"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.
Okay, so this cover. It's our first "homage" to Jack Burnley's classic cover to Batman #9 that forms the background of this blog. And by "homage" I mostly mean "swipe" -- Jerry Robinson has just taken that image, flipped it (although at least he remembered to reposition Robin's "R") and then added this menacing shadowy figure.
Secondly, the text on the cover tells us that someone in this issue is going to discover the secret identities of Batman and Robin, the implication heavily being that it's this tough thug looking guy. Which is completely false, placing this as I believe our first cover to fall under the category of "patently misleading", a type of cover that DC would become masters of during the Silver Age. Covers that imply or promise stories that are not what the issue is really about.
"The Joker Reforms"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson and George Roussos
Synopsis: Our story begins in the small town of Farr Corners, in the Ozark Mountains, which Bob Kane draws as one of these Old West towns that he and Bill Finger seemed convinced still existed in America anywhere west of the East Coast.
A mysterious, shadowed individual stumbles into town, finding his way to the Constable, where he produces a valise of precious jewels that were stolen in Gotham City. He wants to ensure they are returned to their proper owners, and gives his name as Ed Smith. The twist? Ed Smith is... THE JOKER!
Flashback to the night before, as Batman and Robin are swooping in to stop a robbery by the Joker and his men of a jewelry store. However the crooks get away when the Joker throws an ammonia bomb, and soon they're in a plane headed west to pick up the other stash of jewels the Joker hid during their crime spree.
However the plane's engines fail and so the gang parachutes out to avoid a horrible death. Joker figures he can still land the thing and thus claim all the stolen goods for himself. Unfortunately Joker is a better criminal than aviator and crashes in the Ozarks.
He's thrown clear of the wreck, wakes up with amnesia, finds the jewels, heads to town, and thus we're back at the beginning.
Back in Gotham, Bruce and Dick are trying to figure out the Joker's next move. Bruce thinks he has a lead with a scrap of paper he found at the scene referencing "Joe Kerswag, Farr Corners", and even though Bruce is somehow too dull to figure out the clue, they decide to head to Farr Corners anyway to investigate the lead.
Of course, the crooks who jumped off the plane are also headed to Farr Corners, where they find the town holding a celebration in honor of town hero Ed Smith, which... waitasecond, you're telling me none of the townsfolk recognize him as the Joker? A renowned federal criminal? The comic gives the rationale that they haven't seen pictures of the Joker this far out, but the townsfolk have clearly heard of Batman and the Joker, presumably through newspapers, so why do newspapers in the Ozarks not print pictures? And even if you didn't know what the Joker looked like, wouldn't a pale-white faced man with ruby red lips and green hair in a purple suit strike you as a little... odd?
Batman and Robin show up and are instantly recognized by a young boy in town who reads Batman comics -- wait, so this town gets Batman comics whose existence is confusing enough in a world where Batman is real and yet they don't get newspaper pics of the Joker? And this kid didn't recognize the Joker either? Are people in the Ozarks just really stupid?
Anyways, the constable introduces the Dynamic Duo to the town hero Ed Smith and Batman of course does a massive double take. He decides however to follow the Joker and observe him rather than immediately arrest him, in order to see what his game is.
The Joker's goons thus of course see their leader paling with the Batman and assume the worst.
They attack, but when they shoot at Batman the Joker actually saves him! The crooks run off, and Batman and Robin continue to be baffled by the Joker's behaviour. Robin believes it must be a trick, as it'd be impossible for the Joker to have reformed, while Batman believes they must keep following him until they find out where the cache of stolen jewels is hidden.
"Ed Smith", meanwhile, has been having a series of terrible nightmares, images of hidden jewels placed in the railroad express office. He isn't sure why he's having these visions, but decides to check the office and see if there isn't more good he can do by returning more stolen goods to their owners.
The crooks spot him and assume he's going to the cache, so they follow. Batman finally figures out the "Joe Kerswag" clue and also heads to the express office. Batman and Robin manage to tie up all the crooks, but Joker gets knocked on the head and regains his "sanity".
Threatening the Dynamic Duo with two pistols, they are only saved when Robin knocks a column of boxes over onto the Joker, which end up spilling out all the crook's ill-gotten gains.
Batman reveals the obvious clue ("Joe Kerswag" = "Joker Swag") and the Clown Prince of Crime is locked up and sent to prison once again.
~~~~
My Thoughts: One of the toughest things about reading and writing about these old Batman comics can be the monotony. The stories, which are very simplistic and formulaic by nature, can become very repetitive read one after another at a rapid pace. So to get a story like this, which even if it strains credulity at times, features the characters in different situations and settings, can read like a breath of fresh air. In terms of the development of Joker's character, it's interesting that when he loses his amnesia and becomes "himself" again, it's explicitly written as the Joker regaining his "sanity", especially since the madness of the character has become such an explicitly large element of how he is written today.
The Art: One thing I haven't mentioned that much when talking about Bob Kane's art is his excessive habit of swiping. In the early days of the Batman comic he excessively swiped many panels and poses from other sources, usually pulp magazine illustrations. Once he had built up a good number of Batman and Robin poses, his swiping mostly became about swiping from himself -- using the same poses and angles over and over when depicting those two characters, almost like the comic book equivalent of a Filmation "limited animation" series from the 1970s. Usually these aren't too obtrusive -- while he may use the same pose everytime he draws Batman putting on his cape, that pose only occurs once an issue usually and ultimately it's a pretty standard pose so you don't mention the repetition.
I mention all this because in this story Kane draws a very distinctive panel of the "Good" Joker talking to Batman, Batman doing a hilarious double take, and Robin reacting. And then two pages later he REPLICATES IT EXACTLY. Yep, even with uncredited writers assistants, ghosts and other help -- Bob Kane was still incredibly lazy.
That being said, the biggest joy of the art in this story is seeing the Joker being drawn as a good guy, having innocent expressions on his face, or really just any expression other than grinning evilly. It's a unique sight that makes up a lot of the fun of the story.
The Story: I've really got to hand it to Don Cameron for really delivering a fun and unique story. "The Joker goes good", even if it's just amnesia, is very different and really brought a smile to my face as being a unique and imaginative premise. Pretty much my only issue with it is the fact that I just don't buy that everyone else treats Joker as normal. He's a dude with green hair! That's a little bizarre.
Other than that I think this one was a lot of fun and it was just great to get a new kind of story -- even if the clue was really really obvious.
"The Grade A Crimes!"
Writer: Ruth "Bunny Lyons" Kaufman
Pencils: Jack Burnley
Inks: Ray Burnley
Synopsis: In the early hours of the day, as the milkman makes his rounds, a daring robbery is committed - the Van Dorn jewels stolen and their servant shot. The jewels are brought back to a mysterious ringleader who conceals his identity behind a domino mask, and sends his men out again and again dressed in black robes and cowls, committing a series of "early bird" robberies in the hours of the morning when only the milkman is active.
Late one evening, millionaire Bruce Wayne and his ward Dick Grayson are leaving a high society party at the Morgon Mansion, when they hear a gunshot -- the guard shot in the back! They quickly change into Batman and Robin and begin fighting the eerie cultist looking burglars. However they manage to overpower the two and escape -- the only man on the scene once again the milkman, who didn't see anything.
Searching the mansion for clues, they discover a white button ripped from a white shirt -- odd, since the crooks were wearing black mantles.
It's the next morning at the breakfast table when Bruce finally puts it all together - the early morning robberies, they're always the morning after a party, only jewels are stolen while other valuables are left untouched, the white button, the milkman -- obviously someone at the party is the inside man, they case the joint and perhaps lift the keys, and then the milkman is their getaway driver whom no one would ever suspect.
I for one am simply amazed that a Batman mystery was "fair play" for once and that Bruce figured out the clues at about the same time the reader would.
The next big society party is being held by Winthrop, treasurer of the Purity Milk Co. and a renowned gem collector. Batman figures that by spying on Winthrop's party they'll discover the ringleader of the crooks, since it must be someone high up in the milk industry! Waiting around for the party to end, Batman finds Winthrop's guards have been drugged -- just in time for the milkman's arrival!
One of the cloaked burglars enters and prepares to shoot the guards for appearance's sake -- but Batman charges in to battle -- but when the crooks escape he intentionally lets them go as Robin has coated their getaway vehicle with infrared paint of the kind we've seen Batman use before to follow people.
They follow the gang to a diary farm hideout, where of course a battle breaks out amid the cows and milking machines and so on. Batman fights the masked leader of the group, whom he deduces is Winthrop himself - Winthrop was the inside man, drugged his own guards, and of course he's the jewel collector.
After a few more fight scene pages, Batman and Robin deliver the thieves to Commissioner Gordon, revealing that Winthrop had gambled with his company's money, and had to resort to thievery, in addition to wanting more jewels for his own collection.
~~~~
My Thoughts: Sometimes all you really want is a standard story, well told -- or told well above the average level of quality. "Grade A Crimes" features no supervillain, introduces no new elements, it simply does a standard Batman robbery/mystery plot, but does it with style, panache and very well plotted storytelling. I enjoyed reading it -- on paper it's nothing special, but here it's all in the execution.
The Art: The Burnley Bros. deliver gorgeous artwork in this story. Go and get yourself a reprint of it somehow and see this stuff. It's looks like an episode of the hallowed Animated Series, it's dark and stylish and just lovely to look at. The touch of dressing up the crooks in cultist looking outfits adds a delicious extra element of macabre mysterioso that is perfect for Batman and feels like it's been missing from the strip for a while. It just instantly makes it cooler than just more gangsters in three-piece suits.
The Story: This story is written by Ruth Kaufman, and usually when a new writer appears I try to do some research to find out who they were. But all I can find out about Ruth is the somewhat self-evident info that she was one of the very first female comics writers. Apparently she wrote a couple more scripts for DC that appeared in their other books around this same time, and that was that. I have no idea what happened to her.
Which is a damn shame, because this is a really, really well written story for a rookie writer. It's solid and confident, it understands the characters and the world of the strip, it remembers that Batman is a detective and remembers his methodologies from past stories. It gives us a mystery with clues that we can figure out along with the Batman, and it's exciting and interesting. It's a standard kind of story, but it's done well, with excellent art and very competent plotting, and that puts it a cut above.
"The Adventures of the Branded Tree"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Jack Burnley
Inks: Ray Burnley
Synopsis: Scotty and Olaf are two highly exaggerated racial stereotypes working as lumberjacks in the "north woods" when they come across a tree with the image of a dagger cut into it. Oh well, there's choppin' to be done, so they get to it -- which of course is when a bunch of Gotham City gangsters who are looking for just that tree happen across them!
Olaf eats a bullet, but Scotty is saved by the timely intervention of Batman and Robin -- lucky for him Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were taking a fishing trip in these very same woods! The Dynamic Duo drive off the Gotham gangsters, saving Scotty -- but they still have no idea why they wanted that dagger tree.
However, an exaggerated French stereotype lumberjack informs Batman that the tree is now heading down river on its way to the mill, and there's no way to find it out of all the thousands of logs in the river.
So, of course, the gangsters beat up a bunch of employees at the mill, rendering them unable to work and creating job openings that the gangsters themselves take, because somehow this is the easiest way to get into the mill to look for the log.
Batman and Robin arrive in town and question the local police, leading them to the suspicious happenings at the mill. The ensuing fight that breaks out of course ends up with Batman and Robin unconscious on the conveyor belt headed for the buzzsaw!
Batman manages to wake up in time to see Robin heading for some sawing, and saves the Boy Wonder by throwing logs into the saw to jam it!
However by this time the crooks have found the log with the dagger cut in it, and retrieved from it a small cylinder. Seeing that the tide of the battle is turning, the gang leader Bull Beaton stuffs the cylinder within a large roll of newly made paper and retreats.
Two days later Bruce and Dick are back in Gotham and just happen to be walking past a printing plant as paper from that mill just happens to be getting delivered and of course the gangsters just happen to be there at that exact moment to get their cylinder.
So we get our third fight scene of the story, this time in a printing press (lots of "stop the presses" puns) and finally the Dynamic Duo are victorious and retrieve the cylinder -- which holds industrial diamonds stolen weeks ago and hidden by Beaton and his gang in the tree. Well, those diamonds are of course badly needed for the war effort and so these crooks are branded traitors (a capital crime), and tied up for the police.
~~~~
My Thoughts: It's hard to get this across in the synopsis but the gimmick of this story is that it's being narrated by the paper you're reading it on, and is supposedly the story of how it was made -- tree, cut down to a log, sent to a mill, pulped into paper, printed into a Batman comic. As such it's an educational story as well as a Batman adventure -- although the idea that Batman exists in the same world as his comic is one that keeps cropping up and gives me a headache each time.
The Art: Good stuff from the Burnleys -- not as good as the previous tale but still high quality. As the story consists mostly of fight scenes what makes all the difference here is the way Burnley takes advantages of the three setpieces the characters are dropped into -- forest, mill, printing press. It's well rendered, dramatic and exciting.
The Story: There's nothing too-too bad with this story, aside from it's heavy reliance on coincedence, but ultimately it's just some fight scenes in some neat locations tied together with a simple gimmick and capped with a rather non sequitorous ending -- why was such a big mystery made of what was in the cylinder? It was stuff the crooks stole, okay, anyone could've guess that! Frankly, while it's well done, it's also highly forgettable.
"Here Comes Alfred!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson and George Roussos
Synopsis: A passenger liner pulls into Gotham pier after a dangerous wartime Atlantic crossing, and two gentlemen disembark. One is a mysterious fellow named Gaston LeDuc, the other a loquacious, heavyset Englishman with a thick posh accent who fancies himself an amatuer detective.
However, the new arrivals are being watched by a gang of (Mexican?) criminals led by Manuel Stiletti - who are themselves being watched by the Batman and Robin! The crooks attack the Englishman, as they are apparently after his valise. Batman and Robin rescue the gentleman, who offers to assist them in their cases as an amateur criminologist in return -- our heroes brush off the offer and retreat into the night.
But later that evening, at Wayne Manor, Bruce and Dick get a surprise when the doorbell rings and its none other than their English friend! Has he somehow discerned their secret identities? Is he a better detective than they thought?
Nope! He's Alfred the butler, arrived from England to serve "Mawster Bruce"! He had meant to be here two years ago, but because of the war he had to wait a year for a ship from England and then the one he did take took a very circuitous route, and then it was torpedoed and so was the next one and so on so that he didn't arrive until now. But of course, Bruce is still rather confused as he never sent for a butler and hadn't had one for years! Well, turns out that Alfred is the son of Jarvis -- who was Bruce's father's butler! Jarvis had wanted Alfred to carry on their family's service to the Waynes and succeed him as butler but Alfred wanted to be an actor in a music hall and so disappointed his father by staying in England and becoming an actor.
However, on Jarvis' death Alfred promised to return to America and take up the call of duty as the Wayne family butler, but has been delayed getting there on account of the war.
Well, this puts Bruce and Dick in quite a pickle -- what if he discovers their secret identity? Bruce can't think of any reason to send him away however, and so Alfred begins his duties.
But Manuel's gang has followed Alfred to Wayne Manor, and begin prowling around the house, tripping a burglar alarm that wakes up Bruce and Dick but which Alfred somehow doesn't notice. What he does notice is an old newspaper lying around about the "Duke of Dorian" fleeing the Nazi invasion of his country, and Alfred recognizes the Duke as "Gaston LeDuc", the man from the boat!
The crooks burst in and once again demand Alfred's valise, threatening to kill him. The butler gives it over to them and they begin cutting the labels off the valise, but Batman and Robin burst in, having intentionally delayed themselves so as not to get the crooks wise to the fact that they are the residents of the house. The crooks take off with the Dynamic Duo in hot pursuit, leaving Alfred alone.
Which of course prompts Alfred to check in on "Mawster Bruce" and "Mawster Dick", only to discover they aren't in the house! That's when a crook whom Batman and Robin simply left unconscious in the house (quite sloppy!) wakes up and attacks Alfred! Alfred knocks him into a wall, knocking him out again but also jarring a concealed trigger, opening up a secret passage!
Alfred follows the passage to a hidden criminological laboratory, and then through another tunnel to an underground hangar containing the Batplane! And thus Alfred comes to the obvious conclusion! Yes, the scary looking shadowy dude on the cover who discovers the secret identity of Batman and Robin is ALFRED!
Meanwhile, the Dynamic Duo has pursued Manuel and his gang to an abandoned theatre, and since we've reached that point in the story, they're captured and tied up -- hung from the catwalks high above the stage, but left alive because Manuel thinks its better to do "all our killing at once" because he's a really stupid criminal.
Turns out they needed the labels on the valise to learn the identity and address of their intended victim (huh?) who is of course Gaston LeDuc aka the Duke of Dorian!
Meanwhile Alfred has followed the crook left behind at Wayne Manor to the theatre, where he finds and rescues Batman and Robin. The crooks break into the Duke's hotel where they proceed to steal the crown jewels of his country -- which he had brought to America to establish credit for his government-in-exile.
Stealing the jewels and kidnapping the Duke, they return to the theatre -- where they fall right into the trap of Batman and Robin! The crooks rounded up, Alfred returns the jewels to the Duke, revealing his identity and purpose to the Dynamic Duo.
Back at Wayne Manor, Alfred explains how he solved the case to Bruce and Dick, and they realize he learned all the information by accident, and thus isn't a master detective after all. Dick is just through declaring him "not very bright" when he enters the room with their capes and cowls in his arms, pressed and ready since the Bat-Signal is calling them to police headquarters!
Alfred reveals he discovered their identities the night before (but doesn't mention how) and so Batman and Robin are off again into the night, but now they have Alfred at home taking care of them!
~~~~
My Thoughts: So this is clearly a very significat story in the Batman canon, perhaps the most significant since the introduction of the Penguin or Batman joining the police force. Today, Alfred is considered such an essential element of the Batman mythos, even more so than Commissioner Gordon or Robin, that it's bizarre to realize that the character had been around for four years before Alfred was introduced!
Of course, then there's the odd fact that when you're reading these early Batman stories, you don't really miss him. Part of that is the length of these stories mean there really isn't time for character development and interaction, just plot, so the things that Alfred contributes to stories today don't really factor in -- much the same reason that Gordon has barely appeared in the past four years of stories.
However, it is strange that millionaire Bruce Wayne hasn't had anyone working for him at Wayne Manor this whole time -- granted, Golden Age Wayne Manor is drawn much smaller and more modestly than it's mammoth Modern Age counterpart. But that doesn't really explain why, after four years without him, the creators decided to add a butler character.
It's even weirder because the Alfred that appears in this story is nothing like our modern conception of the character. He's overweight, clean-shaven, and most significantly something of a bumbling fool who considers himsef an amateur detective. He arrives from overseas and then accidentally discovers Batman's identity. He's basically the exact opposite of the supremely cool, tough Alfred of today who has served as Bruce's conscience and father figure since his parents died. Indeed, even the way Alfred is worked into the story is somewhat awkward -- the whole backstory that he's carrying on his father's legacy but couldn't make it until now because of the war and so on.
The explanation for this seemingly strange comedic addition is quite simple, however. The Batman movie serial. Although it's premiere was still several months away, production had begun on the first live-action Hollywood adaptation of Batman into a theatrical serial from Columbia Pictures, and it's screenwriters had decided that a rich guy should have a butler and that the butler could be a great source of comic relief in the serial. Thus, Alfred.
Bob Kane had been invited to serve as a creative consultant on the serial in LA and decided that the character should be brought into the comics ahead of time to familiarize readers with the character. However, lead times on comic books are actually quite long, and so in order to get Alfred in the comics before the serial, they had to produce the stories before an actor had even been cast.
Once the serial debuted (with William Austin as Alfred), the character was altered to resemble the actor (more on that when we get there!) resulting in the thin, moustached Alfred we know today!
So until then we will have this bizarre proto-Alfred, who is significantly different than how we're used to thinking of him.
The Art: Since we're introducing a significant new character, Bob Kane is on pencils, and while Jerry and George do a decent job cleaning him up, there are a few panels in here that really look quite bad -- characters drawn very far away and small in the panel and thus lacking detail, becoming vague smudges. Alfred's a decently designed character, drawn fat and goofy looking to match his bumbling personality. It's decent stuff, a little below par.
The Story: So aside from doing some creative gymnastics to justify Alfred's existence and inclusion, Don Cameron also has to provide some kind of action story for Batman and Robin to fight some criminals. And so we get a really weak story about this foreign politician and crown jewels that is mostly interesting solely in how it ties into the real-life war. Of course "Duke of Dorian" makes no sense - a Dorian is an ethnicity in Greece, which was conquered by the Nazis and had a government-in-exile, but there's no Duke.
Anyways, what I don't get is why they need labels off Alfred's valise to find the Duke. For a while I thought they were after Alfred because they got him and the Duke mixed up at the pier, or maybe Alfred's bags where switched with the Dukes, but there's nothing in the story that indicates that. Maybe I'm just unaware as to how 1940s US bag-tagging works? Seems odd that the name and address of someone else on the same boat as me gets tagged on my bag?
Oh well, here comes Alfred!
Notes and Trivia: First appearance of Alfred!
"Crime a Day!"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Batman has agreed to give a daily series of lectures about crime fighting for the USO, and so come Monday crowds of Gothamites show up to watch Batman's lecture (can you imagine modern-day Batman doing something like this?).
Batman's opening lecture addresses the concept of clues, and he points out that the Joker is often undone by his egotism where he intentionally leaves clues daring Batman to stop him and these are often his undoing.
Batman's remarks hit the newspapers which are soon calling Joker an egotistical fool -- there's even an editorial cartoon lampooning him!
Well, of course, openly mocking the psychopathic muderous clown in your city is a good way to get a response, and so Joker crashes Batman's next lecture with some of those clues he's going on about: "Take a Bow - Sow the Seeds - Shed a Tear - Reap the Harvest". Joker plans to commit crimes based on clues Batman can't possibly figure in order to shame him into quitting. He'll commit a crime a day to match Batman's lecture a day.
Batman realizes that the "Harvest" refers to a painting of that name by a famous artist that's being displayed at a new art exhibit. The Dynamic Duo race over there, but Joker and his men are already there -- spraying the crowds with pepper spray while they make off with the goods (oh, and Joker takes a bow before doing so, so that all the clues work).
Joker and his men make off with the painting in an oil truck and while the Batmobile is in hot pursuit they easily shake it by pouring oil all over it and then lighting it on fire! Joker escapes whlie Batman has to ram the Batmobile into a fire hydrant to save Robin and himself (the car is wrecked, though).
Joker's daily crimes continue and he continues to make a fool out of Batman, until it is the Dark Knight who finds himself the subject of an editorial cartoon. At his lecture, he is hammered with questions about his inability to catch the Joker. The pressure is such that Batman actually does consider quitting crime fighting, until Robin sets him straight and restores his self-confidence.
Joker airdrops his newest clues on the Dynamic Duo: "Kill the Motor - Hang the Jury - Take the Rap". Batman and Robin think it must refer to a court or a trial at first until they realize that "rap" could also mean "wrap" (what) meaning a woman's wrap garment, meaning the beauty contest being judged tonight for which the prize is a fur wrap worth $15,000! (Almost $200,000 today!) This month's apophenia concluded, they race to the contest, where Joker has trapped the contest's jury in the elevator for which he has cut the power (hence the first two clues).
Our heroes save the jury, and Batman manages to catch up to Joker and capture him this time -- at his next lecture he displays Joker live in a cage and mocks him on stage (which seems like a questionable decision) and our story ends with a final editorial cartoon mocking the Joker.
~~~~
My Thoughts: We've really moved quickly from "Batman, Dark Avenger of the Night" into stories that would feel totally at home on the Adam West TV show, haven't we? Once again we have a Joker story that emphasizes that the Clown Prince of Crime is more into testing Batman than any kind of actual gain from his criminal exploits. The interesting thing about this issue is the way it frames their battles not as a private feud but as something that the whole city is an audience for, which makes sense. We only get rare hints occasionally in these Golden Age stories of how the average citizen reacts to Batman or his rogues, so this kind of story is fun for the new perspective it gives on our characters -- even if the idea of a publicly famous Batman who gives lectures for USO benefits is pretty unthinkable in a modern context.
The Art: Jerry Robinson is clearly doing a majority of the work here, contributing a lot of detail and dimension in his inks over Kane's rough pencils -- it appears to me that Kane is mostly doing figures, faces, and layouts while Robinson is fleshing them out. However the story also has a lot of really great black shadows and somehow the art all pulls together to give the story, ridiculous on the surface, an effective urban thriller feel that gives it the grandiosity of a classic Batman/Joker tale from this era. The mock editorial cartoons are also really well done and in a convincing imitation of the common style.
The Story: Bill Finger's scripts often meander, introducing an initial gimmick before quickly forgetting it in favour of big setpieces, but this story stays on track by keeping anchored to the crime/lecture a day, clues and editorial cartoons. Joker's clues are actually pretty clever this time around and the crimes and chases interesting and new -- by coming up with this exciting variations Finger avoids the feeling of repetition one sometimes gets when reading these stories one after another. The sight of the flaming Batmobile crashing into a fire hydrant is pretty amazing.
Notes and Trivia: Another Batmobile destroyed.
"The Harlequin's Hoax!"
Writer: Joseph Greene
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: Four men in Gotham City receive some very strange packages from the Joker. Charles Saunders receives a radio with no loudspeaker, Mr. Fordney an automobile with only three wheels, Richard Morse gets a telescope with no lens, and finally Jim Brown gets a clock with no hour hand. Despite the seeming nonsensical uselessness of these "gifts", the men are all shocked and horrified -- there is some meaning behind the Joker's seemingly random "generosity".
Meanwhile Bruce Wayne is on a date with Linda Page at an amusement park -- but when they go on the "parachute drop" the ride gets stuck with them hanging in the air! An hour goes by and it still hasn't been fixed, and then the Bat-Signal blares into the night sky! What's a guy to do? Well, Bruce releases his safety belt, and pretends to "fall" and then catch a cable and slide down it. Playing "shaken" he hurriedly leaves the amusement park, and Linda still stuck in the air. Responding to the call of duty? 1. Not being a dick to your date? 0.
At HQ, Gordon fills him in on the Joker's latest mad antics, and Batman (reasonably by this point) assumes there must be a pattern and a larger scheme at work here. But what??
That night, Joker easily robs a department store -- the alarms were all turned off, leading Batman to think it must have been an inside job. And what a coincedence -- Saunders works at the same department store! With that in mind, when Joker attempts to rob a camera store where Fordney is a superintendant - Batman and Robin are there to meet him! A quick fight later and they've actually caught him! Tied up in the back of the car, ready to be taken to the police! What the heck? There's still six pages left in this comic!
Well, Joker ignites a flashbulb making Batman think they've popped a tire (really, Batman?) and when the Dark Knight stops to take a look at it Joker manages to get away. It may be the most down-to-earth and yet somehow ridiculous Joker escape yet.
Anyways, Batman decides to check on his hunch of what connects the men with the gifts and quickly finds himself proven right. Saunders is deaf in one ear, Fordney has a wooden leg, Morse a glass eye, and Brown an artificial hand -- just like the radio with no speaker, the car missing a wheel, the telescope with no lens and the clock with no hand. Turns out the four men had been in an accidental explosion in another city which caused their injuries and lead to the death of two other men. They had been implicated in the deaths and acquitted, but the scandal had forced them to leave and set up shop in Gotham. Joker somehow found out and has been blackmailing them.
A flash on the radio reveals Morse has given into the Joker's demands, but Brown promises Batman he will go to the police. At that moment, Joker and his men burst into Brown's home. They overpower the heroes and handcuff them to the radiator, leaving them to die with a time bomb about to go off (of all the hackneyed things!)
Brown manages to get out of the handcuffs since, ya know, one of his hands is fake (weird that Joker would forget about that) and throws the bomb out the window. He lets Batman know that Joker is headed to an aircraft manufacturing plant.
There, Joker is going to steal the diamonds the plant uses for it's precision drilling and cutting. Batman and Robin show up to stop the theft, culminating in a dramatic battle in and around the assembly line of the plant! But at the end of the line are the finished planes and surprise surprise Joker uses one to escape! The End.
Wait, what?
~~~~
My Thoughts: Another formulaic Joker story, although quite competently handled by Greene. The most interesting element is the wartime references -- Joker stealing cameras because they aren't being made anymore and thus valuable, Batman won't drive on a popped tire because it would ruin rubber that's in short supply, Joker raiding an fighter plane manufacturing plant, etc.
The Art: Absolutely nothing special at all here, in fact a little subpar, until we get to the chase through the factory, an unfortunately truncated two-page sequence that is awesome in its scope and superbly drawn (perhaps traced or otherwise based heavily on photoreference).
The Story: Greene handles the Joker formula better than in his last few appearances -- the random acts of mischief at the top are actually important throughout the whole story, the bigger crimes are consistent and build on each other, the clues actually progress and make sense, etc. It's nothing special really, just competent writing, but unfortunately competent writing reads like a breath of fresh air sometimes in Golden Age comics. What Greene gets right here is that Joker's scheme only seems crazy at the start, but is completely reasonable once we have all the facts.
This wartime cover by Jerry Robinson is neat, but the sight of Batman and Robin parachuting into a combat zone does make me really wonder.... why the hell hasn't Bruce Wayne been serving in the war? Were rich people exempt? Guess he was just lucky enough not to be drafted, and didn't volunteer because he's... not patriotic? Devoted to his war on crime? It must be that second one.
"The Batman Plays a Lone Hand!"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson and George Roussos
Synopsis: Dick comes home to find Bruce packing his suitcase. Are they going on a trip? No! Dick is leaving, because from now on, Batman works alone! Bruce has finally realized what we've all been screaming at him, which is that having a kid sidekick is reckless child endangerment. Now, firing Dick from being Robin is one thing, but flat out kicking Dick out of the house and on to the streets (which is what is happening) is not just a dick move, it's also kind of cold and evil. Am I suddenly reading a 1990s comic?
Dick tries to point out all the times he's saved Batman from certain death at the hands of their enemies, but it's no use. Bruce is alone, and Dick is out on the streets, living under a bridge with hobos (holy shit this is dark, what the fuck Bruce?). Then, in the night's sky -- the Bat Signal! Dick almost springs into action before remembering he's not Robin anymore, and then sees Batman swing into action overhead.... with another Robin!! It's all clear now -- he got rid of Dick not to protect his safety, but because he'd found a new kid he likes better!
Heartbroken, Dick sells his two-way radio to a pawn shop for eight bucks, enough money to live off of until he gets himself a job in his new Dickensian lifestyle (eight bucks being about $100 in today's money).
Now the story flashes back an hour to show us the call from Commissioner Gordon that the Batman answered. "The Thumb" and his mob have tried murder Mayor Not-LaGuardia, and while unsuccessful they were able to escape. The Batman swings after their car, the new Robin close behind him -- but "The Thumb" (he's just a gangster who wants the city under his) fires at the boy with his tommy gun and kills him!
The Batman jumps down to attack the crooks, but they manage to get away. Luckily, they didn't murder anyone -- Batman's been carrying a mannequin dummy Robin around behind him as a decoy to draw the crook's fire. Which, when you think about it, if that's his main use for Robin... you're really fucked up, Bruce, y'know that?
The gangsters realize they need to kill Batman before they can do anything else (duh) -- so they place a clever trap for him: a notice in the newspaper saying to meet them at a certain address (oy). Batman decides to go anyway (really Bruce?) but in disguise as a door-to-door sweeper guy (were those a thing?) he's able to get a foot in the door before unleashing the typical Dark Knight can of whoopass on the gangsters. Somehow, despite just being a bunch of goons, they manage to overpower the Batman (Batman's Strength Level in a Comic - Act 1: Awesome, Act 2: Weakling, Act 3: OP as Fuck -- look it up, kids) and imprison him Cask of Amontillado style in the basement to die slowly of starvation and suffocation.
Which is when Batman decides to use his two-way radio to call the kid sidekick he threw away like a bad pair of socks, and the message comes through to the pawn shop owner. For a minute I hoped the pawn shop owner would step up, but he finds the message annoying and shuts off the radio. D'oh!
But luckily, Thumb and his boys go to dinner at a restaurant where Dick has been working as a dishwasher, and the kid overhears them gloat about offing Batman and thus springs to action. He changes into his Robin costume that he's been apparently wearing under the same outfit he's been wearing the last two days, and busts in to save the Batman.
After all the gangsters have been thoroughly K.O.'d, Robin heads off into the night again, since the Batman doesn't need him. But, he does! Turns out Thumb had threatened to kill Robin in order to keep Batman from interfering (a dumb threat), so Batman pushed Robin out of the team and had Thumb think he was killing Robin when he just shot a dummy, in order to keep Robin safe. And he didn't tell Robin and of this and was a huge dick to him because he knew that if Robin was in on things, he'd insist on being involved anyway (which is true, he totally would) and thus this was all an elaborate emotional manipulation so that Batman could beat up crooks without worrying about Robin (which doesn't negate the point that he always has to worry about Robin because he's a little kid and taking him into firefights is ridiculous).
~~~~
My Thoughts: So for a while I thought I was reading a late 90s/early 00s "Asshole Batman" story, with how manipulative Bruce is here. So, if y'all thought that Bruce being a total dick who doesn't trust anyone and will totally play with the emotions of his friends in order to get what he wants in his war on crime was something that started in the post Frank Miller world -- think again, cuz he's a total dick to Robin here, which is made worse by the fact that Robin is like between eight and ten years old here and their relationship has been totally buddy-buddy so far.
This story also introduces what is going to become a very familiar trope, especially as we head into the Silver Age, which is the "break-up" of the Batman/Robin team, which always turns out to be a fakeout -- it's almost always what we see here, with Batman tricking Robin, although sometimes Robin fools Batman and sometimes they're both fooling the villains, but it's always completely bullshit designed to fool the reader most of all.... except for when it isn't.
The Art: Good stuff here from the Kane Studio. Having George Roussos back to help Jerry Robinson means that essentially Kane's linework gets double the amount of detail as usual and returns to a very good level of quality. There's not a lot of Roussos normal shadow background, leaving the story with a lighter, more colourful feel, but character faces and expressions are very well done.
The Story: This is pretty lackluster, I must admit. Batman's just a total ass to Robin at the start of the story, and then acts surprised that Robin is leaving at the very end. And really, it's because a gangster threatened him that he decided to lie to his best friend? You guys are heroes, you face this shit head on. Batman wouldn't have a second thought about fighting a two-bit hood with Robin if he hadn't recieved that threat -- I mean, c'mon, they following mass serial killer The Joker all around America, and fought monsters and witches and all kinds of horrifically dangerous crazy shit. So really, The Thumb is too dangerous for Robin to come along on?
Notes and Trivia: First "break-up" of the Batman and Robin team.
"Comedy of Tears!"
Writer: Jack Schiff
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson and George Roussos
Synopsis: The Joker is loose again, and this time he wants Gothamites to see a different side of him. So he sends his goons out to run a serious marketing campaign promoting himself as the world's greatest tragedian as well as comedian, because "Tragedy is but the other face of Comedy". Yes, the Joker's new goal is to make people cry, and his first target is a little boy named John Blake whose straight-A report card the Joker steals - his first victory in making people cry! Yes, Joker steals a kid's report card, a scene which was later adapted into a colouring book page in the 1960s from whence it became a popular internet meme (not to mention the apparent source of Joseph Gordon Levitt's character name in Dark Knight Rises!)
The Joker also steals a petition to remove the city's park commissioner -- the gathering of which would've earned old Joe Brady his first honest paycheck in a year! Next he steals the reference letters a young chauffeur needs to get a job with the wealthy Mr. Van Gild!
Joker's crimes succeeded in making people cry, but Batman is convinced there is something more to the scheme than just random mischief, and hurries to Commissioner Gordon's office to try and foil him in time!
Turns out, Joker wanted the documents for the signatures on them -- the report card, the petition and the references are all signed by some of Gotham's finest and wealthiest citizens! J.P. Blake's forged signature gets them a pass onto the lot of Colossal Studios, where a "gala crowd has gathered to celebrate the filming of the final scenes of a great epic" which may be the most unlikely thing ever to have happened in a Batman comics -- from the idea of a movie studio lot on the East Coast to the idea that they'd let rich people in opera clothes gather around the shooting of complex, key sequences.
While Joker's men loot the star's dressing rooms, Batman is still in Gordon's office explaining the scheme, when an officer bursts in to report Joker's hold-up (even with Batman on the team, the GCPD is still the world's most bumbling police force). On the movie set (which appears to be a big boat or something?), Joker's men collects everyone's valuables in a big potato sack when Batman and Robin swing in and start fighting people while spouting movie-appropriate puns and wisecracks.
The fight ends up with Joker and Batman battling on top of a Tower set, and Batman dangling over the edge -- Joker threatens Batman's life unless Robin gives him the sack of jewels, and Robin almost does it, but Batman lets go of the precipice to fall to his death rather than allow Joker the victory (after all "those are not our jewels to bargain with!") Robin is shocked, Joker, escapes, but of course Batman is fine because it's a movie set and there are safety nets and shit!
The Joker's next scheme is to have a notorious criminal pardoned from the electric chair at the last minute by forging the governor's signature! The crooks get away with their fugitive, but the Batmobile is hot on their trail thanks to a clue (a newspaper clipping) one of Joker's men accidentally left behind at the movie set. So they follow them to the exclusive Surf... Beach... Club... where they chase continues on... sand sailboats... Even Batman remarks that of all his chases with the Joker, this one is certainly unique. Anyways, the boats end up crashing into the water, Batman comes up for air, Joker doesn't, is he dead or isn't he, standard Joker story ending.
Except... the story keeps going! Predictably, Joker is still alive, as the Dynamic Duo discovers when he pulls another series of jobs -- getting into rich people's homes using forged servant's references! So Batman decides to bait a trap for Joker with a news story of a "champion autograph hunter" collecting famous autographs of people in Gotham City, whom the Joker will be unable to resist stealing from. This person is of course Robin in "disguise", ie. wandering around looking exactly like millionaire Bruce Wayne's ward Dick Grayson but for plot reasons no one recognizes him as such. He collects signatures from famous real NYC personages Joe DiMaggio, Jerry Siegel (acknowledged as the creator of Superman - so the Man of Steel is a fictional character in the Batman universe at this point), and finally a signature from some guy named Mr. Bigby, and since he's the only fictional one, we know who Joker is gonna rob.
Because it's a trap, Batman and Robin are there to fight Joker and his men, but during the fight Joker manages to nab Robin and threatens to stab him with a pair of scissors (?) unless Batman lets him go and Bigby gives him $100,000 (over a million in today's money). Batman gives his word Bigby will pay, Joker lets Robin go and Batman hands Joker the money in an envelope (and for some reason lets him go). When he gets back to his hideout, Joker finds that the money is in fact a certified check in his name ("The Joker") and that he'd never be able to go to a bank to cash it without being arrested!
Batman and Robin have a good laugh at Joker's expense.
~~~~
My Thoughts: If I were to draw the dividing line anywhere, I think now would be the place to put up the definitive "The Joker is no longer dangerous" sign. His plan here is basically mischief and thievery, and he's so harmless that Batman doesn't even put him in jail at the end -- just knowing he's pulled a fast one on him is victory enough. It's just about the game, the scheme and the gimmicks now. What'll make a story memorable from here on out is how clever the plot can be.
The Art: Serviceable stuff from the Kane Studio -- facial caricatures are really good for Joker, our heroes, and some of the celebrity cameos and the action/chase stuff is well done -- but backgrounds and other details are often lacking and the sense of geography and physical space is usually neglected.
The Story: There's a lot of fun stuff in here, in general it's an enjoyable read, but I gotta knock Schiff down a peg here for his story's structure. I mean, it follows what is growing to be a Joker formula -- bizarre minor crimes at the start that actually presage a larger more elaborate crime, interspersed with chase and action scenes -- but this formula can be abused and mishandled and it totally is here. The story is called "Comedy of Tears" but ultimately Joker's "make 'em cry" campaign lasts about two pages and the majority of what he is doing is based around signatures and autographs. And ultimately the structure we get is a bunch of minor crimes, leading to two bigger crimes with action/chase scenes, and then a whole other third act section based on the bait and switch. It leaves everything feeling very disjointed and randomized, like Schiff's just throwing in ideas from the pile and struggling to fit them into the story. He does a good sleight of hand to make it all seem coherent, but it could have been much stronger.
Notes and Trivia: First appearance of John Blake!
"The Story of the Seventeen Stones"
Writer: Bill Finger
Artist: Jack Burnley
Synopsis: Okay, so this convict named Rocky Grimes is set free after twenty years hammering rocks (1) in the slammer. He's claimed innocence all this time, in fact he's claimed he can't remember anything of his life before prison, but it was the 20s so they locked him up anyway. Now he's out, but when he's hit on the head by a loose cobblestone (2) kicked up by a passing car (did shit like that ever actually happen?) his memory comes back to him in a flood.
Turns out he totally was a bigshot crook, but when his gang held up a bank and he shot a guard, he was dumb enough to blab his name to everyone in earshot. His gang is worried about being caught, but Rocky tells them if they squeal on him, he'll squeal on them. They get pissed and one of them hurls a stone from a fireplace (3) at his head, which knocks him out and gives him amnesia. They drop him at a police station, he takes the fall for the crime since all the prints match up and shit, and they give him 20 years instead of the chair because of his mental deficiency.
Now that his memory is back, Rocky thinks that since he spent twenty years pounding stones, twenty years bookended by getting hit in the head with a stone, he should get revenge on all the members of his gang -- with STONES AS HIS SYMBOL! Hooray for trademark Gotham criminal themed insanity!
First up, Lefty Slade, who waits to meet someone for a tip on a job under a stone archway -- but when a wire pulls the keystone (4) out, the whole thing collapses on him and he dies. The keystone bears the words "I finally remembered" etched into it.
Fin Gonzy is now a loanshark, and so Rocky goes in disguise to his shop to try and pawn a gold watch. Fin begins to use a touchstone (5) to test the purity of the gold, when Rocky throws off his disguise and stabs Fin to death with the touchstone, now also bearing the legend "I finally remembered."
The next day, Mayor Not-LaGuardia has invited Batman and Robin to help dedicate building of the new orphanage designed by famed convict-turned-architect Mason (*groan*). As the cornerstone (6) is being placed, the cable holding it from the crane breaks loose and Batman is barely able to push Mason out of the way in time! The cornerstone reads... "I finally remembered."
Robin spots Rocky getting away and they follow him down to the waterfront -- however Rocky loses them when he spills oil on the water and lights it aflame, leaving the Dynamic Duo unable to pursue. Batman realizes the killings are all connected by stones (ah, ya think?) and Robin figures if they look up the records of the victims, they may find what connects all of them.
So our heroes head to police headquarters only to be told by Gordon that a masked man walked in, threatened the cops with a tommy gun, and then burned some files from the criminal records! GCPD, you are truly the worst.
However, Batman announces he can still read the info off the charred cards using SCIENCE! He sprays the cards with a chemical dye, then takes an infrared photo of the cards, and the result is a black image where the paper absorbed the dye, and white writing because the ink did not, thus restoring the information on the cards! Holy forensics, Batman! I have no idea if this actually works but it's a really cool scene anyway for establishing Batman's scientific knowledge and giving a nice forensic procedural.
Anyways, the team figure out what we already know, and realize the last two members of the gang are Parks, who went out west to work in the petrified forest, and Brenner who became a diamond-cutter. So of course he's scheduled to cut the "famous Onkers Diamond" at the House of Jewels exhibit tonight!
Meanwhile, Rocky has obtained a heliotrope, or "bloodstone" (7) which he has had cut into the shape of a bullet and the standard message written upon it. He'll use it to shoot Brenner at the exhibition. This being Gotham City, the House of Jewels exhibit is just ridiculously over the top -- including a bejeweled miniature Taj Mahal and a physical rainbow sculpted of gemstones that leads to a gold pot filled with topazes, which is just the most overly extravagant thing I've ever heard of, especially for a major American city during World War II!
Anyways, Brenner is about to cut the diamond (8) when Rocky shows up to shoot him, but is foiled by a swift kick to the face by Robin. A fight with Batman results in a ton of precious stones being dropped to the floor, and the crowd goes wild, giving Rocky a chance to flee.
Chasing after him, we're suddenly at an abandoned old stone quarry, which, okay... sure, it fits the theme. The Dynamic Duo burst into the shack Rocky's hiding it, and run smack into a huge slab of stone (9). Rocky ties Robin up and throws him into the water flooded quarry with a rock (10) tied to him so that he'll have to tread water to stay alive (which he cannot do indefinitely of course). Meanwhile, Rocky has Batman tied to a chair in a room where he is burning sulfur, aka brimstone (11)! So of course he leaves the two to die, unsupervised.
Batman gets free by cutting his bonds against a grindstone (12) that was left behind, and then saves Robin by pulling him up out of the quarry using a boulder (13) as a counterbalance.
They follow Rocky to the petrified forest where he is set to go after Parks (Finger doesn't hesitate to remind us that in a petrified forest the wood has turned to stone), and is about to beat him to death with a piece of petrified wood (14) when Batman and Robin show up.
Batman chases Rocky onto a stone log bridge (15) and the two grapple, when a sudden storm of hailstones (16) comes down, knocking Rocky off the bridge and to his death -- now he lies under a tombstone (17).
~~~~
My Thoughts: A decent enough story that straddles the line in it's anatagonist between a normal "gangster" style villain and a more colourful "themed" villain. I mean, if this was a Silver Age story you can bet Rocky would've had a rock themed costume and a silly moniker like "The Stone-Cutter" or something like that, but as it is he's just a (relatively) normal guy in a suit who happens to become obsessed with rocks. It's an interesting middle of the road approach.
The Art: The number one reason to read this story is Jack Burnley's art - the story is basically just a showcase for it. Burnley's rendering of Rocky Grimes and his madness is absolutely superb, with an excellent use of black shadows and dynamic facial expression. The compositions and framing are excellent throughout. Truly, Burnley is a step or two above the Kane Studio in his draftsmanship.
The Story: It's all right. The gimmick of the stones is fun and it's nice to see that it remains consistent throughout, instead of forgotten early on like some of Finger's gimmick based stories. In some ways it's like watching a 1980s slasher movie, with the gimmicky murderer hunting down victims one at a time and killing them in a creative fashion -- only instead of Donald Pleasance our hero is Batman, which makes it infinitely better, really. The best and most chilling aspect of the whole story are the frames of Rocky's dead victims accompanied by the "I finally remembered" stones -- it's a really fantastic image. I also notice the subtle touch that Rocky actually succeeds in killing his victims who are still criminals, while the ones Batman happens to save are all reformed. The story doesn't draw any attention to this, it simply does it, and it's a really good way of maintaining a consistent morality to the Batman stories without making a big deal about it. Story choices like that get a lot of points from me.
"Destination Unknown!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson and George Roussos
Synopsis: We open in Gotham Central Station as the secretary of Mr. Clayborn boards The Comet, a luxury train travelling non-stop to California. Clyde Clayborn is a collector of oddities, the "Tricky-But-True" man, and is in need of a new oddity for his feature (and if you're scratching your head, realize he's basically a thinly veiled Robert Ripley of Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not, which was near the height of it's popularity at this point). He sends the conductor on a mission to find him one on the train, but the old man insists that nothing interesting ever happens on trains.
Also on the train is a team of doctors accompanying Mr. Fortesque, a man in an iron lung who must get to a California specialist as soon as possible. Then there's John Keyes, an escapee from a California prison who is being sent back to get the death sentence (although he pleads innocence), and Detective Guffey, the overblown police officer who caught him. Finally there's a hobo hitching a ride.
So of course a mysterious shadowy figure knocks out the engineer and sends the train hurtling forward at full throttle. It accelerates from forty up to ninety, whipping through Jamestown and heading towards the dangerous Travers Trestle at a speed so high that it won't be able to make the turn.
News of the wild Comet reaches Gotham, and so Gotham City Police Commissioner decides to light the Bat-Signal and call in Batman and Robin, since they have so much experience in runaway trains 400 miles away from the city...? Turns out Bruce and Dick are out in a rowboat in a park lake when they spot the signal -- they quickly change into their outfits and head to Police HQ, learn of the sitch, and then head out to meet the Comet in the Batplane.
So - wait... the Comet is doing ninety heading out of Jamestown, 405 miles away from "Gotham City", and it takes an hour and a half to get to Police HQ from the Lake on foot, and then forty minutes to get up to Wayne Manor, by which time the Comet is now 600 miles away. Assuming the Batplane travels as fast as the fastest single propeller aircraft of 1942, then it will take the Batplane an hour and forty minutes to catch up to the Comet (by which point it will now be 750 miles away from it's starting position, or 345 miles away from Jamestown when the problem was recognized), and almost FOUR HOURS has past since Gordon first shined the Bat-Signal and in this time NO ONE ON THE TRAIN JUST THOUGHT TO GO TO THE FRONT CABIN AND DECELERATE THE FUCKING TRAIN???
Anyways, as the train approaches the curve of Travers Trestle, the Mysterious Villain prepares to parachute off the train, when Batman lands on top of it. The villain fires at him, but Batman swoops down into the train and pulls the brakes. He deduces the man with the gun and the parachute was the culprit (no shit!) and instructs Robin to meet him at the next station. By the time the Comet pulls into the station Batman is nowhere to be seen -- who sent the train wild and who saved them is a total mystery to everyone aboard.
With the train stopped, the hobo tries to hide among the freights, but is spotted by Batman and instantly suspected since, y'know, he's poor and without a ticket. The hobo pleads innocence and Batman believes him -- but ties him up and sticks him in a baggage car just to be sure of his whereabouts.
And so, with the train stopped, Bruce Wayne buys a ticket and boards the Comet, while Dick Grayson buys a ton of comic books and boards the train. Clayborn's secretary, meanwhile, finds the tied up hobo while she's looking through Clayborn's things, and is persuaded to untie him, not realizing til he's gone that he could have been the attempted train-wrecker.
Dick is trying to sell copies of World's Finest, and when the conductor catches him Bruce offers to pay his fare, so Dick rewards him with a copy of Batman, and WAIT -- why couldn't Bruce just pay his way to begin with? What purpose did the ruse with selling comics serve? And Batman and World's Finest are real comics within the world of Batman??!
Anyways, going from car to car trying to sell comics, Dick finds out that the hobo was untied by Miss Hibbs, Detective Guffey was knocked out and his prisoner is free, and the docs with the iron lung patient are reclusive dicks who won't talk to anyone.
Based on this info, they change into Batman and Robin and immediately investigate the iron lung patient's cabin to find that the docs are gone and he's being pumped full of poison gas instead of oxygen! Batman saves his life and then heads up onto the roof where he finds the two atop the racing train -- and is shot for his troubles! Robin swings onto one of the attackers using a semaphore signal -- but doing so causes the train to switch onto an eastbound track and head straight for another train coming right at them!
Despite having been shot, Batman makes his way to the front of the train and informs the engineer who hits the brakes -- but the track is curved and the other train doesn't see them to know to stop! So Batman rips the bat-logo off the front of his outfit and attaches it to the train's headlight, creating a Bat-Signal in the sky so the other train knows the slow down.
Anyways, get this: Turns out the Docs were never Docs to begin with -- the iron lung contained a dummy -- but they were the guys who committed the murder that Keyes was accused of, and tried to kill him in the iron lung with the gas and wreck the train -- because Keyes had escaped and headed east so that he could find evidence to prove his innocence and they didn't want that evidence getting out in a new trial.
Meanwhile, Miss Hibbs is gonna marry the hobo, who turns out to be Ken Thorne, President of the Railroad, masquerading, and the "Tricky-But-True" man has enough oddities to ensure his radio program's continued success -- while the bored conductor still insists nothing ever happens.
~~~~
My Thoughts: I'm not really sure where to place this story, genre-wise. It feels most like a screwball farce, what with the large cast of characters and the fact that nothing really seriously bad happens. It's also one of those Batman stories where Batman is barely in it -- he comes in about a third of the way through and barely does much of anything -- in fact he doesn't even solve the mystery or catch the bad guys! We simply cut from him having saved the train to an epilogue/wrap-up sequence that explains everything!
The Art: Pretty good Kane Studio quality. Most everything is quite well rendered, dramatically framed and lit, and only Batman and Robin look particularly "cardboard flat", probably because they're required to stay on-model with Kane's artstyle while everything else can be more or less redrafted to Robinson and Roussos' content.
The Story: Don Cameron's second script disappoints me. While there's a good number of colourful characters and pulse-pounding events, all of them are pretty cliché and rote from pulp adventures and serials (especially by 1942 standards) and the way it's all put together is really slapdash. For example, the way Batman and Robin are introduced into the story -- why not just have Bruce and Dick be passengers on the train to begin with? And then there's the ending -- another mystery where none of the clues and connections are given to the audience until the denouement, and the wrap-up and explanations themselves are just the final page of the story. All in all it's very messy story construction and leaves it all feeling rushed, disconnected, and sloppy.
Another patriotic wartime cover, although I'm wondering what anniversary this "Anniversary Issue" is celebrating. Yeah, it's the twelfth issue, but this series isn't monthly so that means nothing. The series started in spring and this is an August/September issue, so what's the deal? Oh well.
"Brothers in Crime!"
Writer: Don Cameron
Art: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: So we open with a significant milestone in Batman history -- the introduction of Batman's Trophy Room! Yes, the Batman is a bit of a hoarder, as it turns out, keeping all kinds of knick-knacks from his past cases in a room in Wayne Manor locked up by a dial combination in a six-inch thick steel door! Cuz that ain't suspicious.
Trophies already collected include a stuffed penguin and gas umbrella from Detective #58, what looks like the Joker's mantlepiece from his early lair in Batman #1, the Joker's decoy duck from Batman #9, and Bruce Wayne's portrait from Detective #42.
Batman draws Robin's attention to trophy from a story we've never heard: a bullet proof vest used by Peter Rafferty in June, 1939. He was one of three brothers who tried to protect themselves with such vests and all ended up dead.
We then flashback to May, 1939, when Peter Rafferty was being released from a stint in prison. He's eager to go straight, but his brothers Steve and Mike draw him right back into their criminal schemes. They kill a gas attendant rather than pay for gas, steal the station's money, and implicate Pete in the crime. Stuck with them, the three brothers go into business painting the town red, believing themselves protected by their iron bullet proof vests.
They start a spree of robberies which are accompanied by an equal amount of unnecessary murdering that has Pete on edge. They soon attract the attention of the Batman and his youthful aide Robin, the Boy.... wait a second! Robin didn't join the show until April, 1940 -- I call bullshit.
Anyways the Dynamic Duo end up fighting the gang at a scrap metal yard, and by a contrivance Steve Rafferty finds his iron vest getting picked up by the big yard magnet, and leading to his death in the scrap pile.
Batman and Robin find a note directing them to the next target, the wealthy Gotham Yacht Club. When the Duo shows up to break up the heist, Peter Rafferty takes off in his car while Mike and the gang try to escape by water. Fighting the Batman ends up sending their boat out of control and they all fall into the water. Then Batman, floating there with the rest of the crooks, just kinda watches as Mike Rafferty sinks and drowns due to his vest. Wait, what? That's cold, Batman. I mean, it's in like with genuine 1939 Batman, but continuity's sorta broken what with Robin being here.
Pete tries to get out of the gang, but they don't take so kindly to that and begin hunting him, so Batman decides to get Pete before they do. A storm breaks out and Pete seeks shelter in a suburban home. Turns out it's the home of two kindly old people who's grandson was being operated on for his appendix by a doctor upstairs when the storm took out the power. The doc can't operate by candelight, so Pete decides to redeem himself by saving the kid by using his iron vest as a conductor. It works and the kid is saved, but the gang catches up to Pete and shoots him while he's not wearing the vest. Batman knocks out the gang.
In 1942, Batman and Robin remark on the irony that the live-saving vest saved the life of the boy, but lead to the death of the three Rafferty brothers.
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My Thoughts: The trophy room is such a mainstay of the Batcave that I'm sorta surprised that it's first appearance predates it. We've now got Bruce keeping his costume in a secret trunk, his crime lab in a secret room, and his trophies in another secret room in Wayne Manor. Meanwhile the Batmobile and Batplane are in that abandoned barn reachable by underground tunnel from Wayne Manor. Good thing it's a big house and they never have guests over.
Still, it's an element of the Bat-canon that's just going to get bigger and bigger, and the "tell you a story about something in the trophy room" is going to become a dependable framing story schtick over the years as well.
But while the continuity of the current trophies is well done, the gaffe of Robin with Batman in 1939 is nigh-unforgivable, especially since Joe Greene just did a story set in 1937 with the correct, solo Batman. I'd blame it on Don Cameron being a new writer, if it wasn't for the good continuity with the trophies showing he at least knew the series' history to some extent.
The Art: Holy smokes if there's a reason to read this story it's the art. Jerry Robinson has clearly, clearly surpassed Bob Kane as a solo artist. The detail in this art is fantastic, the character art is extraordinary, and holy crap there's actual effort put into the backgrounds! They aren't just non-descript shapes and shadows, the action is actually taking place in defined spaces. Robinson also uses different panel sizes, angles, and layouts than Kane, whose work is often based on repetitive poses and images he can reuse over and over. Robinson's art has great detail in it, looking far more realistic than Kane's carboard cut-outs. It's not quite as good as Jack Burnley, but it's quite amazingly good compared to Kane with Robinson's inks, even.
The Story: As much as I get the use of the framing device with the trophy to build interest, why the heck is this story set in 1939? The time setting isn't used at all. Is there some reason it needs to be pre-war? If so, set it in 1940 or 41 so at least using Robin isn't a total anachronism. I mean the tale is set in the strip's earliest months but otherwise the story is completely contemporary in style.
Other than that snafu, I must say it's a well plotted story. It's pacing is excellent and it's relatively consistent. It feels a bit standard as it were, but the art more than makes up for it. Writer Don Cameron was probably the oldest member of the Batman creative team when he came onboard. He'd been a crime writer for several US and Canadian newspapers in the 1920s, then tried to make it as a pulp fiction writer in the 1930s. By the 40s he'd hit hard times and turned to DC comics work to make ends meet. As such, we're seeing a writer nearing the end of his career, but with a lot of experience both in pulps and non-fiction crime writing, which serve him very well as a writer on Batman. I'm looking forward to more Don Cameron stories.
Notes and Trivia: First appearance of Batman's Trophy Room
"The Wizard of Words!"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson and George Roussos
Synopsis: So, inspired by something one of his henchman says, that crazy-ass Joker decides to start a series of crimes based on taking turns-of-phrase literally. So he sends a message to a banker saying he'll cover him with dough (give him lots of money) -- but then literally dumps dough on his head. He sends a message to the D.A. (drawn to look like Nolan from last issue, so this story probably takes place sometime before Detective #66,) saying he'll frame him, and then literally ties him up in a picture frame. He sends a letter to the Mayor (drawn to look like La Guardia) saying he'll see fireworks, then actually lights fireworks in his office.
Everyone in Gotham is sorta thinking, "WTF?", including Bruce and Dick, although Bruce is sure he's up to something. The Joker sends another note to Commissioner Gordon promising to "paint the town red", and sure enough his goons are out coating the town in red paint, including a plane just spraying that shit from the air.
Bruce notices one of the buildings hit with red paint is a bank, and decides that all these pranks are designed as random chaos to cover the Joker's real crime. And so! As Batman and Robin they take a secret elevator down to an underground hangar beneath Wayne Manor where the Batplanes, Batmobiles and a repair workshop are held! In the Batplane, they are pulled up an incline by a winch into the old abandoned barn, where they now take off! (Holy Almost-Batcave, loyal blog readers!)
Anyways, turns out there's an acid mixed in with the paint that allows Joker and his men to bust in through the bank ceiling and into the vault. Cue the fight scene, the police show up and the Joker gets away again. Back at his lair, one of Joker's henchmen complains about Joker not letting him shoot the Batman during the fight, but Joker explains that only he may be allowed to kill the Batman, and it must be a death worthy of his brilliance.
The next clue Joker sends is that he's going to make "hot news" by "setting the world on fire". Bruce deduces this means Joker's going to burn down the printing plant of the Gotham City World newspaper. Batman heads out to stop them, gets knocked out by the Joker, who is going to "send him for a spin" and ties him to a huge gyroscope (they have huge gyroscopes in printing plants?) Joker intends the spinning to send the blood to Batman's head and kill him, but halfway through the process decides this death isn't good enough, changes his mind and decides to send Batman on "the road to success." In this case, that means a narrow wooden board placed over a high space in the burning factory. If Batman, in his extremely dizzyed state, can cross the board he'll live, but if he falls, he'll die. Batman can barely walk, and he nearly falls crossing but then Robin swoops down and rescues him.
So then the Joker escapes AGAIN, and for his next crime he hears that a large amount of gold is being brought to Gotham by train by a passenger in a large plain satchel. He sends a message to the company that "Money Talks", and the company men notify the Batman. Joker sneaks on the train in make-up and uses a metal detector to find the passenger with the gold. He then gets off the train and makes off in a handcar, but the Batmobile shows up. Batman and the Joker start fighting on the handcar, then he chases him into an army base, Joker steals a barrage ballon (basically a small zeppelin shaped thing) and they fight on top of THAT until Batman punches him off into the river.
Is he dead? Who knows, but Robin makes a joke about the criminal "drowning his sorrows." Ugh, Robin.
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My Thoughts: And so we've comfortably settled into the "post-murderous" phase of the Joker's career, where the focus is entirely on crazy patterned crime schemes meant to confound the Batman. A neat detail here is Joker's insistance on killing Batman himself, and his inability to decide on the best means of doing so.
The Art: The art is good -- Kane/Robinson/Roussos do a great story with a lot of colour and shadow and action and movement. Sometimes figures are drawn too small or indistinct in the panel and facial features are mushed together, but this is a common problem with Kane's artwork. Overall this is all right stuff -- although Joker's eyebrows seem to be getting bushier with every story.
Probably the most significant thing in the art is the panel that gives us a cross-section of Wayne Manor's new underground hangars -- this is going to be become a recurring visual motif for depictions of what will soon be the Batcave.
The Story: So Joker's pun-based crime spree starts all right, but this is a story that runs out of steam really fast. The burning newspaper plant was the natural climax, but Finger has Joker escape AGAIN, which leads to a series of set-pieces that are just going through the motions of over-the-top comic book escapades, from the train to a fight on top of a zeppelin that just screams out to be trying too hard. Ultimately the Joker formula, while applied well here, is just too shallow to draw out for too long, and the back-end of the tale just loses energy.
Notes and Trivia: First appearance of "underground hangars" beneath Wayne Manor
"They Thrill to Conquer!"
Writer: Bill Finger
Artist: Jack Burnley
Synopsis: Everyone is gathered to watch the stunt man "Fearless Ford" perform a human fly act crawling up a skyscraper to promote war bonds. Bruce and Dick watch from a skyscraper across the street and think they spot a man with a gun in a window just above Ford. They dash across into the room as Batman and Robin, and Robin is shot in the face with the gun -- which shoots ammonia at him instead of bullets. The gangsters run off and they pull Fearless Ford into the room.
Ford explains that the mob has been muscling in on stunt men for protection money (okaaay) and that several stunt men have been killed during their stunts in ways that could be written off as tragic accidents. In this case, Ford was going to get the ammonia to the face, so that he'd fall to his death.
Turns out Ford was once a circus performer in a family of acrobats but his son was injured in a fall (lucky they didn't all DIE! thinks Robin, I'm sure) and now Ford needs to pay for a costly operation on his son's spine, which is why he's taking all kinds of extra dangerous stunt jobs and also why he won't pay the mob.
Batman figures they'll try again at Ford's next performance for a circus at Gotham Garden, the Dynamic Duo check up on Ford in his dressing room. Turns out Ford is afraid he'll be killed and doesn't want to go on with the act. So of course our hero gives him a rousing speech at convinces him to go on, or perhaps he remembers he's a millionaire and gives Ford the money he needs for Tommy's operation so this'll all be over? No, Batman declares Ford a coward who's lost his nerve, revokes his man card, and socks him in the face, because it's 1942 and even heroes were kind've assholes back then.
So it's last-minute substitution time, and even though Batman takes to the stage in full-on Batman regalia, and he's announced to the crowd as Batman, the crooks still try to make an attempt on his life even though he's not the one who owes them money. Robin stops them, of course, seemingly unharmed from the faceful of ammonia he got last time, but Batman ends up falling into the lion's den (literally) anyways. Luckily, his lion taming skills keep him alive in time for Robin to swoop in and save him.
Dick wonders how the pair can help Ford if he refuses to make more appearances, so Bruce goes to Ford's booking agent Joe Kirk and offers to pay Ford $500 to appear at a charity event at Wayne Manor. Bruce! Why not just GIVE Ford the money he needs?? Anyways, Kirk books Ford, but he once again refuses to appear, as he's "lost the nerve". So Bruce (this time disguised as Ford) agrees to do the stunt, which is a car stunt this time. Once again, a murderous attempt is made, but Bruce gets out of it because he's awesome. Right away Kirk offers Bruce/Ford another gig, a high dive at the fairgrounds, and Bruce agrees.
Batman and Robin examine the fairgrounds before the stunt, and find evidence of tampering. Bruce/Ford does the high dive, but the tank explodes when he hits it! Ford's family are convinced he's dead, while Robin follows the trail back to... Joe Kirk! Kirk beats it in a plane, while it turns out that it was a dummy that did the high dive and Batman's alive and well.
Batman uses the cannon for the human cannonball act to propel himself into the air and catch Kirk's plane, and they begin fighting. Robin heads to the Batplane, hidden in a nearby hangar just in case, to head after them but finds he's been beaten to it by Ford! Ford wants to get Kirk for his treachery, and heads up in the Batplane, diving out of it to get onto the other plane. He misses, but Batman saves him. The Dark Knight had already dealt with Kirk, but congratulates Ford on getting his nerve back and becoming a man again.
~~~~
My Thoughts: So I guess the moral is supposed to be about having courage and being a man, and given that this is a wartime comic that seems admirable, but I just can't get behind this one. Batman comes off as a showboating asshole, Ford is never really redeemed, and there are just too many plotholes. It was sort've a wasted opportunity with Robin given his tragic history with the circus, and ultimately the whole thing feels more like an excuse to let Jack Burnley draw Batman in some fantastic situations.
The Art: Speaking of which Burnley's art is great, as always. He really does well with human figures and faces, drawing them far, far more three-dimensionally than Kane or Robinson, about as "photo-real" as you can get in Golden Age style art -- although his Batman and Robin retain some 2D-ness to remain on model -- after all, every Batman story was simply labeled "by Bob Kane" so to the reading public it still had to look similar. I will say, however, that Burnley seems to be weaker on backgrounds -- they're often the kind've blank abstractions you see in Kane's art and a lot of other Golden Age work but that we just saw Robinson do a lot of good detail in.
The Story: Ugh. This might be one of the worst Batman stories I've read so far. I mean, start with the ludicrous idea that a stunt man talent agent is using the mob to hit his talent up for protection money (isn't he gonna run out of clients doing this), which is a contrived scenario even for a Batman comic. Then Batman, who could easily solves Ford's problems with a donation of cash, instead forces the man to perform when his life is in jeopardy, then beats him up and takes his place when he's unwilling to do it. Finally, when Ford does "man up", he doesn't even save the day. Batman saves him, and has already beat the crook. It really makes Batman look like an ass, and the moral that you're only worth a damn if you're willing to do crazy stunts for little money while the mob is trying to kill you is just bullshit. Finally -- what happened with Tommy? Did Ford ever get enough to pay for that operation? We'll never know, because this story sucks. (Also, what the hell is that title supposed to mean??)
"Around the Clock with Batman"
Writer: Bill Finger
Pencils: Bob Kane
Inks: Jerry Robinson
Synopsis: It's been named "Batman Day" in Gotham City, and the Dynamic Duo are thrown a parade! A statue is built of them in the city park! The Mayor (not-LaGuardia) reads out a list of their accomplishments (120 arrests, 118 convictions, 70 confessions, defeated the Joker six times, etc. and I can tell you that at least that last one is incorrect). Everyone is Gotham is amazed -- how can one man and one boy manage to do all this? Well, we flashback to sometime in May and a story of a day in the life of Batman.
Bruce and Dick get up in the morning and exercise in the gym. They perform tests on the Batplane, and this is followed by a healthy breakfast and then experiments in the crime laboratory, proving a crook named Maroni guilty. Dick notifies the commissioner, then tests Bruce's photographic memory with files from their casebook. Then they head out in costume to appear at an event to promote the sale of war bonds. They get home and Dick works on his homework (from what school? Is he home-schooled?) while Bruce works on a book he's writing (as Batman, I think) called "Observations on Crime". Unfortunately he can't think of what to write for the final chapter and the publisher's deadline is on Monday.
The Duo heads out in the Batplane for an evening patrol and spot a jewelry robbery in progress. They try to stop the crooks but they get away, so they follow them to an art gallery. Once inside, all they can find is a normal legitimate art gallery (if such things where filled with massive sculptures), until Batman notices the eyes in one large bust seeming to sparkle with their own life. He deduces the jewels are hid inside, they fight the crooks and round them up. The gallery owner begs the police to keep the story out of the papers to save the reputation of his gallery, and likewise Batman can't use it for his book.
Then Batman and Robin head to a children's hospital to appear for children with infantile paralysis and support the March of Dimes. Resuming their patrol, they spot a woman trying to commit suicide by jumping from a building. There's a large crowd and police trying to talk her down. Batman rescues her, and then they hear from the cops that "Heist" Andrews robbed a bank downtown while the police were busy with the suicide (man, the GCPD sure is undermanned). Batman follows a hunch by following the girl, who leads them right to Andews' hide-out. They beat up the crooks, round them up and take them to jail.
Batman decides to write the final chapter as a day in the life entitled "Around the Clock with Batman" and then the two go to bed (they sleep in the same room, but in seperate beds).
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My Thoughts: "Day in the Life" stories can either be really interesting or really banal, and this one straddles the line. But it's a cool concept, although it's always weird seeing a Batman who gets parades thrown for him and the like. Mostly the story just comes across as saying "aren't these great, swell guys who work 24/7 to fight crime and be heroes?" which does seem a little bit ridiculous and heavy-handed at times. I mean, I know Batman and Robin are swell guys -- but the volunteering for war bonds and the March of Dimes strikes me as a little much, especially when Dick apparently never goes to school or plays and Bruce Wayne has no life of his own. The impression you get is that their whole lives is being Batman and Robin, and if that's the case why have secret identities? Heck, now that they're honorary policemen and all and the city loves them, why not just join the police force? Or donate money to it at least? It seems kind've cowardly compared to the regular cops.
The Art: Decent, serviceable stuff here. Standard scenes and action we've seen before. Perhaps the best stuff is the opening four pages before the jewelry heist, which look to my eyes to have been heavily redrawn by Jerry Robinson, as they look much better than Bob Kane's standard work. The fight in the art gallery is cool though, it's sort've an early version of the classic Bill Finger trope of battles with giant props, but a lot of the other action is of a fairly standard type.
The Story: While the concept is decent, it does suffer from the fact that we don't see Linda Page or Commissioner Gordon or really get any sense that Bruce and Dick have a life outside being Batman and Robin. Because the whole point of the story is that it must be so difficult to be them and do all these amazing things -- but when they can devote their ENTIRE day to being superheroes, then it's really not as impressive. It's almost like "of course they can do all that, they don't have to worry about going to work or going to school or having a social life, etc etc"
Finally, I also feel that neat concept aside, this story really comes across as basically a couple of half-baked ideas (the jewelry heist and the bank robbery), with a bunch of pages of filler to round it out. I mean, ultimately, what does the "Batman Day" opening sequence contribute?
