And the 'Nam #7 was mostly pencilled by Wayne Vansant and #12 was drawn by John Severin apart from the cover.

OH JOY! This story is reprinted in The Greatest Batgirl Stories Ever Told! So I got to read it last night. WHEEEEEEE!

I think I had this issue when I was a kid. I remember the Joker's Daughter from way back, but specifically the cover I remember is the one with her and Two-Face.

But reading the story from Batman Family #9 … it all looks so familiar! Especially how ridiculous she looks as the Penguin's daughter!

So either I had this for a short time in the 1970s and traded it away for something else, or one of my friends had it and I gave it a quick read at school or at somebody's house over the weekend, or maybe I read it at the drug store and didn't buy it! (This was hard to do at my usual small town drug store, but there were places in some of the nearby towns where you could practically lay on the floor and read comics for an hour.)

I especially love that Irv Novick/Vince Colletta art!

Just thought I'd comment a bit on the DCCP issues I just read....

IN the Batgirl team up (#18) there's no mention of any of the Bat-family, but Barbara does mention she just lost re-election. #31 feature Robin and a circus adventure.. he takes a girl named Angie there, and it's outside Gotham, which doesn't make a huge amount of sense, since he should either at Hudson or with the Titans.

Speaking of the Titans, one of the letters in #31 mentions how awesome the preview in DCCP #26 is.. the letter response claims there were LOTS of positive letters, but they were saving them for the Titans book.

The Batgirl story isn't anything signifigant... the set up is Barbara is going to this fancy mansion for a party to take a vacation after losing the election, (which Clark Kent is covering, naturally) and it turns out the mansion is owned by a mad scientist and makes every that goes into it want to kill each other.

It was definitely work the $1 I paid for it (I got a small lot of 5 DCCP as part of something else I wanted on ebay from the same seller), but probably not worth seeking out.

Detective Comics #483 (MAY 1979)



Okay, so you've survived the DC Implosion and barely managed to save the ailing Detective Comics title by utterly uprooting the concept and content, but oops...we forgot it's the 40th Anniversary of Batman's first appearance in this title.



More than a little odd to be celebrating this immediately after deemphasizing Batman's presence in this title, but Levitz tries his best to put a positive spin on it, and hey, he remembered to acknowledge Bill Finger. So I have to give him respect for the effort.

And, if nothing else, this first story in this volume is a meaningful homage to the anniversary being celebrated...


Batman: "The Curse of Crime Alley"

Script: Denny O'Neil
Pencils: Don Newton
Inks: Dan Adkins
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Todd Klein
Editing: Julius Schwartz

Grade: C+

Denny O'Neil's follow-up to his groundbreaking "There's No Hope in Crime Alley" (Detective Comics #457) has Batman again visiting Crime Alley on the anniversary of his parents' death (and note this story is printed 24 months, or exactly two years, after that previous story). It was an important story two years earlier that lent so much to the Batman mythology, and yet there are still basic aspects of both stories that I struggle with. First, if it's common knowledge that Batman returns to Crime Alley on this night every year





How has no one yet pieced together that this was the same night as the double murder that transformed this street into "Crime Alley", and then gone on to suspect that maybe, just maybe, Batman is Bruce Wayne?

Secondly, why hasn't Batman cleaned up Crime Alley? Seems like that would be the ultimate way to avenge his parents death, but even the people he helps in this and the previous Crime Alley story are astonished that Batman isn't too busy to deal with low level crime like this. It seems like it would take Bruce two weeks of work as Batman and three boardroom meetings as Bruce Wayne to permanently transform Crime Alley.


As for the sequel itself. there isn't all that much to discuss. Batman stumbles upon a plot by crime boss Maxie Zeuss (this is his first appearance, by the way):



to get revenge on a rat that will also result in the death of countless residents of Crime Alley. As Batman attempts to warn and protect them, he is shown just how little he understands of how the other half lives. This particularly haunting moment rang especially true for me:



But, again, how can Bruce be so out of touch with the very place that made him what he is? After all, he has been DC's most street-level hero since Batman #217, published a decade ago. It seems like O'Neil is making Bruce another Hal Jordan, realizing he doesn't understand how the other half lives, but that rings even less true here than it did there, and at least in the pages of Green Lantern, Hal did something with that realization. Here, O'Neil is just setting Batman up to return to the status quo.


This is the earliest Don Newton work I've seen on Batman. Newton might be my favorite Batman artist of all time, but he's still a little more green on these pages. Still, I enjoyed this one image immensely:





Overall, I respect what this story tried to do, but I feel it fell short.



Note: I will no longer be reviewing DC Implosion features inserted into this magazine for brief stints that are in no way related to the Bat Family. Thus, no Human Target nor The Demon this time around.



Batgirl: "A Date with Batgirl"

Script: Bob Rozakis
Pencils: Bob Oksner
Inks: Vince Colletta
Colors: Jerry Serpe
Letters: Ben Oda
Editing: Allen Milgrom

Grade: D+

Rozakis' final work on Batgirl is a true groaner. In typical Rozakis fashion, we have a totally arbitrary bit of continuity exhumed from an earlier issue that will end up serving as the crux of this story:



And then the whole focus of this outing is "What if Batgirl went on a date...AS BATGIRL?"



It's an absurd premise for a story that goes exactly as you'd think it would (lots and lots of autographs, no privacy), and then the ensuing conversation inadvertently offers Batgirl the necessary hint for solving a totally hair-brained clue a villain accidentally gave her:



Were this The Riddler, that would be clever. But a random goon accidentally giving out such a carefully considered clue? Ridiculous.


I'm not familiar with the art of Bob Oksner, but he turns in some odd work, here. His technique is very good, but his choices are...weird:



I guess he didn't know how else to make a discussion about cold chicken parmigiana interesting.



Robin: "Terminus!"

Script: Bob Rozakis
Pencils: Kurt Schaffenberger
Inks: Dave Hunt
Colors: Bob Rozakis [as Boris Zabok]
Letters: Ben Oda

Grade: D-

I guess "Terminus!" sounds more impressive than "conclusion to that storyline I wrote last time around that wasn't all that memorable."

Robin takes down MAZE in one fell swoop without any particular effort on his part. Instead, Duela Dent is back



and doing all the work for him. All Robin had to do was show up and kick a few guys . Bam, the entire organization is done with.

Rozakis had originally planned to turf Duela in this feature after the cancellation of Teen Titans, but Levitz is tossing him off of this feature as of next issue, so I'm happy to see noting more come of that. I'm guessing this is Duela Dent's final appearance until Tales of the Teen Titans #50 six years from now, though I may be mistaken. If that's the case, then this would be her final appearance as an actual crime fighter. Good riddance.

Perhaps the weirdest part of this story is its pacing. MAZE gets defeated right off the bat, leaving the remainder of this story to Robin confronting Raven (no, not that Raven), the one MAZE agent who escaped. It turns out he is the guy Lori Elton has been dating in lieu of Dick Grayson. Dick confronts him, reveals that he knows who he is, and then kicks his butt in front of the entire college campus. And then, when Lori finally sees the mistake she has made in liking another man, Dick drops the shade:



As this is the dramatic end of the issue, I guess we're supposed to be rooting for Dick, here, and thinking "Serves you right, Lori!"

...except for two small problems.

One, nothing has been said about Lori Elton or her new boyfriend since Batman Family #19, eight months and one title ago. Even then, it was depicted exactly once



and clearly wasn't occupying much of Dick's thoughts in the time since.


But okay, let's say you actually remembered this hanging plot thread and actually believed Dick had been so hurt by this as to warrant his little revenge here. Well then, let's look back to Batman Family #18 to remember why Lori left Dick for someone else so abruptly.

Oh, that's right. This happened:



Lori watched a classmate die while Dick ran off (to become Robin), and he didn't even stick around to comfort her in this scene, instead running off to pursue the mystery of who did it.

Seriously, poor Lori.


With Rozakis leaving the Robin feature as of next issue, I wonder if we will be seeing anymore of Lori Elton, here or in any title.



Minor detail: Rozakis was also a colorist?




"Gotham's Great Kangaroo Race!"

Script: Denny O'Neil
Pencils: Dick Dillin
Inks: Frank McLaughlin
Colors: Gene D'Angelo
Letters: Mike Stevens
Editing: Julius Schwartz

Grade: D-

You're wondering, "What the Hell?" I'm wondering, "What the Hell?" and even the folks of Gotham in this story are wondering "What the Hell?" Batman is trying to capture a criminal who he knows is an expert at handling kangaroos and needs some cash, so Bruce decides the most sensible course of action is to hold a massively hyped kangaroo race so that this dude will enter, win, and go home with the prize money that also includes a tracer.

This HAD to be the result of some kind of drunken bet at the DC Office.

The sad part is, Dick Dillon doesn't even show us much of the race, and he certainly doesn't make it exciting. So this is just a really really outlandish means of catching a villain we care nothing about.

Perhaps oddest of all is this little detail O'Neil throws in. A woman asks Bruce for charity for a truly worthy children's cause, and this is his response:



Bruce later anonymously makes sure the charity gets the money it needs.

Okay, but WHY? Why is Bruce out to prove that he's a jerk? What does he gain by doing that? Wouldn't a guy so obsessed with his parents as to devote his life to being a giant bat that fights crime be concerned with overly tarnishing the family name/legacy? I thought the entire point of moving to the Wayne Foundation a decade earlier was to get Bruce more involved with social justice, not less.


All in all, an utterly pointless story that missed its chance to be fun.





Two other minor details in this issue. Some of you might enjoy Dick Giordano's portait of The Bat Family:





And this issue provides a statement of ownership showing just how bleak Detective Comics sales had become:



Average number of copies printed in the past 12 months: 367,965. Number of copies printed of the most recent issue: 211,552. I believe 500,000 was the average sales number for major books around this time period, right? Either way, if the most recent issue is over 150,000 copies lower than the yearly average, that would suggest sales have declined by over 300,000 over the past year. When the statement of ownership rolls around again next year, I'll be curious to see if merging Batman Family into this book did indeed boost sales the way it was intended to.

I would buy that issue in a heartbeat.

Batman did tackle urban renewal at least once, but Batman vs. Starbucks Yuppies would truly be something to see.

Detective Comics #484 (December 1978)



Definitely my favorite cover from this era, and one of my favorites in all of comicdom. When I was a kid, a friend had this in his collection, and I traded heavily for it. I still have no regrets, even if the interior story doesn't match the events of the cover at all.

For what it's worth: The banner logo changes from emphasizing "Batman Family" to emphasizing "Batman starring in Detective Comics" as of this issue.



Batman: "Assault on Olympus!"

Script: Denny O'Neil
Pencils: Don Newton
Inks: Dan Adkins
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Gaspar Saladino
Editing: Julius Schwartz (editor)


Grade: D

It has now been three months since Paul Levitz assumed control over the entire Bat Office, and a certain phenomena is now evident. As I noted waaaaaay back in the day in my review of Batman #313 (on sale this very month), the street level stories Wein was writing in that title have now given way to ludicrous costumed villains pulling Silver Age shenanigans. Similarly here, Denny O'Neil, perhaps the name most commonly associated with the street level Batman stories he'd now been writing for a decade, has made the central focus of these Batman stories fall on Maxie Zeus, an over-the-top colorful villain who would rather make constant references to Greek Mythology and place Batman in impossible death traps than actually kill the dude.





It's a tired old trope, and it isn't Denny O'Neil at all, and yet Maxie Zeus will still be coming back several more times.

Maxie Zeus is a cute enough villain (if you like your villains cute). He even allows Batman to capture him at the close because playing the part of a God correctly matters more to him than actually winning, but my biggest struggle with the ludicrous death-traps and scenarios in this story is just how illogical so much of it is, like how O'Neil and Newton depict Batman escaping from a hydraulic-press ceiling and ravenous wolves at the same time:



I swear I lose brain cells every time I look at this panel.


It's a mess of a story, cute if you long for the simpler Silver-Age stuff, but woefully out of place in 1979, especially with talent like Denny O'Neil and Don Newton in play.



Batgirl: "The Race Against Murder!"

Script: Jack C. Harris
Pencils: Bob Oksner
Inks: Vince Colletta
Colors: Gene D'Angelo
Letters: Mike Stevens

Grade: B


Bob Rozakis' 2.5 year reign of terror on the Batgirl and Robin features is finally over, and Jack C. Harris seems to have no interest in continuing any themes or threads from that time, instead starting fresh with both characters, using these first outings to take them back to their roots. In the case of Batgirl, we are reminded for the first time in ages that she is a congresswoman, in addition to being the daughter of the Commissioner of Police, and Harris explores these competing roles quite well here:



especially as Barbara is forced to wonder if the enemies she has made as a congresswoman are responsible for the attack that has nearly claimed her father's life in this story (spoiler alert: they aren't).

I also appreciate Harris exploring how hard it is to be Batgirl operating in Batman's town, a concept that this feature really hasn't addressed before (largely because Babs is usually operating in Washington, DC):



Elliot S. Maggin would have called attention to the latent sexism here, and Bob Rozakis would have avoided an issue like this entirely, but Harris' Batgirl just rolls with the punch and moves on. Interesting.

We also get to see the more playful side of Batgirl that Rozakis seldom (if ever) explored:



In so many ways, this feels like a return to all Maggin was doing right with the character at the beginning of this run, as well as an unspoken promise to get no more stories based on stupid and semi-sexist concepts like "Ooh, what if Batgirl went on a date...as Batgirl!". When written correctly, Batgirl is the most complex character in the Bat Family, and Harris seems to be getting that.

As for what he isn't getting, man is Batgirl a terrible detective:



It took her most of the story to figure that out? And, weirder yet, the assassin didn't expect her to figure it out at all??

There are several moments like this in the story, and it isn't just Batgirl. Commissioner Gordon is conscious and being attended to by an assassin posing as a nurse, but only Batgirl figures out that she must not be a real nurse because she is wearing clunky, cumbersome jewelry on the clock. How does a career policeman who rose to the top not figure this out for himself, especially when he knows someone is trying to kill him?

Harris really needs to work on the detective aspect of this feature.

Also, he commits my least favorite conceit in a Batman/Batman-related story: introducing a new crime boss that has never been mentioned before who is supposed to be the biggest bad guy in Gotham:



Man, that trope gets old fast.


Minor Details:

-I may not like Paul Levitz' push for Batman writers to adopt a more Silver Age approach in their storytelling, but I do like his push for continuity. It's nice to see the stories in this volume aligning in minor ways:




- Why would the police be able to reconstruct the fragments of the envelope belonging to a letter bomb? Wouldn't the individual pieces be incinerated, or at least burned?






Robin: "The Return of the Flying Graysons!"
Script: Jack C. Harris
Pencils: Kurt Schaffenberger
Inks: Frank Chiaramonte
Colors: Jerry Serpe
Letters: Albert De Guzman

Grade: C

Much as with the Batgirl feature, Jack Harris is attempting to take this one back to its roots. Whereas with Batgirl, this involved re-examining her multiple roles and responsibilities in a way that hadn't been tackled in over two years, his approach with Robin is far simpler -- take him back to where it all began, and have him remember his own origin, all while dealing with a new conflict that closely resembles that one.



Haley's Circus has a new Flying Graysons act (though it's just a stage name), and it sure looks like someone is trying to kill them too!

The mystery proves decent but underwhelming, but the most important thing this story does is give Harris a chance to retell Robin's origin. In an age before the rise of trade paperback collections, but after the demise of double-size reprint issues and annuals, I wonder how many chances fans reading this title had ever gotten to actually experience Robin's origin.

Well, here it is, for anyone who needed it:



And, of course, this origin ties Robin to Batman in a way that both Maggins and Rozakis were moving away from. This Robin repeatedly refers to training he received from Batman in this story, and Kurt Schaffenberger even seems to be drawing him a little younger. Thus, while I loved what Harris did for Batgirl in this issue, I'm a little more hesitant with his depiction of Robin as the eternal kid sidekick. I sincerely hope he'll be moving away from that in later issues.


Important Details:

- Mr. Haley knows Dick is Robin (though he does not tell this to Dick):



It makes total sense. He would know Dick's aerial style and technique better than anyone, and Robin's very first appearance was in dealing with the thugs who killed Dick's parents. By extension, this would mean Haley knows who Batman is too.


Minor Details:

- Bruce Wayne indirectly sends Haley a check every month that allows the circus to continue to stay afloat.

- Dick will be returning to Haley's circus once again in DC Comics Presents #31, two years from now. It's been a while since I read it, but I thought I recalled Dick remarking that he hadn't visited in years, and that the circus had fallen on hard times. Perhaps the writer and editor of that story totally missed this one.

- Dick seems to have a new cast of friends to replace Lori Elton, as well as the other familiar faces from his old solo feature that seldom made their way into the Elliot S! Maggins and Bob Rozakis runs:



They have not been named yet.



Unsolved Cases of the Batman: "The Galileo Solution"

Script: Denny O'Neil
Pencils: John Calnan
Inks: Frank McLaughlin
Colors: Jerry Serpe
Letters: Todd Klein

Grade: D-

Unsolved Cases of the Batman was a short-lived backup feature in Batman that ended with the DC Implosion. As this one was edited by Julie Schwartz, it is most certainly old inventory from that era and not a new attempt to resurrect the feature. It proves every bit as forgettable as the other unsolved cases that really isn't worth getting into, except that the ending confuses me:



1. How is it an unsolved case? Unresolved, perhaps. But Batman clearly determined whodunnit.

2. Why isn't Batman's testimony enough to lock this guy up? "He tried to lock me in a death trap and murder me while confessing to what he did" should be enough in a city where the police trust and work with Batman regularly.



I can't say I'm thrilled with Paul Levitz' vision for this or any Batman title at this point, but Jack C. Harris is at least giving me hope for the two features that matter most to me in this run. I'm not happy with his depiction of Robin as of yet, but he hasn't done anything to utterly turn me off yet, and Batgirl is more promising a feature than it's been since Elliot S. Maggin departed 2.5 years earlier.

For the first time in a long while, I actually look forward to the next issue.