The Brave and the Bold #105 “Play Now… Die Later!” (February 1973)Theme: The Spanish prisoner
Story: Bob Haney
Art: Jim Aparo
Editing: Murray Boltinoff
Dramatis PersonaeBruce Wayne, billionaire, Batman
Alfred, butler and chauffeur to Bruce
Diana Prince, Conchita's saucy chaperone
Emiliano Vasquez, Spanish prisoner, father to Raoul and Conchita
Raoul Vasquez, revolutionary
Conchita Vasquez, Raoul’s beautiful sister
Pilar, Conchita’s frail chaperone
Francisco Montoya, Spanish magnate, owner of Marvilla cigar company
Ernesto, revolutionary
“El Moro,” Emiliano’s kidnapper
Amazonian Guardian Angel, no, really
The Story: In Gotham’s
Las Pampas district, beautiful
Conchita catches the eye of
Bruce Wayne as he dines alone at a Spanish restaurant. She turns down his offer of “a ride home” until she’s attacked by thugs outside the establishment. Her chaperone (or
duenna)
Pilar suffers a medical event from the stress, so
Alfred takes her to the hospital while Bruce changes into Batman and engages a second wave of attackers, who are actually fighting amongst themselves, almost shooting a child. One of them is Conchita’s brother
Raoul, whom
Commissioner Gordon takes into custody.
Bruce Wayne gives Conchita a ride home from the hospital. Raoul has escaped from jail already. He is enraged to find his sister with a stranger but calms down enough to explain that his father
Emiliano is being held for ransom by
“El Moro.” If Bruce pays the ransom, the father once freed has access to fabulous wealth to share with his rescuers. Bruce recognizes this as the venerable con game known as “The Spanish Prisoner.” He decides to play along, giving a stash of cash to the Vasquez siblings.
Batman needs someone on the inside, so he arranges for
Diana Prince to serve as Conchita’s new
duenna. Diana and Conchita take Bruce’s money to Dock 93, where “El Moro” takes the cash without giving the location of the hostage. He runs away with both, when some other men start shooting. Conchita faints and is kidnapped, while Diana fights valiantly but is felled by a tire iron and left for dead.
Batman is surprised to find that Raoul (belatedly arrived at Dock 93) wants the location of the hostage but not the money. That’s not how the Spanish Prisoner con game is supposed to work. Raoul flees with the slip of paper when the police arrive. Batman follows the trail to a
Las Pampas warehouse owned by wealthy businessman
Francisco Montoya. He finds evidence that Emiliano was chained here previously, but no longer. Someone clubs Batman, and soon he is chained there instead.
Did you know that Wonder Woman has an
Amazonian guardian angel who will appear whenever Diana is endangered? It’s a good thing, since long after the battle at Dock 93, Diana is still lying unconscious in the middle of the road. A semi truck from the Haney company (hmmm) barrels down on her, but her guardian angel snatches her up and moves her out of harm’s way.
Diana returns to
Las Pampas the next morning looking for clues. She improbably figures out which warehouse contains captive Batman, whom she frees. On a fishing trawler, Batman (and Diana and Raoul) find disassembled fighter jets! This is the treasure everyone’s been talking about. The heroes beat up the villains, and Emiliano Vasquez (who looks like Colonel Sanders) assures everyone that the fighter jets will be used to further the cause of “freedom,” i.e. his side in a Spanish civil war. Batman even gets a kiss from Conchita. Happy ending! Except for the little bit about Raoul escaping from jail after committing numerous felonies, but we won't get into that.
My Two Cents: Well, that’s a convoluted tale! Lots of new characters, lots of short scenes. It’s almost like a summary for a longer story, so I found it difficult to condense for our purposes. It wears its inspiration openly. “The Spanish Prisoner” con has been around for centuries. The title appears to come from this
1910 short story published in Cosmopolitan Magazine. A sample:
It‘s known today as the “advance fraud scam” since the “mark” is asked to give a cash advance in expectation of a large payout. Many people became familiar with it in the early days of widespread internet due to the “419” or “Nigerian Prince” version of the story. David Mamet made an excellent 1997 film both about and titled “The Spanish Prisoner.” Mike White’s television drama “The White Lotus” has a Spanish Prisoner subplot in the second season (2022) as well, in which the beautiful girl is also both the prisoner and the promised reward. The TV Tropes web site says of this hoary situation: “The common subversion is thus the money being real and the character unluckily passing up a reward from an actual wealthy Nigerian prince.” That’s basically what Haney does, though wealthy Bruce Wayne was never interested in the reward aspect anyway. (Note incidentally that Bruce Wayne is living in a Gotham penthouse, not a manor with a Batcave underneath it.)
Haney uses the backdrop of a very ill-defined civil war in Spain. His rebels are from San Sebastián, a Spanish resort city where I once ate breakfast two tables down from Woody Allen.
However, Haney is probably thinking about Catalonia, a quasi-independent area on the very northeastern corner of Spain. It borders France and has often been a battleground and prize sought by both nations. It has its own flag and Catalan language. As recently as 2017, Catalonia attempted unsuccessfully to secede from Spain.
In our story, the Vasquez family represents Catalonian rebels. Montoya the evil industrialist represents the Spanish government; Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are the only billionaires who get to be good guys. I wonder what the Spanish reaction to this comic book was, since it equates “freedom” with “violent Catalonian revolution.” It’s absurd to think that a disassembled fighter plane would fit in a few crates or could turn the tide of war, but that’s the story Haney chooses to tell. Also, Raoul offered to share the treasure with Bruce Wayne. Did he know it was really airplane parts? That whole plot twist undermines the first part of the story.
The first Batman/Diana team-up in B&B #87 was by Sekowsky, and it seemed like a WW solo story into which Batman had dropped. Diana could have been defending some other racecar driver, and the story would have unfolded the same way. This one is the opposite; Diana is superfluous, so I wonder whether it started as a story for one of Batman’s solo books. In Sekowsky's story, Diana did not know Batman's secret identity. In this story, she does; Batman discusses it freely over the radio even.
Diana fails to protect either the ransom money or Conchita, instead getting knocked unconscious far longer than usual for an action story. This necessitates her rescue by the ridiculous and insulting notion of an “Amazonian guardian angel” which, if true, would completely take the danger out of every Wonder Woman story you’ve ever read. Furthermore, it ignores the O’Neil/Sekowsky claim that Paradise Island has been removed from our dimension. Sometimes the Guardian Angel doesn't even wait until you're in trouble; when she's bored, she just drops by to say, "Hi," and Diana immediately recognizes her. Haney repeats the idea that "many" people know that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman.
Fashion Plate: Diana wears her white turtleneck suit and sensible boots, this time accessorized with a wide, bright blue belt. She also gives fashion advice to Conchita.
Sexual Politics: Raoul is, as they say, a piece of work. He’s controlling and borderline abusive to his meek sister Conchita. Nevertheless, by the end of the story he’s Batman’s ally, so we’re supposed to forget that he instigated a public firefight that almost killed a kid in the early pages. He tells Diana that he is “not used to women who fight like men,” which is the closest he gets to saying something nice. To whatever extent he represents honor-obsessed Spanish society (and we’re given no alternative examples), it’s not a pretty picture.
Haney talks about Diana in terms that Sekowsky and O’Neil never would. She doesn’t just walk down the street. Rather, “a lithe figure saunters saucily.” Women can just walk, OK? A beautiful woman isn’t being “saucy” simply by existing, and Diana isn’t strutting in a way intended to draw the male gaze. But apart from his sexist description, Haney is hitting on an underlying truth that everybody (except apparently Fellows Dill) thinks Diana Prince is beautiful, when she’s not wearing her glasses and ponytail. Conchita and Raoul both consider it inappropriate for a
duenna to be so young and pretty; her job is to fend off men, not attract them.
Note the use of Duotone paper throughout this issue for textures. Note also the ubiquitous cigar advertisement on the billboard. It appears several times before we get the payoff that Batman uses it as a literal smoke signal when he needs rescuing from inside that building.
Haney claims that depowered Diana Prince is considerably smaller than Wonder Woman.
I quite like the idea that Amazons are quite tall and bulky, physically imposing like WBA players. The only artist that comes to mind is Darwyn Cooke, who portrayed Wonder Woman as taller than Superman.
Covers That Lie: At no point in the story does Batman rescue Diana. They board a fishing trawler but not a galleon, and are never threatened with a giant harpoon. The dramatic rim lighting effect on the cover is very much in the spirit of Neal Adams covers of the era. Aparo did a nice job with Batman throughout the issue too.
Bond Girl Boy: Batman is chained to the warehouse wall by one hand. This leaves his other hand free to manipulate the machine that’s making rings of smoke exude from the cigar advertisement on the side of the building, thereby drawing Diana's attention eventually. Couldn’t he have just used that free hand to reach his utility belt? I’m sure he has some device that could have cut or opened the manacle. Instead he has to wait hours for Diana to arrive with a bobbie pin to free him. I don’t buy it. His “Wonder, Woman” pun is dumb too.
Body Count: El Moro, shot dead by Montoya’s agents. ("El Moro" means "The Moor," meaning a Spaniard with darker skin from African ancestors.) Raoul was shot by police but lived. Diana and Batman were both knocked unconscious but show no signs of concussion after awakening.
Lettercol: Letters in B&B #108 respond to this story. “Great idea about the Amazon guardian angel!” says Mary Van Vleck. But another reader didn’t like that idea. Mark Lucke notes the “heavy plotting leaning away from characterization.” Jim Balko calls the story “utterly suspenseful.”