Detective Comics #219 (May 1955)




So World's Finest is Bi-monthly, and Batman is published eight times a year (no January, May, July, and November). I get that, in the publishing game, shelf space is at a premium and you don't want to print anything that isn't going to sell, but was there a reason for skipping these particular months? Anyway, these three very different publishing schedules result in two issues of Detective Comics occurring back to back here in these reviews.



"Gotham City's Strangest Race!"

Script: ?
Pencils: Sheldon Moldoff
Inks: Charles Paris
Colors: ?
Letters: ?

Grade: D


Seriously, what is going on with these titles at this point? Two months ago, they were firing on all engines, and nearly all of them were written by Bill Finger. Now they're all losers, and the one Finger script we got in the past month was hardly any better.

This feels like the work of Edmund Hamilton again, with yet another script centered upon a club for wealthy and eccentric hobbyists. This time it's an entire town that shuts down once per year for an antique car convention. And here comes the lame justification for why Batman and Robin need to drive and race an antique Batmobile in this story:



Seriously, the town can't let deputized law enforcement people drive a modern car while trying to thwart dangerous crime? Batman doesn't even bother to ask. And since when do entire towns shutdown and declare this kind of edict for the sake of bored, elite hobbyists? What about the regular, middle class folk living in that town who need to drive to work?

If this is Hamilton writing, he is at least more skeptical of eccentric hobbyists this time. Whereas his Gotham Explorers Club was admirable in its work, his Gotham Heroes Club could take down legitimate crooks in their midsts, and his Batmen of All Nations were actual, legitimate crimefighters, being an antique car enthusiast is depicted as wasteful here:




Meanwhile, Sheldon Moldoff's art continues to bother me. For example, immediately after the narration specifically draw attention to the sleekness of the modern 1955 Batmobile, Moldoff draws it and gets the perspective completely wrong, making it look awkward and cumbersome:




And how about this scene, where the script calls for Bruce to dive safely under the car, but Moldoff gets the perspective wrong, making it look like Bruce is about to go under both sets of wheels:




And I truly have no idea what is happening here, during the climactic struggle, nor who is saying, "Don't give up, Batman!":




The plot is both stupid and a rip-off. The world's greatest detectives cannot figure out why criminals would want to disassemble a car other than to uncover Batman's secret identity:



I guess they've never heard of smugglers before? I mean, the answer is so obvious that the writer even teases us, asking the readers if we've solved the mystery yet.

...Only it's oddly more specific than that. The final solution comes completely out of left field and requires a ton of backstory we were never given previously:



A solution that we had no way of guessing, all while baiting us like it was obvious from the clues we'd been given.



Crappy, crappy story.



Minor Details:

1. Whereas Bill finger implied in World's Finest Comics #74 that Batman and Robin only go on patrol as needed, and Edmond Hamilton showed them going on a regular morning patrol in Batman #91, this writer has them doing a regular evening patrol instead:



So which is it?

Did they repurpose art for an Atom story or something.. no, can't be that, too early. Seems like someone just wanted to draw a giant engine, and attempted to build a story around that.

I agree that these last few have been a complete left turn from the first copy code stories... clearly there's no thought to any sort of consistency, just filling the pages.

It’s time for a few words about Gotham City newspapers!

I think Shaxper is correct about the status of the Gotham Gazette as the Gotham newspaper most commonly cited in the 1940s and the 1950s. (I was going to do some research to help strengthen this statement, but I had a long day. I work in animal rescue (part-time) and today I got involved in trying to catch a little kitten. It was several hours out of my day when I was planning on working on this. I’ve decided not to put off my Gotham newspaper comments any longer and just go with a few notes I made already. That kitten was very hard to catch. We eventually called in one of the trap experts and I’m very confident we’re going to have a happy ending. The kitten is not feral. It looks like a pure blood Siamese or a Himalayan. It’s just a very suspicious little kitten.)

I’ve been reading old Batman comics for a very long time. Decades! Since the 1970s, when I was reading all the reprints I could find. And I’ve long been under the impression that the Gotham Gazette is Gotham’s top newspaper! It is referred to constantly, from the 1940s and into the early 1960s, maybe longer!

But it’s not Gotham’s only newspaper! I also see a newspaper called the Gotham News a lot. And there are others! So many others!

And it’s not surprising. If Gotham is based on New York City, then it should have a bunch of newspapers. Maybe six or seven dailies! And specialty newspapers! In Yiddish or German maybe. There might be a newspaper for the African-American community. And since this is Gotham City, the Underworld might have its own newspaper! (And it did! In Detective Comics #193, the Clown Prince of Crime established his own rag, the Joker’s Journal!)

I have a reprint of Detective Comics #114 with a story called “Acrostic of Crime.” It’s a Joker story and, for some reason, the Joker spends a lot of time scrapbooking. He has all the newspapers, and he’s gloating over the headlines about how he’s made Batman look like a fool. He has his scissors and he’s cutting out the articles and putting them in his scrapbook!

From this one story, we have these named newspapers serving Gotham City:

Times-Dispatch
Courier Star
Post Journal
Daily Express
Daily Telegram
World-Examiner
The Spectator
News-Journal
Daily Star

And of course ... The Gotham Gazette.

I hunted up two stories I remembered where specific Gotham City journalists play a major part. (This is in addition to any Vicki Vale stories. She deserves a lengthy comment of her own. Besides, she’s a photographer for a magazine (either Vue or Picture Magazine) and so she’s not strictly speaking a newspaper journalist.)

Batman #157, in a story titled “Villain of the Year,” presents the adventures of Batman and Robin as they tangle repeatedly with a villain called the Jackal. This wily fellow robs the crooks right after a major crime. The Caped Crusaders are getting some help from a reporter named Hal Lake, who writes a column called Underworld Confidential. He turns out to be the Jackal! However Hal Lake is suffering from a personality disorder and has no memory of his activities as the Jackal.

Unfortunately, the name of the newspaper that publishes the Underworld Confidential column is not named.

We have to go back a ways for the other story, back to Batman #19. It’s called “Batman Makes a Deadline” and it’s about a reporter named Larry Spade. He’s been told he’s dying, that he only has a few days to live! But he’s working on a big story about a corrupt, murderous insurance racket! He puts in quite an effort to get the story, and he succeeds in getting Batman on the trail of the criminals. With the help of Batman and Robin, the dying journalist is able to hand on his last big story on time just before he dies.

The newspaper is called the Gotham City Graphic.

I couldn’t find writer credits for either of these stories.

And from now on, I’m going to keep a close eye on the Bill Finger stories, to see if he made a habit of using the Gotham Gazette.

A big city like Gotham would easily have that many newspapers back then, Hoosier X. (Remeber, not all of them were necessarily dailies.)

In New York City in the 40s, you had at least these nine (off the top of my head) plus papers that covered boroughs or catered to certain audiences, like the Amsterdam News, which served the African-American community.

New York Times

Daily News

New York Post

PM

Herald-Tribune

Journal-American

Wall Street Journal

Daily Mirror

New York World-Telegram

PS: Check out Batman coverage here: www.gothamgazette.com

Holy crud. David V. Reed was writing in 1952? No wonder his stuff seemed so tedious by 1979.

In addition to writing some really good Batman stories in the 1950s (like “The Gorilla Boss of Gotham City”), Reed also wrote the beloved four-part “Where Were You on the Night Batman Was Killed” storyline in Batman #291 to #294.

I was reading Batman sporadically in the late 1970s. (I was way more into Marvel comics at that point.) So I got a bunch of these 1970s David Reed stories brand-new off the stands. Looking at Mike’s Amazing World, I see that Reed wrote the Riddler story in Batman #279 (the first issue of Batman I bought brand new), the Penguin two-parter in #287 and #288, and the Mad Hatter story in #297.

These are all fun Batman stories that I enjoy as much now as I did back in the 1970s.

There’s a lot of 1970s Reed stories I haven’t read. But I like most of the ones I’ve seen.

I mean, yeah, he wrote the return of Dr. Tzin-Tzin in #283 and #284. That’s not good. But it’s another one that I read regularly, because it’s so bonkers!

To slightly paraphrase one of our old friends, "Joy, gentle friend! Joy and fresh days of love accompany your heart!"

Happiest of birthdays, shaxper!