Who gets into trouble as an usual love interest does.
Also: Diananigans lol.

Getting back to The Batman Archives, Volume Four …

Detective Comics #97 features a story titled "The Secret of the Switch!" And it's a doozy of a story with an overly complicated criminal plot behind the whole set-up.

Fortunately it starts with a very bizarre "only in Gotham" situation. The latest issue of the Gotham News tells the story: the mayor is full of praise and honoring a dead Gotham gangster called "the Slasher," the leader of a criminal combine that's been terrorizing the city. Even Commissioner Gordon later in the story is admitting that the city owes a debt of gratitude for the Slasher's final actions. You see, the Slasher hated being a hunted man and he committed suicide … but not before leaving a suicide note that revealed some of the other criminals in the combine and the hiding place for some of the items that had been stolen.

But it can't be that simple, can it?

There's a couple of things that Batman finds suspicious. One of them is the whereabouts of the Slasher's dog. It was a vicious unlovable beast that only responded to the Slasher. So Batman asks around and one of the underground Gotham figures tells Batman that the Slasher gave the dog to the guy who runs the Auto Wrecking Yard. As soon as Batman leaves, the dude calls and says "Batman's on his way."

And so on and so on. They follow the clues and Batman decides to check out the scene of the suicide again. They find a box and an electrical wire leading over the alleys and rooftops to a house several blocks away. There's a safe and a series of switches. What does it all mean?

I don't even feel like unraveling it. But the Slasher isn't really dead. He was playing dead to trick the other members of the combine into going to the safe with the switches. This is where most of the loot was hidden and only one of the crooks knows the secret of the switches. You see, only one of the switches is safe. The others all blow up the house!

Batman and Robin and the Slasher and his gang and the bad guy who knows which switch is the good one all congregate at the house and there's a fight and Batman and Robin win. And Batman pulls a random switch, freaking everybody out. You see, there had been a flood and the basement had been underwater, so the bomb had shorted out and it was safe to get the dough no matter what switch you pulled. So the Slasher's twisty, complicated plan was completely unnecessary! But that's the way Gothamites do things!

Not bad. Not great but suitably entertaining for a Saturday evening.

No man wearing tightie-whities under his pajama top looks scary.

That's awesome! Is there a story behind it? Did you get to meet the great Jack Schiff? Is the Batman story better than it looks? Are the Roy Raymond and Manhunter from Mars stories any good? Is Patrolwoman Diane Meade up to her usual Diananigans? Does Captain Harding ever leave his desk? 

Next up is Detective Comics #99, with a pretty good penguin tale - "The Temporary Murders!"

I read this a few weeks ago when I first got The Batman Archives, Volume Four, and I thought it was a rather average Penguin tale. But so much time passed before I started to write about it that I read it again last night … and I liked it a lot better this time!

The Penguin's scheme is not so great. The Penguin is kidnapping people and then sending them home (or to the office) in a coffin frozen in ice! But they're not dead! The Penguin has come up with a way to freeze them alive and there is away to revive them safely … but you have to pay $50,000 for the process!

One of the victims is sent to the board of directors of a company where Bruce Wayne is in attendance because of his interests in the company, so Batman and Robin are on the case almost immediately.

I was a little disappointed at first because this is kind of a lackluster effort from the Penguin. It's not such a great theme crime! Where are the umbrellas! Why aren't there birds involved! It's like it's a hack job because the Penguin needs money! He's not even blasting his name everywhere! batman and Robin start to suspect the Penguin is involved because it involves cold and ice.

(SPOILER ALERT: The Penguin isn't really freezing people. The figures are wax dummies but you can't really tell through the ice. It's just a big con!)

But the second time reading it, I noticed that there's quite a few scenes with the Penguin in his icy lair, wallowing in his genius, ordering the lackeys about, just reveling in his own glorious self. There's some actual penguins following him around. Every once in a while, one of them says "Ork!" or "Orkle!"

It's amusing to see so much of these "Penguin at home" sequences. It reminds me that the Penguin (much like the Joker and Lex and Dr. Sivana and a few others) appeared so much that they were supporting characters as much as villains. The Penguin is such a charming and fun-loving rogue in this period! Narcissistic, arrogant, smug, yes. Also a little bit murder-y at times. But a fun character! (Although he doesn't seem to be quoting Shakespeare and Keats any more. Maybe that was a Bill Finger thing? ("The Temporary Murders" was written by Don Cameron.)

Anyway, Batman and Robin find the Penguin by following Alfred's suggestion to investigate the city's Refrigeration and Cold Storage District. See, Alfred understands Gotham City despite not being a native!

They find the Penguin and he manages to knock them unconscious and puts them in a death trap, chortling and gloating the whole time. There's a panel I love where the Penguin is dragging Batman across the floor to put him in the specially prepared freezer. I find the idea very amusing! Short little Penguin making the effort for his criminal artistry! And the best part is later on, when the henchmen have returned and the Penguin has been keeping his mouth shut about Batman and Robin because … he wants it to be a surprise! What a thoughtful boss! Not at all like these generic ferret-faced, pencil-thin-moustached, fedora-wearing Gotham gangsters that these thugs are used to! I bet Penguin's associates get cake and especially ice cream on their birthdays!

Of course, all the Penguin's thoughtful preparations go to waste because Batman and Robin have escaped, and the bad guys are quickly rounded up and the alleged victims of the Penguin's freezing procedure are found in a dungeon and released.

Thinking of the joyless, vindictive, rude modern Penguin, the deformed Gotham night club owner, you can really appreciate the original Penguin, who was so great he changed very little from his earliest appearances in the 1940s all the way into the 1990s! I kind of get why they changed him because he had been pretty much the same for so long, but they got rid of so many of his great characteristics that he's just not very interesting anymore!

Oh! I forgot to mention! How crazy is that cover? I'm not sure what Batman is trying to do. It kind of reminds me of all those covers from the Jack Schiff era where Robin is in the corner with his mouth agape because he CAN'T BELIEVE HIS EYES at what's happened to Batman. But at least when Batman get the cover spot, he at least tries to do SOMETHING!

Which brings us to Detective Comics #102, the last issue in The Batman Archives, Volume Four. It's a Joker story titled "The House That Was Held for Ransom." It's OK. It's not one of the better Golden Age Joker stories.

here's this eccentric millionaire who lives in the forest and he loves his house! It's perfect. He only leaves when it's absolutely necessary!

And one day he comes home and the house is so gone! The house had been kidnapped by the Joker and he's holding it for ransom!

Batman figures that the only way to kidnap a house is to put it on a barge and float it down the river. Oh! Good job, Batman! now we know how the Joker accomplished this so easily!

So there's a few pages of searching the nearby streams and the Joker sets a trap by leaving some bricks on a bridge and then there's a fight and finally the wealthy recuse gets his house back.

THE END

What's interesting to me is that we get a few geographical details that can easily be ignored by every other Batman writer ever since because each one makes up his own Gotham City every time he puts pen to paper. The house is twenty miles north of Gotham on the Kiddiwah River. The river is 200 miles long with many outlets and streams, including Stanford Creek, which is the nearest creek to the original site of the house and it's also where the Joker hid the house and set his trap for Batman and Robin!

I'm done with this volume of the Batman Archives! Now I can focus on Ditko Spider-Man, and the JSA in All-Star Comics for awhile!