I bought Batman #182 digitally from Comixology. It's an 80-page giant from the 1960s and it has a bunch of crazy Golden Age (and early Silver Age) Batman stories. I've been reading one almost every night before I go to sleep.
And one of them was so wonderfully crazy that I had to come here and talk about it! It's a story I never heard of, with an obscure "mad scientist" villain who could be a refugee from a low-budget Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff movie. I'm talking about "The Experiment of Professor Zero!" from Detective Comics #148 (June 1949).
At the start, Batman and Robin are looking at their casebook, and they come across the entry for "The Pigmy Plot," and Robin remarks it's a good thing the public doesn't know about "The Pigmy Plot" because they'd never believe it! Because Gothamites would FREAK OUT if they knew that a Batman villain had shrunk our heroes and put them in a birdcage. I guess.
Professor Zero has come up with a ray that shrinks people to nine inches tall. And he's shrinking millionaires and businessmen and then extorting money from them to give them the antidote.
Batman and Robin don't know this yet. Gordon sends them to visit a scared banker who wouldn't say what he was afraid of. They go to his office and fine no one there, but there's spilled ink on his desk and marks that look like tiny footprints all over the desk!
They go back to police headquarters in a confused state and suddenly, they are knocked unconscious by a mysterious force!
When they awaken, they are in a giant birdcage in a huge room. But no! It's not a giant's house! They have been shrunk!
Professor Zero shows up and starts gloating. He's really full of himself. And why not? In his first at-bat as a Gotham villain, he has knocked out Batman and Robin, shrunk them to nine inches tall and has the power to dispose of them rather neatly. And all before Batman even knew of his existence or had even had time to guess what his game was!
Professor Zero has a henchman named Beefy, a generic Gotham City gangster with a fedora and a purple striped suit. Beefy cracks me up! First there's his name. And then … we'll get to that.
They take Batman and Robin on a boat (I guess they're in Gotham Harbor) and Professor Zero thinks it would be funny to drown them like cats. Yeah, Professor Zero! That's hilarious! So he puts them in a bag and tells Beefy to throw them over the side. Beefy is having none of it. "Aww, boss. They're so little! It wouldn't be fair! I aint that kind of Gotham gangster!" So Professor Zero snarls at Beefy for being so weak and throws them in the harbor himself.
So they're in a bag in the harbor, filing with water. Robin wonders how they'll ever get out of THIS! Well, you know Batman! When they were in the bird cage, he looked around for useful things and he pocketed a parrot claw! And a parrot claw is just like a knife! So they cut their way out of the bad and get to shore.
Now we get to the crazy part.
They have to figure out what to do next. They're nine inches tall! They are miles from the Bat-Mobile or the Bat-Cave! They have no idea where Professor Zero has gone!
Oh! Wait! Scratch that last part! Batman noticed boxes labeled "Clover," "Ants" and "Meal Worms" on the boat! Hippos eat clover! Lizards eat meal worms! (He calls it the "Zoo Plate Special.") So Professor Zero is probably experimenting on animals at a private zoo, and Batman remembers there is such a zoo at 45 Turnpike Road.
Ah yes! Gotham City's famous Turnpike Road! Home to many private zoos and abandoned amusement parks, adjacent to the abandoned warehouse district!
So they start walking across town, avoiding traffic and trying not to be seen. They see some sidewalk toy salesmen and they are offering up some nine-inch mechanical dolls of Batman and Robin! So Batman and Robin are purchased and put into a shopping bag. Eventually, they sneak from the bag (and Batman mentions that he's going to send some money to the lady who bought them to cover the expenses of paying for them when they thought they were toys). They go to a post office where it's lunch hour. (All the other stuff happened before lunch! Wow!) And they make a shipping label for 45 Turnpike Road and seal themselves in a package and mail themselves to Professor Zero's hide-out!
This whole sequence of getting across Gotham and pretending to be mechanical toys and mailing themselves is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in a Batman comic book! Does anything else that happened in this issue even matter?
So Beefy gets the package and thinks it must be more equipment for the lab. So he takes it to the lab and leaves it there.
And, no, there are no tiny hippopotamuses or lizards or anything like that. This story needed a few more pages to be fully fleshed out.
But they do find several shrunken bankers and financiers and millionaires. While they are tying to decide how to rescue them, Professor Zero and Beefy show up!
"Crush them with a chair, Beefy!" says Professor Zero. No, boss, says Beefy, the generic Gotham City gangster who knows it's wrong to crush tiny people, even if they are Batman and Robin.
So Professor Zero pulls out a pistol and shoots Beefy DEAD! "You're too sentimental! I need practical men around me!"
Professor Zero pulls a shotgun out of a closet and starts chasing Batman around the lab and trying to kill the Dynamic Duo. It's a bit awkward. He finally gets Batman cornered on a shelf where he keeps the electric fan (Gotham gets hot in the summer) and the pepper (Beefy's cooking tended to be a bit on the bland side). And while Professor Zero is aiming, Batman turns on the fan and shakes the pepper enough that some pepper falls out and is blown in Professor Zero's eyes and while he's fumbling around, he drops the shotgun … and it goes off and he guns himself down! The embarrassing death of Professor Zero!
It turns out that the ray wears off in a few days, so everybody is soon back to normal.
The only thing left is to mourn for Beefy!
