He got that trick from Wolfie...

I had an exhausting workday. So I fell asleep kind of early and woke up at midnight after about four hours of sleep. Sometimes when I do this, I read a comic book and go back to bed. If I read the next issue of Detective tonight, it’s #342. And I hesitate. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I remember it as being noticeably bad.

Well, maybe it’s best to just dive in and get past it.

I'm up to Detective Comics #350. After the Johnny Witts story (#344) and the first Blockbuster (#345), I hit a run of lesser New Look efforts that I barely remember ever reading. I must have read them when I got them (four or five years ago) but they left very little impression. #348 has a guy in a turban who calls himself the Birdmaster. He operates an international crime syndicate from the Himalayas. Somehow. He has huge flocks of trained condors, vultures and buzzards that are trained to attack jet planes. He causes several to crash! He's blackmailing the US government, and they'll have to pay if they want air travel to be safe. There's a bit where Batman explains that some of the birds are trained as medics, and they help any wounded birds get to safety if they get hurt running into jet planes. Somehow.

I feel like I should remember this. It's so nutty. Maybe I skimmed it late one night before bed and put it in a bag and stowed it and forgot about it. I would bring the Birdmaster back so the Penguin could kill him for stealing his thing.

And then #349 is the return of the Blockbuster. And another Outsider appearance. Batman is encased in a coffin and the Outsider shows up to finally take his revenge ... but he hadn't counted on how much Blockbuster hates everybody except Bruce Wayne. So Blockbuster attacks the Outsider! And Batman gets out of the coffin (he gets calcium on his hands from his make-up (long dumb story) and it hardens so his fists are like concrete blocks, and he busts out of the coffin) and saves the Outsider, who escapes through a window. Then Batman uses his concrete-block fists to clobber the Blockbuster!

The New Look is just as silly as the late Jack Schiff era. The silliness is slightly different. Exhibit A is any New Look story.

And then there's Detective Comics #350 where Batman reveals that he was once, early in his Batman career, quite soundly defeated by a costumed villain called the Master of Menace. This is one bad guy who won every round and escaped to enjoy his ill-gotten gains for years in the jungle somewhere, presumably in the foothills of the Andes, just a few compounds away from Baron Zemo. Fortunately, the Master of Menace has a very dumb son who decides to prove himself to his father by going on a crime spree in Gotham. The son is defeated by Robin. Batman isn't even there! The Master of Menace comes back to town to restore the family name ... but this time Batman is ready for him!

I was thinking this might be a good place to take a break, but I realized that the Outsider storyline is wrapped up in #356, and that's a much better place to take a breather. Just a short one. As dumb as these stories are, I don't find them hard to read. And the back-up is the Elongated Man, which always has Infantino art! It can be pretty dumb sometimes, but I love Ralph and Sue, and I really enjoy most of their silly adventures.

And Batman #256 was in the mail when I got home yesterday! I now have every issue of Batman from #251 to 400!

I already own #256 digitally, so I know what’s in it, and it’s just about as good as a reprint collection can be! “The Penny Plunderers!” Batman Island! The one where the bad guy is called Dr. Doom and he tries to kill Batman and Robin with all the items in the Bat-Cave like the giant penny and the brontosaurus robot!

And now I’m reading Batman #256. It reprints one of my favorite stories, “The Penny Plunderers,” which I’ve read about 1 million times because I have another reprint. I think it’s in “Batman in the ‘40s” (which I seem to have misplaced at some point.)

Poor Joe Coyne! He’s obsessed with pennies! He turns to crime and gets caught by the cops when he robs a cash register that only has pennies in it. So he hates coppers and he hates pennies, but he will get his revenge with COPPER PENNIES!!

“MY CRIME SYMBOL WILL BE PENNIES!!”

And why not? This is Gotham City. Anybody who’s likely to team up with Joe Coyne will very likely be perfectly comfortable with this.

I read Detective #359 a few days ago. The first Barbara Gordon Batgirl! I’m hoping to have some time in the next few days to write a few paragraphs about it and talk about the way the New Look changed as Batman burrowed deeper into the 1960s.

Last night, I read #360. It’s about a Gotham City gangster named Gunshy Barton. He hates guns. He won’t let his henchmen use guns. He comes up with a system to shout code at his gang members so they can carry out his orders and Batman and Robin won’t know what he’s saying. Like he says “HBITF” and it means “Hit Batman in the Face!” and Batman is surprised when they hit him in the face. (Not a real example.)

It’s worse than it sounds somehow.

I think I might have hit another bad run of New Look Detective stories. I don’t remember #361, #362 or #363. I remember #364. It’s my best candidate for worst issue of Detective ever!

And then #365 is the one where the Joker operates an Underworld TV station! I love that one!

I didn’t technically take a break from reading Detective Comics. I’m just reading them more slowly.

I am also reading 1960s Thor. Even though Mr. Trombone and I are up to Journey into Mystery #102 on the review thread, I’m reading ahead quite a bit. I’m up to Thor #126. When it’s my turn to write a review, I go back and re-read the next issue and then write the review. (Hopefully, I’ll have time to review #103 later today.)

I thought it would be fun to synchronize my Thor issues with my Detective issues. Right now, I’m reading Thor from early 1966. The last issue of Detective I read was #369 from late 1967. (With Neal Adams art on the Elongated Man story.) So I’m hoping to read one issue of Detective Comics for every five issues of Thor. Hopefully Thor will get caught up within two or three weeks and I’ll be reading Thor and Detective stories with the same cover date.

I’m shooting to synchronize the two series with the cover date of May 1968. That would be Thor #152 and Detective Comics #375.