Detective Comics #492 (July 1980)



A major major issue for Batgirl fans, especially with a cover like this one. We already know that Paul Levitz believed the rest of the Batman Family needed to be downgraded in order to more clearly establish Batman as their superior (he outright said this in an earlier letter page), and yet we also know that Batgirl had been the lead selling point of The Batman Family's early days (well, specifically the Batgirl/Robin team-ups, but she was clearly the lead in those stories). So, after change upon change designed to take Babs Gordon down several pegs, she gets the central focus of this issue with an unprecedented two-parter that extends across both Batman's and Batgirl's features for this issue, and it seems designed to accomplish two goals at once:

1. Gauge fan reaction to Batgirl nearly dying and nearly quitting. Does she still have a lot of support in the readership? Perhaps, enough to make her the one backup feature that will continue once Detective comics shrinks back to its standard size in four more issues?

2. Give Batgirl a new direction forward. She can't be the powerful Senator/more empowered member of the Batgirl & Robin duo anymore under Levitz' edict, but she can grow into a different but equally compelling hero.

As a result, what follows is perhaps the finest Batgirl story I've ever read, even if it is compelled to portray a far weaker Babs Gordon, hopelessly living in the shadow of Batman:




Batman and Batgirl: "Vengeance Trail"

Script: Cary Burkett
Pencils: Don Newton
Inks: Dan Adkins
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: A+

Last issue, we saw Batgirl take a near-point blank bullet shot and then fall off a roof to her supposed death. Interesting in hindsight how similar this move feels to what was ultimately done to Barbara Gordon eight years later, but it's done for a very different reason here. While the explanation of how Batgirl didn't actually die is a bit of a cheat:



it sets the stage for an equally meaningful consequence from this defeat:



and ultimately allows for Babs' metaphorical resurrection into a tougher, more resolved hero:






Burkett's writing fires on all engines, and Don Newton (who, up to this point, didn't feel like the first rate talent he'd soon become) comes alive on this story, adding so much subtext with his gorgeous penciling, aided by Adkins' inks:




I especially like the unexpectedly strong characterization lent to a Pre-Crisis James Gordon, whose example helps shape the hero Batgirl learns to become by the close just as meaningfully as Batman's:




It's a damn shame that the later Batgirl Special will simply dismiss the second part of this story and decide that Batgirl has been haunted by her would-be killer ever since, and an even greater crime what Len Wein and Alan Moore do to her after that.

But for this short, beautiful stretch, Batgirl is empowered and well-written once again, even if we need to be constantly reminded that she is not in the same league as Batman.


Important Details:

- Batgirl is nearly killed by Cormorant, seriously considers quitting, and then returns to take down Cormorant and General Scar.


Minor Details:

- There are soooo many Newton panels I want to post and discuss here, bu this review is already looking to be pretty image-heavy, so I'll refrain.

- In the letters page, Levitz indicates that Newton was submitting his work from Phoenix, Arizona and had no actual contact with the writers with whom he was working. I was not aware of this.

- Since when is Batgirl nick-named The Dark Knight Maid? That's...terrible.






Tales of Gotham City: "Fifty Million Tons of Soul!"

Script: Bob Haney
Pencils: Bob Oksner
Inks: Bob Smith
Colors: ?
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: B-

This opening page alone would have made a perfect self-contained story for me:



If the purpose of this feature is to tell the story of the little people in Gotham, we got it in spades. That's all we really needed.

But we have pages to fill, so a conflict is introduced. Surprisingly, it's a really good one - a young man, willing to kill himself over losing his girlfriend, and their exchange atop this bridge feels disturbingly real, especially the manipulative reaction of the suicidal man:





but Haney can't let a Comics Code-approved story end in a suicide, so he takes a turn for the absurd, with a bunch of criminal fleeing from the police and grabbing the ex-girlfriend as a hostage. What follows is utterly ridiculous:



That it ends with the guy and the girl getting back together (after, ya know, the guy trying to guilt-trip the girl with his suicide), as well as the guy who designed the bridge showing up at the last minute to aid in the struggle and then dying on the bridge, admiring that it still lives, is just far far too much for a story that started as grounded in realism as this one did.




Man-Bat: "We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay..."

Script: Bob Rozakis
Pencils: Romeo Tanghal
Inks: Vince Colletta
Colors: Gene D'Angelo
Letters: Ben Oda

Grade: C-

Levitz explains in the letters page that there has been a change of plans in regard to this fifth feature; Black Lightning will be appearing regularly, but not every issue. So we have Bob Rozakis writing Man-Bat again.

Joy.

And, just as with Jason Bard's story last issue, no mention is made of the fact that, the last time we had seen Bard and Man-Bat in this title, they were working together as partners.

As for the story itself, it's neither memorably good nor memorably bad. Man-Bat believes his wife and daughter (who is now significantly older than the last time we saw her--remember, she was born in this title) are being held by a gang on the subway. Turns out it's an enormous mutant rat instead, which might have been too absurd to take seriously if Romeo Tanghal hadn't done such an excellent job with the rat's utterly realistic depiction:



It's utterly forgettable, but utterly forgettable is pretty great for both Bob Rozakis and Man-Bat.




Robin: "The First Bird"

Script: Jack C. Harris
Pencils: Charles Nicholas
Inks: Vince Colletta
Colors: Gene D'Angelo
Letters: Milt Snapinn

Grade: D-


I have to keep reminding myself that I was begging for someone to come in and take this run away from Bob Rozakis. Who would have ever expected Jack C. Harris to be even worse?

It's not enough for Harris to relegate Robin to D-level campus mysteries anymore. Now, let's bring in Batman's single most unimpressive villain of all time and have Robin panic about whether he even has the capability to take him down:



It's not like Robin took down the Scarecrow on his own six issues earlier, confidently and without any doubt about his ability to do so.

And the plot just gets dumber from there:




Plus, let's be clear that Penguin specifically came to Hudson University in order to capture Robin:



So he's done enough research to realize Robin operates exclusively at Hudson U these days, and then didn't bother to try to figure out if he was one of the students on campus? Maybe a student who used to live in Gotham? Maybe a student who was briefly active in Washtington DC at the same time that Robin was? With the same physical build and hair color?

Seriously, if Batman's villains are aware Robin works specifically at Hudson University and go there to hunt them down, then its sheer laziness to pretend they wouldn't quickly extrapolate his and Batman's secret identities.


Anyway, it's crazy to consider that, in four months' time, New Teen Titans #1 will debut, with an extremely different depiction of Robin. I doubt it's coincidence that this is the exact same month in which the Batman Family format is retired, and Robin's solo stories here are ended.


Minor Details:

- I guess "Baldy" Baldwin is intended to be a recurring character at this point



though the GCD doesn't indicate that we will ever see him again.





All in all, one of the finest issues of Batman Family/'Tec we've yet seen, just when I was checking out on this run. While the Batman Family format will expire in four more issues, this gives me hope that the Batgirl backup feature that continues beyond that point may be worthy of attention.

Incidentally, Levitz acknowledges in this issue that sales are not good AND that he's already planning seven issues out:



He must have at least suspected this book's dollar format was doomed.

I wish this was still around. Newton is one of my favorite artists of all time, even with the brief window of time in which he was active before his untimely death.

As I've stated before, Newton was the first artist that I really connected with and the first that I started following as an artist rather than following characters. I first discovered him in the last issue of Charlton's Phantom and then followed him trough most of his career at DC.

Since she had to take a part-time job cleaning up stately Wayne Manor.  

It was pretty comprehensive, covering his fanzine work extensively, up through his pro stuff.  Ton of fanzine art pieces, on all kinds of characters, especially Golden Age heroes and some early Silver Age.

I own the original to this piece.....



Here are a few more of his fanzine pieces....

Well, I only own the Black Terror one; but, it is pretty darn cool.  Some of the lettering has fallen off, though, as it was pasted on.  As for the others, I saved some images that I liked from the former website, a while back, before it disappeared.  I would kill, or possibly just maim, for any of his artwork from The Phantom #70, "The Mystery of the Mali Ibex," with the big Bogart riff.