis engage in battle with the Dynamic Duo who realize that "Fred" is a spy.
The Nazis bind the Duo and stick them in a car loaded with explosives and send them to crash into the gasoline tanks, but in typical serial cliff-hanger fashion even though it appears that the car does explode, Batman and Robin in fact get out just in the nick of time by using the cigarette lighter to cut their bonds.
They follow Hoffner to the antique shop, and beat up all the Nazis (even using the swastika chandelier for the old "spin and kick" routine). Using maps and records found in the hideout tey are also able to arrest scores of other spies throughout the country.
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My Thoughts: We're almost a year into full-fledged involvement in WWII for the US, but aside from some patriotic covers we've seen very little war-related storytelling in Batman. This is in fact the first story to involve Nazis as villains since the US entered the war. In some ways this is a good thing -- Batman fights crime in Gotham City, not ideological socio-political conflicts on a global scale, but given how easily the Nazis become comic book villains (see contemporary issues of Wonder Woman for example) it's still somewhat surprising that the book has been as restrained as it has been to this point. Although I still wonder why Bruce isn't serving overseas (other than the fact that it would be difficult to fight crime in Gotham otherwise, but why hasn't he been drafted?).
The Art: Jack Burnley delivers some really great stuff here, almost attempting photorealism, or as close to it as you can get while still having to be consistent to the cartooning style of Bob Kane. The inks by his brother Ray are absolute fantastic, lending great noiresque shadowy blacks to everyone's faces. Just about everything in the story looks dynamite except Batman and Robin themselves, oddly enough, who retain their Bob Kane style two-dimensionality. That being said, the Burnley art is good enough on the whole that it's always a treat.
The Story: It's a pretty standard "heroes defeat Nazi spy ring" story from Cameron, but the newsreel cameraman angle feels new and adds interest. Most of the schemes make sense and the action setpieces are fairly exciting. The title is a little misleading though -- I mean yes "swastikas over the White House" is the eventual Nazi game plan but it's not a good indication of what's actually going on in this story.
"Bargains in Banditry!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Jack Burnley
Inks: Ray Burnley
Synopsis: It's a Penguin story, and this time the old buzzard has a doozy of a plan. He's offering "bargains in crime" -- he's selling criminal plots. Come to him, pay him a fee upfront and he develops a fool-proof plan for bankrobbing, kidnapping, etc. and gives it to you, collecting a percentage of profits after the fact as well. It's a brilliant scheme, in fact it's the smartest thing Penguin has done so far and one of the smartest things any Batman villain has done to this point. Penguin sells a bankrobbing plan to Hairless Harry and Torchy Blaze, and soon his business is picking up quite well.
The bank robbery goes just as planned, but when Harry and Torchy arrive at their hideout they find Penguin waiting for them -- he wants his cut. And this is when Penguin's brilliant scheme goes stupid because he shoots both men with an umbrella gun and takes the entire loot. Penguin thinks this is smart but how is he gonna keep this scam going once it gets out he's murdering his customers and stealing from them?
Anyways Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are going to the bank to buy a few more thousands of dollars worth of war bonds but when they arrive they find it's the bank that was robbed. The next day the murder of the two gangsters is in the paper and Bruce pieces together what happened. They head to Grand Boulevard in the Batplane, "where the big jewelry stores are located", and where Batman is sure some of Penguin's dupes are sure to strike.
Sure enough, Slippery Elmer and his gang are looting a jewelry store and while they immediately surrender, Batman and Robin beat them up anyways -- confirming my longheld belief that Batman is in crime-fighting more for the physical violence than the values of justice. Elmer gets away, but the Dynamic Duo follow him in the Batplane to his hideout -- where Penguin is waiting to kill him!! Batman and Robin show up but Penguin catches them all in a chickenwire net and escapes!
The next day, Bruce and Dick have freed themselves and delivered Elmer to the police off-panel, when Bruce decides that the best way to draw Penguin out is to start a rival crime planning company. And so, dressed in his best "Nick-Fury-on-an-off-day" cosplay, Bruce sets up shop as "Bad News" Brewster and begins selling plans to crooks. Dick thinks he's gone nuts until it's obvious that all the plans lead the crooks straight into police traps -- which, again, how do you keep the business going once word of that gets out?
Anyways, Penguin challenges Brewster and gives an address to meet him at. Batman and Robin show up... and are instantly trapped in a giant umbrella that realizes crazy knock-out gas (it's seriously like something right out of the 60s TV show, amazing). Turns out Penguin figured things out because "Bad News" sounds like "Batman"... wait, what?
Penguin ties the two up seperately and starts throwing darts at Batman's head but Robin manages to break loose and take penguin down with one of his own umbrellas. FINALLY the Dynamic Duo capture the Penguin and bring him to jail, where he is promptly sentenced to death for the murders of those two crooks earlier in the story. The End. Wait... what?
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My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this story because for once the plot of the criminal was something pretty intelligent and made sense and wasn't just about gimmicks. Batman's counterplot was pretty clever too. Of course Penguin gets too greedy and this is his undoing, but that element of the tale actually seemed like a lost opportunity, for reasons I'll get to in a minute. Also, this is the first Penguin tale to end with Batman actually capturing the crook, as he's always escaped at the end of previous stories, but the sudden announcement of his death sentence seemed very extreme -- granted, all it really means is that if no one uses the Penguin after this then at least Batman finally caught the guy and brought him to justice, while if they want to use him again then it's easy to just right him as escaping (Spoiler alert: Penguin totally appears agan!)
The Art: Not quite up to the usual Burnley standard, but still really good. It basically just looks like A-game Bob Kane, which is what it's supposed to look like anyway, but I must admit I don't think Burnley draws the characters created by Kane as well as everyone else. Which is to say that his "normal" people look fantastic but his Penguin lacks something (Kane draws a really good Penguin) and his Dynamic Duo always come off as cheap copies. I can't put my finger on it. It's not bad, in fact technically speaking it's probably much better than Kane, but it lacks something somehow.
The Story: Cheers to Don Cameron for coming up with something unique for Penguin to do that still feels totally in keeping with his character -- in fact this kind of "brains over brawn, third party crime" stuff feels very much like the Modern Age version of the character, or at least it would if the Modern Age version was ever done right. However I wish Cameron would have realized that crooks would have turned against Penguin themselves once they realized what he was up to -- a story where Batman and Robin actually teamed up with disenfranchised crooks to take down the cheating Penguin would have been really cool. Alas, instead we got a tale whose climax is essentially right on the money for the kind of thing Adam West and co. would parody twenty years later -- ridiculous, but kind've awesome at the same time.
Notes and Trivia: Penguin jailed for the first time, sentenced to death.
Penguin Body Count: 5
The Art: It's Jerry Robinson. This is the good stuff, but Fred Ray's inking makes it even better, just solidifying the work a little more so it looses some of Robinson's loose scratchiness and looks nice and polished. But it's top notch Golden Age Batman, just a joy to be looking at again. The best single panel is on the first page, with Callender shaking his fist in triumph in an utterly classic villain pose. 
