I got Batman #256 and Batman #269 arriving in the mail in the next few days. As soon as they get here, I’ll have every issue from #251 to #307.

I’m still working on my project to read every issue of Detective Comics from #244 to the present. I read #326, the last issue with Jack Schiff as editor, last week. I’ve been writing short reviews in the Complete Batman, 1955 to 1978, thread. But I’m not planning to review every issue as I hit the New Look. The reviews for #244 to #326 were fun for me because I love the era so much, and I think it was a good idea to provide some short summaries and a little analysis for a period that comic-book fans talk about a lot, even when not that many people have read more than a handful of issues. A lot of those stories have never been reprinted. So I was hoping to provide a little information on stories that are kind of hard to find.

The New Look is a lot more accessible. There are numerous reprints, in black and white or color, and they are sometimes available in libraries. So it doesn’t feel so vital to review them issue by issue. Especially since I don’t like them as much.

They’re OK. Most of the time. There’s only a few that make me feel ill. And there’s quite a few of them that I like a lot. Like anything with the Grasshopper Gang! Or Johnny Witts! The Clue-Master!

So I will be noting my progress, but since I won’t be reviewing every issue, and thus it won’t be anywhere near “complete,” I have decided to move my massive Detective Comics Reading Project to the Bat-splaining thread.

I was going to take a break for a couple of weeks, but I actually felt like reading Detective #327 yesterday. It’s not a comic that I like that much, so I haven’t read it for a while. I first read it way back in the 1990s when DC published those Silver Age Classics reprints. I’ve read it a few times over the years. I got my own copy of the original comic five or six years ago. It’s a solid copy, I felt that I got it for a good price. And I’m sure I read it because I read everything, even when I get something I’ve read before. But there’s a very good chance that I skimmed it and didn’t really read it that close. So it was time to pick it up again and take another look at it.

It’s OK, I guess. Very nice Infantino art. And there’s no aliens, and Batman doesn’t turn into a giant or a mermaid or a zebra, and there’s no giant monsters rampaging through the countryside.

But I actually find it kind of dull. The bad guy has some kind of magic ray gun or something that marks Batman and Robin on their foreheads with a magic phosphorus isotope that enables him to control their brain functions somehow, BECAUSE REASONS!

I just really don’t see how this is any less silly than the stories of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Just assigning Carmine Infantino to the Batman books made them more modern. But put Infantino on some of those stories from the Schiff era, and you would’ve had the same effect. I feel like Schiff was already trying to do that in a small way by having Jim Mooney on the Cat-Man stories.

I just don’t find The Mystery of the Menacing Mask to be that much more mature or sophisticated than a lot of the Schiff era stories. And honestly, I find those older stories to be a lot more entertaining than a lot of the New Look.

But I do like Gotham Village. I’m wondering if this Gotham City neighborhood ever appeared again. I bet Jason Blood could have lived there.

I just realized that “Gotham Gang Line-Up” is next. From Detective Comics #328. I first read that one a long time ago. Maybe around 1976. It’s reprinted in one of those 100-Page Super-Spectacular issues of Detective, and I picked it up at a used-book store for 25 cents.

It’s pretty dumb. I thought it was a real groaner when I was a kid. But it’s grown on me over the years. The whole Outsider saga.

#328 is the one where Alfred dies, crushed by a boulder while riding a motorcycle as he pushes Batman and Robin out of the way. It’s hilarious.

I’ll have to dig that out and read it tomorrow.

Last night, I read “Gotham Gang Line-Up” from Detective #328. In which Alfred dies!

Anybody reading the Batman comics who missed this issue probably wouldn’t have realized right away that something had happened to Alfred. He hadn’t been in the comics that much in recent years. Especially in Detective. A whole year might go by and Alfred might appear for one or two panels in two issues. He was in Batman a little more than that, especially when he was writing those future fictional histories where Bruce and Kathy got married and Dick became Batman.

When they brought Alfred back in The New Look, they seem to have made him a lot less frail. He’s more middle-aged than elderly. They have him driving around on a motorcycle and investigating the Tri-State Gang because Batman and Robin are busy. It’s hard to imagine 1963 Alfred on a motorcycle.

The Tri-State Gang sounds like a real gang, doesn’t it! I guess if it's gangs from three states, then the gangsters from the other two states are not from whichever state Gotham is in, so they vetoed names like the Orange Fedora Gang and didn’t want to all wear gorilla suits or whatever.

So anyway, Alfred is captured, and then Batman and Robin are captured, but all the good guys escape and all the major players are running around on a construction site, and the bad guys use a crane to try to drop a boulder on Batman and Robin, but Alfred on his motorcycle manages to push them out of the way somehow. And he is crushed by the boulder.

It was so unnecessary! I keep thinking of the panel (in Detective #224) where the bad guys hit Robin on the head with steam shovel and he only pretends to be unconscious because it’s part of Batman’s plan. That kid is indestructible. I’m sure the boulder would have just bounced off his head!

I guess Alfred didn’t know this. So because of this tragic miscommunication, Alfred is dead.

Bruce and Dick are mourning. But there’s a knock on the door. It’s Dick’s Aunt Harriet! She’s come to take care of Bruce and Dick because she knows they are like helpless baby mice without Alfred.

Will much hilarity ensue? I guess we’ll have to keep reading to find out.

And over in the Elongated Man back-up, Ralph is tracking down a stolen barn door and Sue has to stay in a crummy hotel and then she has to eat in a diner!

One has to wonder what Wertham thought of dormitories and the YMCA.

My guess is he would have loved doing the research.

You knew Alfred was a shape-shifter, right?