By Scott Tipton
January 28, 2004
BATMAN, PART VIII – RECOMMENDED READING
What makes a good Batman story?
All depends what kind of Batman you like, I guess. Personally, I like it all, and tried to include here a representative sampling of great Batman stories, as well as one or two that just need to be seen to be believed.
With over sixty years’ worth of Batman stories to choose from, from dozens and dozens of series, limited series, specials and one-shots, narrowing down the best of the best is a near impossible task. In addition, many of what I would consider some of the most notable stories have already been discussed here in the course of our examination of the Caped Crusader. So let’s just consider these stories “favorites” and not trouble ourselves with any sort of ranking or “best-ever” nonsense. Also, bear in mind that several of what I consider to be the most significant Batman comics ever are yet to be discussed, in the forthcoming DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES columns. Enough explanations – let’s get to the good stuff.
Starting things out with the bizarre, we turn to the 1954 adventure of “Batman – Indian Chief!”
Returning via Batplane from a suitably vague “distant mission,” Batman and Robin notice a Bat-Signal being sent out through, of all things, smoke signals. Further investigation reveals a Native American boy who looks exactly like Robin. Following the boy, Batman and Robin meet Great Eagle and Little Raven of the Sioux tribe, who, inspired by the exploits of the Dynamic Duo, fight crime in the territory as Chief Man-of-the-Bats and – well, Little Raven doesn’t seem to have a superhero name, but that’s all right. Naturally, as Chief Man-of-the-Bats, Great Eagle wears your standard Batman costume, plus a Native American ceremonial headdress and weapons.
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The trouble is, the evil raider Black Elk has seriously wounded Great Eagle in the shoulder, so as to prove that he’s really Man-of-the-Bats. (Precisely why Man-of-the-Bats needs a secret identity is unclear…) Always eager to help a fellow Batman, Batman and Robin agree to pose as Man-of-the-Bats and Little Raven, to protect Great Eagle’s secret. After dyeing their skins to pass as Native Americans (which isn’t at all offensive, really), the disguised Batman and Robin head off to confront Black Elk and his band of outlaws.
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After using some good old-fashioned Native American detective work, Batman and Robin track down Black Elk, and manage to capture him with the help of Great Eagle, whose appearance alongside Man-of-the-Bats puts to rest any suspicions about Man-of-the-Bats’ secret identity. This stuff is just plain weird, and I loves me the weird comics. Although uncredited, the art looks like the fine work of Sheldon Moldoff to me, and at times it’s unintentionally hilarious, like the close-up of Batman in full Sioux regalia.
Switching gears to something a little less ludicrous, let’s take a look at “The Origin of the Batman !”, from BATMAN #47 in 1948. In the course of a routine investigation, Batman encounters crooked smuggler Joe Chill, whom he immediately recognizes as the man who killed his parents, decades before.
When trying to infiltrate Chill’s organization proves fruitless, Batman attempts to goad Chill into making a mistake, but again with no success. Finally, Batman decides to take desperate measures, and confronts Chill directly about his guilt in the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne:
Batman swears to follow Chill night and day until he makes a mistake, and at that moment he’ll bring him to justice. After Batman leaves, the terrified Chill runs to his henchmen for help, explaining that Batman is after him because he killed Batman’s father. Chill’s goons, all of whom have been busted by Batman in the course of their criminal careers, are outraged that Chill is to blame for the creation of Batman, and pull their guns in fury, viciously murdering Chill before he can reveal Batman’s real name.
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Although the notion that Batman has solved his parents’ murder is troubling from a conceptual standpoint (after all, if Batman has avenged the death of his parents, he should no longer have a need to be Batman, psychologically speaking), the story here is solid and satisfying, being one of the darker Batman stories told in the late ‘40s, and with some of the best art Bob Kane did in this period. In addition, the tale provides a well-done retelling of the familiar Batman origin sequence. Although subsequent stories first implicated another man in the Waynes’ murder, and later erased this story entirely, “The Origin of the Batman!” delivers with grim style, and holds up well still today.
Now we jump ahead about forty-eight years or so, to 1996’s BATMAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA, written and illustrated by John Byrne.
Some of the best work Byrne has done in the last decade or so can be found in this one-shot, which features the quartet of Captain America and Bucky and Batman and Robin against the villainy of the Red Skull and the Joker.
Set in 1945, the story involves the Joker being used as a catspaw by the Red Skull in order to steal America’s first and only atomic bomb. Although the portrayal of Captain America feels more like Byrne’s work than any sort of deliberate tribute to the original Simon and Kirby Cap stories, Byrne does a masterful job of capturing the mid-to-late 40s style of Dick Sprang: check out this illustration of the Batcave, inspired by a Sprang lithograph:
The script and characterization is on target as well, with a commanding and confident Batman working well with the more action-minded Captain America. Byrne also has some fun with a little rivalry between Robin and Bucky, as well as indulging in some other cross-company shenanigans, such as Cap’s battlefield adventure alongside Sgt. Rock and Easy Company. My favorite moment, however, comes when the Joker discovers just exactly who it is he’s been working for:
The topper comes just after that, as the Joker and the Red Skull just do what comes naturally:
BATMAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA was the best of the mid-90s rash of inter-company crossover books, and is well worth picking up.
Back in 1986, DC Comics celebrated the 400th issue of BATMAN in grand style with “Resurrection Night!”, a 60-page monster written by Doug Moench and drawn by an all-star cast of pencillers and inkers.
In the story, the celebration of Bruce Wayne’s anniversary of working as Batman (an odd thing to celebrate, as it essentially celebrates the death of his parents, but whatever…) is postponed by simultaneous explosions at Arkham Asylum and Gotham State Penitentiary, releasing all of Batman’s enemies in a single thrust. The man behind it all? Ra’s al Ghul, who then shows up in the Batcave offering Batman a proposition: join him, and he’ll help recapture them all, or put an end to them permanently, freeing Batman of his obligation to Gotham City. Naturally, Ra’s’ offer is rejected, and soon enough Batman’s enemies are kidnapping those close to him, as well as taking Police Headquarters hostage.
The individual chapters are illustrated by such greats as Art Adams, George Perez, Steve Leialoha, Bill Sienkiewicz and Brian Bolland, each in their own inimitable style, without any sloppy attempt to unify the chapters with a common inker. Compare this sequence from Art Adams, with its delicate crosshatching and straining anatomy…
…to this expressionistic, almost nightmarish scene from Bill Sienkiewicz:
The book closes with a brutal brawl (rendered beautifully by Bolland) between Batman and Ra’s al Ghul, who has bathed in the Lazarus Pit while still in good health, risking his life in order to gain the super-strength to defeat Batman in hand-to hand-combat.
All this under a great Sienkiewicz cover, BATMAN #400 is a keeper.
Writer Denny O’Neil gave Batman the noir treatment in “Death Strikes at Midnight and Three!”, a taut short story in prose that first appeared in DC SPECIAL SERIES #15 in 1978. With dark, cinematic illustrations provided by Marshall Rogers, the story details Batman going after Milo Lewes, a refined mob boss who orders the murder of a Gotham prosecutor who’s getting too close to conviction. In a tense confrontation in which Lewes taunts Batman with his purported intelligence, Batman warns the mob boss:
“Milo, drink your wine. Savor it. Then put your affairs in order and call your dear friends and tell them goodbye, tell them your next address will be a prison or a grave because – hear me, Milo – I will find the blind man and I’ll return and I’ll destroy you. I’ll watch you whimper and beg and crawl.”
True to his word, in short order Batman finds the blind man (the sole, integral witness that can put Milo away) and apprehends the thugs sent by Milo to eliminate him. Realizing the jig is up, Milo makes plans to leave the country via private jet, and is already planning on taunting the Batman by sending a postcard from his new hideaway. Plans, however, are about to change:
O’Neil’s prose brings a wonderful hard-boiled flavor to the story, while still remaining unmistakably Batman, and Rogers’ illustrations subtly complement the copy. I only wish O’Neil and Rogers would have done a whole series of stories in this style.
Moving from the moody to the downright bizarre, we come to the 1978 BRAVE AND THE BOLD SPECIAL, entitled “Hell Is for Heroes.”
This fever dream of a comic book featured Batman tracking down a mad bomber, while unbeknownst to him, in England, Deadman and Sgt. Rock were teaming up to recover a stolen statue of the Caped Crusader. What’s the catch? Batman and the statue have been mystically linked, so that whatever damage happens to the statue is also suffered by Batman himself. Who’s responsible for this? Could it be … Satan?
Yes, Lucifer himself is out to get the Caped Crusader, with the help of his fellow villains Nero, Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes, Bluebeard, Jack the Ripper and Adolf Hitler. I guess Attila the Hun was busy that day. Why Batman? “Man dares to look to heroes … champions … to uplift and inspire him! Such idols must be destroyed!” says the Prince of Darkness, sporting shiny metal short-shorts and a Led Zeppelin haircut.
So while Lucifer and the Bad News Bears send their evil hoodoo vibes to stop Deadman and Sgt. Rock, Batman is getting progressively beaten to crap in Gotham, thanks to the various poundings the statue is taking. All this while Batman is tracking down probably the lamest arch-villain Gotham’s ever seen.
Just looking at this guy, you should know he’s a mad bomber. In the process, Batman also gets pirouetted with extreme prejudice and then filled full of lead by the meanest stripper ever.
Meanwhile, Deadman goes to Sherlock Holmes for help on the case. No, I can’t explain it.
Oh, and Sgt. Rock meets the Loch Ness Monster.
I’m not sure what kind of medication Bob Haney was on when he wrote this, but I want some.
We’ve already discussed this story in our previous Joker column, but I wanted to again highlight “The Laughing Fish!” and its conclusion, “The Sign of the Joker!” from DETECTIVE COMICS #475 and 476, by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers. An excellent mix of insanity, tension and doomed romance, these comics sum up everything a good Batman story should be. The Joker’s copyright fish scheme is just crazy enough to still make sense in the Joker’s twisted mind, while Batman’s repeated failure to prevent the Joker from murdering his victims reinforces just how formidable and crafty a foe he can be. Another subplot from the Englehart/ Rogers run was tied up in this story, as “Boss” Rupert Thorne, who had maneuvered the Gotham City Council into declaring war on Batman, has an unexpected reunion with Professor Hugo Strange, whom he’d murdered several issues earlier in a vain attempt to learn Batman’s true identity:
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The story closes with a Batman/Joker fistfight in the pouring rain high atop a construction site, which ends with shocking results:
But with Batman’s momentary victory comes a more heartbreaking defeat, of a personal nature:
The complete Englehart./Rogers run is available collected in the trade paperback BATMAN: STRANGE APPARITIONS. Go buy it.
Batman finds some strange bedfellows in BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON, a 1987 graphic novel by Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham, in which Batman joins forces with his longtime opponent Ra’s al Ghul in order to defeat Qayin, a terminally ill madman who plans to set off World War III with the help of a stolen weather-generating satellite.
Aside from the global issues, it’s also a personal matter for Qayin and Ra’s: Qayin blames Ra’s for the death of his parents, who were in Hiroshima on Ra’s’orders on August 6, 1945. Ra’s is also seeking revenge, for it was Qayin who murdered Ra’s wife, pushing her into a Lazarus Pit, before young Talia’s horrified eyes.
Batman agrees to join Ra’s’ organization and become his second-in-command, and with that also comes Talia’s hand in marriage, which Batman at last happily agrees to.
SON OF THE DEMON is a little more violent and bloody than most Batman books of the era, in one of DC’s first experiments with a “mature-readers” approach that accompanied the more expensive “graphic novel” format. Mike W. Barr does right by Denny O’Neil’s creations Ra’s and Talia here, getting their characters mostly on-target, and providing the resolution to the Batman/Talia romance that had long been necessary. As for the art, Jerry Bingham brings a spare, sketchier approach that fits the book’s harder edge quite well, and provides a masterfully subtle job on the coloring that lightly leads the reader from scene to scene. The ending is a heartbreaker, and it’s a real shame that recent DC editorial types have deemed this book “not in continuity.” It’s a beauty.
A more recent Batman epic can be found in the Jeph Loeb/ Jim Lee 12-parter, “Hush.”
Loeb, who’s told some excellent “Year One” Batman stories in the past with THE LONG HALLOWEEN and DARK VICTORY, brings all the best toys out of the toybox for this one, involving Joker, Two-Face, Riddler, Killer Croc, Ra’s al Ghul, Talia, Harley Quinn, Clayface, Poison Ivy, the Scarecrow and the new mysterious villain called “Hush” in a massive conspiracy against the Dark Knight. Along the way, Superman, Nightwing, Robin, Oracle, the Huntress and even Krypto the Superdog (yes!) are called in to assist Batman in unraveling the mystery of who’s really behind it all.
New characters are introduced, such as Thomas Elliott, Bruce Wayne’s childhood friend; old plot lines are resurrected, such as the death of Jason Todd and Batman’s hunchbacked handyman Harold; and a genuine relationship between Batman and Catwoman is begun, with Batman even making the ultimate display of trust.
I recently re-read “Hush” in the collected hardcovers and enjoyed it immensely, far more than when I was reading it month-to-month. Loeb’s storytelling works much better at a faster pace, and I found to my surprise that many of the plotholes I thought were left behind were in fact neatly and elegantly closed up.
Jim Lee brings some of the best work of his career to the project, combining his normal slick, angular style with more of a weightier feel to the anatomy. The women are gorgeous, and Lee shows us a creepier Joker than we’ve seen in years. Lee also experiments with a watercolor-style for flashbacks, to excellent effect, such as here, illustrating Batman’s fond memories of Barbara Gordon’s years as Batgirl.
Lee also doesn’t skimp on the fanboy moments, such as this spread of Batman and Nightwing choosing a Batmobile for the evening.
While I enjoy the dark, moody, psychological stories as much as anyone, there’s also a place for good old-fashioned superhero action in BATMAN, and Loeb and Lee delivered big-time, as well as leaving a mystery or two yet to be explored.
There’s a particular moment in “Hush” between Batman and Catwoman that, I’m convinced, is a deliberate homage to the final story under discussion this week: “The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne,” from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #197.
Written by Alan Brennert (who only wrote a handful of Batman stories, all of them excellent) and drawn by our own Joe Staton (who honors us every week here at Movie Poop Shoot with his fabulous work on the Web comic FEMME NOIR), the story is told from the perspective of an elderly Bruce Wayne writing his memoirs, recounting how he came to marry the woman who would be his wife for twenty years: Selina Kyle, the Catwoman.
The year is 1955, and Batman has learned from Commissioner Gordon that the Scarecrow is out on parole. Later that night, at the wedding of ex-girlfriend Linda Page, Batman encounters the Scarecrow, who’s hoping to draw the Caped Crusader out. With Robin and Batwoman at his side, Batman is struck by one of the Scarecrow’s gasbombs, and before his very eyes, Robin and Batwoman just fade into nothingness. The gas triggered Batman’s deepest subconscious fear — of being alone.
When calls and visits to all of Batman’s friends go unanswered, he turns to an enemy: Selina Kyle, still in prison from her last crime as Catwoman. Catwoman agrees to help, and soon Batman and Catwoman are on the trail of the Scarecrow. When Batman suffers minor burns as a result of one of the Scarecrow’s traps, Catwoman is met with a startling sight:
Batman and Catwoman continue to search for the Scarecrow, and grow closer in the process. Soon they wind up the victim of more of Scarecrow’s fear gases, giving Batman the fear of cats and Catwoman the fear of bats. Even worse, Catwoman herself is beginning to fade out like Robin and Batwoman before her, signifying Batman’s increasing emotional bond. There’s only one solution:
Between Brennert’s romantic, poignant script and Staton’s ace job on the art (eliciting the best of the Moldoff/Sprang Batman style while still retaining his own), this is my favorite Batman story. Period.
Home stretch, people! Next week, we take a look at Batman on TV and in the movies. For answers to any of your Bat-questions, just e-mail here.
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