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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 22, 2023 10:14:35 GMT -5
I haven’t read any old comics since I finished my readthrough on Avengers #1 to #79.
So I’m thinking of starting my long-term project of reading all my consecutive issues of Detective Comics. I have every issue from #244 to the present, so that’s more than 800 issues, from 1957 to 2023.
I did this a few years ago when I started about #390 and read up to the end of the New 52 because I didn’t want to get into Rebirth.
I might start over the weekend.
Or I might not.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 22, 2023 19:40:47 GMT -5
I hadn’t planned to get started so soon on my project to read Detective Comics from 1957 to the present. But while I was working today, I remembered that Detective #244 contains “The 100 Batarangs of Batman,” which is a story I’ve long had a great fondness for, and it’s also one I’ve not read over and over again. So as soon as I got home from work, I pulled out #244 and read the whole issue.
Some generic Gotham gangsters visit one of the city’s biggest Batman fans, with a large collection of Batman-related items, and they ask to see his Batman films, particularly the films using batarangs. (He says he buys them from newsreel cameramen.) The collector, not realizing they are gangsters, is happy to share his collection with fellow Batman fans. But they knock him unconscious and steal the films.
He reports to the cops, and Gordon tells Batman about the theft. So Batman and Robin spend about eight pages looking at all the specific cases that involved different kinds of batarangs, and making up a list of suspects who might have stolen the films.
Batman also talks about the case where he met the Australian who taught him how to use boomerangs. He was already Batman, and he chased some crooks to a carnival where the Australian was demonstrating boomerang tricks.
About every three panels of the flashback sequence, Batman and Robin, in hushed tones, whisper “Gosh! I hope they haven’t heard about Batarang X!” And they look over at the closet labeled “WARNING! BATARANG X!”
It cracks me up every time!
After they’ve narrowed down the probable suspects, they bring in the collector to look at some mugshots, and he identifies the guys who stole his film.
And so they figure out what’s going on, track down the bad guys, and end up using Batarang X to foil their plans and round up the bad guys.
I won’t spoil it by revealing the secret of Batarang X.
I like this story because of the little clues it gives us about Gotham City’s Batman culture. There must be any number of Batman nerds like the collector in the story. And they buy films from newsreel cameramen and they probably pore over every crime scene involving Batman to pick up stray batarangs and bat-lines and two-headed coins and umbrellas and various kinds of Bat-memorabilia.
The Roy Raymond story involves some impossible things happening. As usual. But this time Roy is stumped! It turns out one of his crew is his descendent from 100 years in the future who has traveled to 1957 to celebrate his ancestor’s birthday with some 21st-century inventions that are unexplainable to mid-20th century minds. Because reasons!
And the Martian Manhunter story involves John Jones taking a vacation and going to Hollywood to visit his friend who is making a movie about firefighters. The last four stunts are so dangerous that no stunt man will do them. John agrees to help so his friend won’t go broke. And in each stunt, John has to figure out some way to get around his weakness to fire.
This is a notable story for being one of the early Martian Manhunter stories where he never appears in his Martian form. Not even once, not even in a symbolic panel.
Coming up next! “The Dynamic Trio!”
Guest starring Vicki Vale! (I probably won’t go into much detail on that one.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 25, 2023 11:53:34 GMT -5
A couple of nights ago, I read “The Dynamic Trio!” in Detective #245. I’ve been familiar with this one for a few years because it was reprinted in one of the Batman annuals in the 1960s. It wasn’t a story I thought about very much. It’s one of those stories where Batman and Robin are being helped by a third mystery hero because REASONS!
In this case it’s Mysteryman! And it turns out to be Commissioner Gordon ... because REASONS!
This time around, I liked it a lot better.
For one thing, there’s an unnamed mayor of Gotham! And he’s mad at Gordon because he can’t stop all the fugitive criminals being smuggled through Gotham City and out of the country. (Somebody has resurrected Joe Chill’s old racket from Batman #47.) So the mayor orders Gordon to hand the case over to Batman and Robin.
It’s great to see any of the Gotham City government aside from the police department! It’s too bad he’s not named. It’s also great to see how calmly Gordon handles this shouty bureaucrat. Judging by the number of mayors and the way that Robin only ages three or four years between Detective #38 and Detective #326, Gotham has a new mayor every three or four months. But Gordon is always there, puffing on his pipe and pretending to disapprove of the GCPD rank-and-file betting on how long the latest mayor will last.
Another thing I like about this story is the way that Vicki Vale is used! She’s there on almost every page, relentlessly trying to decipher the mystery of Mysteryman! It must be Superman! Maybe he’s a robot! She even sticks him with a pin in one scene! (Oh man! That is SO Vicki Vale!)
In the end, she figures out that it’s Gordon. And Batman wanted her to find out! You see, Gordon had a plan about how to deal with the fugitive-smuggling racket, but Mayor Shouty had ordered him off the case. But Batman needed his close cooperation, so they came up with Mysteryman so that he could help Batman and Robin.
Gordon wanted it to be a secret, even after they had rounded up the bad guys. But Mayor Shouty’s ploy to humiliate the commissioner didn’t sit well with Batman, so he didn’t try very hard to keep the secret from Vicki. When the story was published in Vue magazine, Vicki got the scoop and Gordon got the credit for his role in terminating the fugitive-smuggling operation.
Take that, Mayor Shouty!
As for Roy Raymond ... I read it two nights ago and I’ve already forgotten what happened.
In the Martian Manhunter story, some gangsters find out that Detective Jones has a weakness to fire. So they start adding a little arson to all their criminal operations. With hilarious results! This is another story where John Jones never appears in his Martian form.
In the next issue of Detective Comics ... the first appearance of Diane Meade!
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 2, 2023 16:33:49 GMT -5
I was just about to read Detective Comics #249. I love this one! It’s one of my favorites from this era. I’ll probably write about it at length.
I decided to write just a few comments about Detective #246 to #248 before moving on.
Honestly? I like all these stories! The creative team is on a roll!
#246 - Murder at Mystery Castle! One of those stories where a murder is committed at an isolated place where there are a limited number of suspects and each of them has a motive! In this one, the murder has something to do with an ice cube setting off a crossbow.
I like the Gotham geography in this one. The castle is on an island upriver, and the river banks appear to be nothing but 100-foot cliffs for miles around.
In the Martian Manhunter story, we get the first appearance of Diane Meade! She’s passed all the tests and is now ready to be a patrolwoman! She gets assigned to follow Detective Jones around. Oh dear! He has to be very careful not to give away the big secret that he’s an alien with powers that change every issue! But keep in mind that Jones has been keeping his Martian form under wraps. Nobody knows that there’s a Martian living on Earth and helping to fight crime. So there’s no way that Diane can suspect that he’s the Martian Manhunter.
When they meet, Detective Jones thinks “She’s very attractive ... for an Earthling!” He must have a thing for bright orange hair.
And then she disappears for thirty issues.
#247 - Have you ever seen the Robot Chicken segment where Batman is afraid of bats? Well, that happens in this issue! Professor Milo hits Batman with a ray that makes him afraid of bats! So he tears the Batman emblem off his costume. And Batman and Robin have to walk because Batman is afraid of the Batmobile. And Batman runs away from a kid with a bat-shaped kite.
It’s hilarious!
He appears as a hero called Starman for a few pages, but finally Robin says “Enough!” and ties Bruce to a chair and makes him look at bats until he’s cured.
The Roy Raymond story has a giant mechanical bloodhound that can find anything. It’s a fake, of course. But the thing is so darn goofy that this is one of my favorite Roy Raymond, TV Detective stories.
#248 - “Around the World in Eight Days!”
Some thieves rob a hospital. Among the radium and other very valuable items is a serum that is vital to the survival of one of the patients. The serum takes a month to produce but the patient will likely only survive eight days without it!
Batman and Robin discover that the items were sold to an international crime syndicate and they find a map with pins in it showing where the booty went, but the pins aren’t itemized! So they have eight days to investigate sites in Holland, Paris, Greece, Southeast Asia, Mexico ... some other places. And of course, the serum is in the last place they look.
I mean, it’s nothing to write home about, but it’s fun as hell.
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 19, 2023 19:53:12 GMT -5
I read Detective Comics #249 over a week ago but I got kind of busy and didn’t get around to writing anything about it until today.
It’s called “The Crime of Bruce Wayne!” And not only does Bruce go to prison, he’s on Death Row for a few pages!
How could this happen!?
Well, there’s a villain called the Collector! He’s a guy in a tuxedo who wears a Lone Ranger mask and he steals high-priced museum items that people might collect. Like statues and paintings. I think it’s implied that he’s stealing these items for his own collection. (I read it over a week ago so I’m a bit cloudy on some of the details.)
He’s one step ahead of Batman as he abandons the getaway car on a pier and escapes in a speedboat. Better luck next time, Dynamic Duo!
Commissioner Gordon asks Bruce Wayne to do him a favor. He wants Bruce to pretend to be the Collector so he can be sent to prison where he can help thwart a prison break. Only Gordon will know! Even the warden won’t know that it’s a set-up.
While Bruce is imprisoned, Robin teams up with Batwoman. They tell Gordon that Batman is in Europe.
Bruce Wayne gets in on the escape attempt by mentioning he’s rich and that he would pay a bunch of dough to anyone who would help him get out. But the master planner of the escape is killed during the attempt. The other convicts realize that Bruce was going to turn them in so they tell the guards that Bruce was trying to force them to try to escape and when the leader objected, Bruce killed him!
So Bruce is quickly found guilty of murder and goes straight to Death Row!
1957! They didn’t mess around!
The Collector has been keeping a low profile but we do see him in a few panels, dressed in his tuxedo and his Lone Ranger mask, reading about Bruce Wayne’s trials and tribulations in the Gotham Gazette, and gloating that somebody else is being punished for his crimes.
Bruce thinks this has gone too far and he tries to speak to the warden to tell him to talk to Gordon. But Gordon has been in a car accident and is in a coma!
So now Robin and Batwoman are trying to capture the real Collector, and they find some evidence that Bruce can’t be the Collector, but it’s comic-book evidence! Something to do with fibers that prove the Collector wears a wig. Or maybe he dyes his hair? Something like that. The police are dubious.
Anyway, everything somehow works out in the end. I don’t remember how. Probably because it makes no sense.
Wow, do I love this story!
I should add that Batman is not on the cover! I think that was very rare in the 1950s.
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 20, 2023 21:31:48 GMT -5
Over the last week or so, I’ve read Detective Comics #250, #251 and #252. I wanted to talk about these three issues in a group because, to me, this is where the Jack Schiff sci-fi era starts.
Yes, there had been some sci-fi elements here and there in the Batman stories, like the adventure with Brane Taylor, and various robots and mad scientists and, just a few issues previously (#243), a story where Batman grows to a great size. We’re about to see a lot more of that kind of stuff.
In the past, I characterized the late Jack Schiff era as a parade of random aliens, giant monsters and strange transformations. We are not yet to the point where it seems to happen every month, but looking at the covers of these next three issues, you get an idea of what’s in store in the years to come.
Well, maybe not the cover of #250. The story is labeled “Batman’s Super-Enemy!” and it shows a guy in an orange dress suit tossing a car at Batman and Robin. It doesn’t say anything about where he might have gotten super-powers. You have to read the story to find out it was aliens!
But you don’t see the aliens. And no one ever communicates with them directly. The bad guy is in a rural area on the outskirts of Gotham, hiding out from Batman and Robin. And he finds a spaceship with some remarkable gifts! A pre-recorded telepathic message informs him that these items are from a friendly alien race that wants to offer its inventions to beings across the universe. However, the message warns that one of the gifts is meant only for destruction and is not to be used except as a last resort.
So he goes back to Gotham, gets his gang back together and starts gunning for Batman! He has a ray that grants super-strength and a ray for paralysis and a freezing ray. Batman barely escapes with his life several times!
Finally, the bad guy uses the destruction device. And it makes all the gifts disappear. It was a fail-safe included by the aliens in case their gifts fell into unworthy hands. (Which sounds a lot like something that might happen in an EC story drawn by Krigstein, just with Batman thrown in.)
So the aliens aren’t on the cover, and in the story, nobody ever interacts directly with any aliens. It’s almost like Schiff is carefully tip-toeing into sci-fi concepts, unsure of how it will be received, and saving the big-headed, green-skinned conquerors from outer space for later.
This is going to be a theme in the next two issues as we get teased with aliens, transformations and giant monsters that, despite appearances, just aren’t there.
#251 gives us “The Alien Batman!” Vicki Vale follows her news instincts and gets a photo of Batman meeting a spaceship and removing his mask to reveal that he’s an alien too! Oh no! Batman has been turned into an alien! Or maybe he was an alien all along!
Well, no, Batman isn’t an alien. It was a plot by the Gotham Underworld to discredit Batman by making everybody think Batman is an alien. The spaceship was a cleverly disguised helicopter and a bunch of generic Gotham gangsters were playing dress-up and framing Batman.
A+ for imagination, fellas!
So that was a pretty good gimmick cover! BATMAN IS AN ALIEN! I bet the kids bought it ... but there are no aliens!
In #252, we get a giant monster on the cover, “The Creature from the Green Lagoon,” and we get a big, weird monster menacing a movie shooting on location for several pages, but it turns out to be a robot! You see, the location assistant discovered a lagoon with an oyster bed of rare black pearls and he somehow built a giant reptile robot to scare everybody away so he could harvest the pearls himself.
So the giant monster is a fake!
I love all these stories, by the way, especially #251 because Vicki Vale plays a pretty good role. It’s just interesting to me, the way that Schiff is sticking his toe in the water and then possibly waiting to see if there’s any backlash.
But don’t worry! There’ll be plenty of onscreen aliens and real monsters roaming the pages of Detective Comics soon enough!
But not just yet! The next issue is The Terrible Trio! These guys are a SCREAM!!
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 25, 2023 10:55:55 GMT -5
After three issues where
1. Aliens sent a package of amazing inventions to Earth where they were misused by a generic Gotham gangster ...
2. A Gotham Underworld hoax causes residents and the police to think Batman was an alien ...
3. And a giant monster disrupting a movie location turned out to be a robot ...
... Detective Comics offered up three issues of much more recognizable material.
#253 features the Fox, the Vulture and the Shark, a trio of criminal engineers, each of whom specializes in crimes based on elaborate devices that enable them to show their contempt for law and order on land, air and sea. (I have loved this story since I saw it reprinted in Batman #176. Moldoff has really outdone himself on character design and on the art as a whole on this issue.)
#254 has a great Ace cover! Batman and Robin are on a ship and the bad guys are firing a harpoon gun at them! Fortunately Ace the Bat-Hound is there to leap in the air and intercept the harpoon with his jaws! The story inside is cool. It starts with a hobo overheating a scientist saying he’s going to make a fortune with what’s in a box, and the hobo leans in the window and steals the box when the scientist leaves the room. Well, the box contains a tiny but powerful radio-active bomb that is set to explode thirty minutes after it is removed from the capsule. Gordon gets hold of Batman and Robin and they take Ace along to help track the box. The clock is ticking!
#255 has a story titled “Death in Dinosaur Hall!” Gotham City has a new elaborate museum/amusement park about to open - Dinosaur Hall! There are lots of giant robots representing dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures at the exhibit. But there’s been a murder! And pretty much everybody who works there is a suspect. Yeah. One of those. With robot dinosaur added.
I like all these stories. It’s all pretty down-to-Earth.
But it’s about to get pretty weird very fast!
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Post by Calidore on Mar 25, 2023 13:08:31 GMT -5
A dog in a cape and mask snatching a harpoon out of the air with its jaws being part of a relatively down-to-earth story is why comics are great.
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 25, 2023 13:31:37 GMT -5
A dog in a cape and mask snatching a harpoon out of the air with its jaws being part of a relatively down-to-earth story is why comics are great. I was going to comment that it’s never been re-printed. But I decided to double check. And it turns out that “One Ounce of Doom!” from Detective Comics #254 was very recently re-printed in Batman: The Silver Age Omnibus, Volume One. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 11, 2023 22:35:03 GMT -5
I ordered a beat-up (2.0) copy of Detective #238 for only $70.
If I had any idea what was happening on the cover, I would describe it to you.
I’ll give it a try.
There’s three oddly-shaped doors and I guess all of them mean DOOM!
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Post by Prince Hal on Apr 12, 2023 15:09:45 GMT -5
I ordered a beat-up (2.0) copy of Detective #238 for only $70. If I had any idea what was happening on the cover, I would describe it to you. I’ll give it a try. There’s three oddly-shaped doors and I guess all of them mean DOOM! I checked on that cover. Never had seen it. I envy you... |
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 12, 2023 20:02:17 GMT -5
I ordered a beat-up (2.0) copy of Detective #238 for only $70. If I had any idea what was happening on the cover, I would describe it to you. I’ll give it a try. There’s three oddly-shaped doors and I guess all of them mean DOOM! I checked on that cover. Never had seen it. I envy you... I ordered it on Monday, and the dealer is in Torrance, which is here in SoCal. It says it’s supposed to be here today and it might be sitting in the mailbox already. Who knows what insanity awaits!? |
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Post by Prince Hal on Apr 12, 2023 20:46:51 GMT -5
I checked on that cover. Never had seen it. I envy you... I ordered it on Monday, and the dealer is in Torrance, which is here in SoCal. It says it’s supposed to be here today and it might be sitting in the mailbox already. Who knows what insanity awaits!? Who cares?! It will be some kind of insane, which is all that matters. 😄 |
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 12, 2023 23:19:41 GMT -5
I ordered it on Monday, and the dealer is in Torrance, which is here in SoCal. It says it’s supposed to be here today and it might be sitting in the mailbox already. Who knows what insanity awaits!? Who cares?! It will be some kind of insane, which is all that matters. 😄 It is really really cool. I have to go to bed and get up early, but I will find time to say a few words about “The Doors that Hid Disaster!” tomorrow afternoon. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 16, 2023 18:11:54 GMT -5
I got a decent copy of Detective Comics #238 for a pretty good price. I read it as soon as I got it but I didn't have a chance to write about it until today.
It's pretty cool! A treasure trove of obscure Batman villains!
Our main bad guy is Checkmate! He dresses in a red-and-black checkered suit. His hideout has a giant red-and-black chessboard imprinted on the floor. But he doesn't commit chess-based crimes or have a gang made up of rooks and knights and so on. His gimmick is that he is always one step ahead of the law, he's always planning several steps ahead, and he's mostly dedicated to checkmating the GCPD and ... Batman!
He's not in the story very much. The story starts with Checkmate at the doctor's office. He's given the doctor's office the name of Mr. Jones, and the doctor doesn't bat an eye that he's dressed up as a checkerboard. This is Gotham City.
Checkmate finds out that he only has a few weeks to live because of radiation poisoning. While escaping from Batman and Robin, Checkmate had taken refuge in a room that, unbeknownst to him, was used to store radio-active substances. (They have them all over Gotham City! And Gotham is known for being very lax about labeling or regulating such places.)
He blames Batman! He gets his gang of generic, fedora-wearing Gotham gangsters together and outlines an elaborate plan of revenge.
Checkmate is dead by the bottom of page three. Batman never caught him! Checkmate couldn't cheat death! But he cheated Batman!
A few weeks later, the plan is put into operation, and Batman and Robin are lured to a heretofore never before mentioned amphitheater which had hosted a Batman exhibit several years before. Inside, they find a series of large rooms that have been redesigned to copy a number of dangerous situations from past crime cases that the Dynamic Duo faced and managed to escape.
It's a lot like "The 1001 Escapes of Batman and Robin!" from Detective Comics #221, the story where Robin stalled The Ascot (Paul King) by describing some of their thrilling escapes from the past. But in Detective Comics #238, they aren't describing them, they are facing the dangerous situations again, only this time, Checkmate made sure to change one aspect of the scenario so that the game is rigged. If they don't figure out that things are a little off, they will use the exact same method of escaping and almost certainly die! (For example, when they were trapped in a giant bowling alley, they grabbed the automatic pin-setter above and avoided the giant bowling ball. In Checkmate's re-creation, the pin-setter is electrified! Fortunately, Batman sees a bug get fried on the wires.)
There are four past scenarios to defeat in this game of wits with Checkmate. And each of them involves a villain who never appeared outside of this story. As a matter of fact, none of them appeared in this story! They are all just names that Batman or Robin shout out as they recognize each trap!
These villains are:
The Bowler, who trapped them in a giant bowling alley and tried to crush them with giant bowling balls
The Harbor Pirate, who forced them to stay underwater with machine-gun fire
Wheelo, the criminal cycle rider
Robot Master, who attacked them with a flying robot bat while they were making a movie set in Egypt for some reason
(You may recall that "The 1001 Escapes of Batman and Robin!" also includes several villains who never appeared outside of the flashbacks.)
In the days since I read this story, I've been thinking about what these villains looked like, and what their hideouts were like, and the gang members, and the crimes they would have been attempting.
The Bowler wears multi-colored shoes and a two-toned jersey. Wheelo probably looks like a villain design that was rejected by the Ghost Rider series in the 1970s. The Harbor Pirate? Robot Master? I'll have to find some time to sketch these guys out.
Batman and Robin come through, of course, and round up Checkmate's gang.
Checkmate is crying down in Super-Villain Hell.
I love this story.
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