Retro Comics are Awesome

[andersonh1]

Batman #8 concluded

The Cross-Country Crimes!
I never get used to Batman being an open public law enforcement figure. To me, it undermines the whole basis of the character as a vigilante, sneaking around in the shadows and scaring criminals to death. But a public figure is exactly what Batman is now, and he's actually contacted by the FBI director for help in capturing the Joker, who's going on a nationwide crime spree. An APB is put out to capture the Joker, dead or alive. The chase goes from state to state to state, with the Joker evading capture each time, until at last Batman works out the pattern and gets to his final destination ahead of him, baiting the Joker into a trap with a story about I. Namtab and his diamond, which of course the Joker can't resist trying to steal. I guess if the Joker can spell his name backwards and use it as an alias, so can Batman. The Joker ends up in jail for the first time since his original appearance.

Detective Comics #59
January 1942

The King of the Jungle!
For the first time in over a year, Bill Finger does not write this month's Batman story. Joe Greene writes the story of the Penguin's second appearance, picking up where the previous story left off with the Penguin hopping a train, where he meets some hoboes who he recognizes as crooks on the run with rewards on their heads. The Penguin comes up with a scheme to turn in the crooks, collect the reward money, and then break them out of jail and split the reward. The crooks are delighted with this scheme and play along. Batman and Robin get involved of course, and while they break up the scheme and put the other crooks in jail, the Penguin escapes capture once again.

[andersonh1]

World's Finest Comics #4
Winter 1942

The Ghost Gang Goes West!
It's another vacation and another western adventure for Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. On the one hand I always chuckle about the vacations, because of course they're going to end up crime-fighting and of course they have their costumes, so the "vacation" is just an excuse to get them out of Gotham and change the scenery. On the other hand, with the type of life they lead, frequent vacations are probably a healthy thing! In any case, Dick is all excited to see cowboys and gunfighters and outlaws, but Bruce tells him that's a thing of the past... until the train is robbed by cowboy bandits. It's the "ghost gang", outlaws dressed like cowboys on horses who rob one spot, and then less than an hour later are robbing somewhere 200 miles away, something impossible to do on horseback. Batman is almost lynched and uses some psychology to calm the crowd down, only to be almost killed by a rattlesnake. In the end the answer to the mystery is a helicopter, hidden in a hanger disguised as a barn, which ferries the "ghost gang" around so they can commit their "impossible" robberies.

[andersonh1]

Detective Comics #60
February 1942

Case of the Costume-Clad Killers
A criminal gang is dressing up as police to rob banks, or as firemen to rob charity balls. In other words, disguising themselves as whoever they're planning to rob, and therefore being able to get very close before being detected, at which point it's too late to stop them. Batman figures out pretty quick that the Joker is behind this, and once again he decides to lure the Joker in and trap him with a story about a famous jewel, which of course the Joker can't resist trying to steal. At this point, this feels like a fairly typical Joker runaround, because the Joker has now appeared in the series just that often.


Batman #9
February-March 1942

The Four Fates!
I liked this story quite a bit. Four fugitives plot to steal a massive ruby from the turban of Jafeer, a fortune-teller. Unluckily for them, they move in to rob the man when he's on the air with a Gotham radio station. Jafeer curses the four of them to die in various ways, and as the story unfolds, that's exactly what happens, though not quite as expected. The man who will supposedly die by lightning is electrocuted on the third rail of a subway while fighting Robin. The guy who will die because of water ends up dying of thirst in a desert, and so on. Every time, Batman wonders if it was really the curse, or just coincidence? He and Robin figure they'll never know. All four crooks have names and personality and a bit of history that plays into the plot, so they're a bit more than generic gangster.

The White Whale!
You might expect, as I did, that this is going to be a takeoff on Moby Dick, and that Batman and Robin will once again be visiting another genre. A white whale is sinking ships, and the insurance company is desperate to find the animal and kill it, because they're losing so much money on the ships they've insured. Bruce Wayne is on the board of the company, and he decides to investigate. He's shanghaied by the evil captain of the whaling ship, with Dick Grayson sneaking on board the ship. After Batman makes an appearance to put a stop to the cruelty of the captain, the ship takes on a whale and kills it, with the captain taking the chance to turn the tables on Batman. At that moment, the crew rebels and puts the captain adrift in a rowboat to die. When Batman protests that it's murder, the crew toss him and Robin in the boat as well. And of course, that's when the genuine white whale appears... only it's not a real whale at all, but a submarine, run by one of the insurance company's board members, who skims a nice profit off every insurance payout for lost ships. A timely intervention by the coast guard puts an end to the scheme. This story took a strange left turn from whaling to insurance fraud, but it was certainly entertaining and not what I expected.

[andersonh1]

After getting to another Joker story, I wanted to go back and see just how often he had appeared in the series. Turns out, quite a bit. And the trend will continue.

Joker appearances:
Batman #1, spring 1940 - The Joker, The Joker Returns
Batman #2, summer 1940 - The Joker meets Cat-Woman
Detective Comics #45, November 1940 - The Case of the Laughing Death!
Batman #4, winter 1940 - The Case of the Joker's Crime Circus
Batman #5, spring 1941 - The Riddle of the Missing Card!
Batman #7, October-November 1941 - Wanted: Practical Jokers!
Batman #8, December 41 - January 42 - The Cross-Country Crimes!
Detective Comics #60, Feb 42 - Case of the Costume-Clad Killers
Batman #9, Feb-Mar 42 - The Case of the Lucky Law-Breakers!

That's ten appearances in two years. Most of the time he appears to have gone to his death at the end of the story, only to have survived somehow when next we see him. He goes to jail twice, and of course escapes both times. At first he's all about murdering people, robbing them and flaunting his crimes in front of the police. As time goes on, he goes more and more for gimmicky crimes, and the character definitely loses the edge he had in those early stories. But then the whole series lightens up as time goes on, so it's no surprise that the Joker does the same thing. He's a good villain, but overused.

Batman #9 concluded

The Case of the Lucky Law-Breakers
The Joker escapes from prison, and sets up a series of scams where he and his gang rob banks, and the stolen money is publicly presented to the ex-cons as prizes on various game shows in order to give the gang alibis for suddenly having money. At the end of the story, the Joker appears to have been run over by a train, but since his body is nowhere to be found, Batman figures he'll be back yet again.

Christmas
Bruce Wayne hands out Christmas gifts at a Gotham orphanage (which made me wonder who raised Bruce after his parents died, in these pre-Alfred stories), when he runs across one boy who insists his dad is on a long trip, and will be back for him. Bruce decides to investigate, and learns that the boy's father is in prison for murder. The man insists that he was framed, and when Batman looks into the case, it turns out that the true murderer is gangster Hal Fink. Batman solves the case, and the boy and father are reunited. Poor Dick Grayson wishes he could be a part of a fun Christmas like that, and Batman surprises him with a Christmas party with Commissioner Gordon and Linda Page. I think Dick would rather have partied with all the other kids his age. Still, it's a nice feel-good storyline for Christmas, with Batman once again helping a down on his luck man who cannot help himself.

[andersonh1]

Detective Comics #61
March 1942

The Three Racketeers!
Three Gangsters sit around a table and discuss their clever plots that were getting them easy wealth, until the Batman and Robin put a stop to what they were doing. One man operated a pirate radio station in order to direct his gang on where to rob. One man invented a serum to make someone lazy and kill their motivation, and demanded a ransom for the antidote. The third guy dispensed with subtlety and stole some tanks which he used in his robberies. The twist ending is that while it looks like all three were swapping stories in preparation for getting together to take in Batman, in reality all three men are in the waiting area of the local prison and are taken off to their cells, having enjoyed their talk together. The guard wonders how smart Batman has to be to take on such smart crooks.

World's Finest Comics #5
Spring 1942

Crime Takes a Holiday
We get another story of criminals cooperating as they declare a halt to crime in Gotham, confusing the police and making Bruce Wayne suspicious. Bruce disguises himself as the "Gold Coast Kid", a thief, and manages to get in with the mobs. While they're not committing crimes in Gotham, they're traveling to other cities, disguising themselves as local gangs who originate from those cities, committing crimes, and then returning to Gotham to enjoy the loot. Batman uses the same tactics to trap them by pretending to have the gang from another city come to Gotham to rob the Gotham crooks, and then having the Gotham police round them alll up when they come to defend their loot.

As someone who remembers Bruce often adopting the "Matches Malone" identity in order to get information from crooks, I enjoyed seeing Bruce do much the same thing far earlier in the character's history.

Detective Comics #62
April 1942

Laugh, Town, Laugh!
Comedian Happy Hanson dies, and leaves a fortune to whichever comedian can figure out the answer to series of riddles that he leaves behind. These five famous comedians are told the terms of the will and are interested. They all have fictional names, but are all clearly based on real people. I figured out Jack Benny, Fred Allen and W. C. Fields, but not the other two. What's disturbing is that the Joker kills three of them. He breaks out of jail, incensed that he wasn't included among the top comedians. He ultimately tracks down the treasure, a necklace of priceless pearls, but is captured by Batman, who only manages to be good enough to save two of them comedians from the Joker. At one point in the story, the Joker has Batman captured and starts to unmask him, but then decides that he has more fun matching wits with him and decides not to reveal his identity.

This is the Joker's 11th appearance since he was introduced two years prior to this story.

[andersonh1]

Batman #10
April-May 1942

Bill Finger is absent from writing duties for three of the four stories in this issue, only turning up for the final story.

The Isle that Time Forgot
Dick Grayson gets his own Batplane for a birthday present (and we finally get his age: he's 9 years old). He and Bruce take it out for a test flight and then get caught in a bad storm and are swept out to sea, but the plane stays aloft. They land on an island and immediately run into cavemen, a dinosaur, a boa constrictor and a sabre-toothed tiger, as well as a crazy professor and his entourage. It all turns out to be a movie set, and the director was secretly filming Batman and Robin in action, knowing they'd never agree to appear in the film. I suspected it was all fake the first time I read this, but you can't always tell in these old stories. A lost world where dinosaurs still live is always a possibility.

Report Card Blues
In an interesting storytelling approach, this story begins with random kid Tommy who is getting bad grades in school, so he runs away from home. He doesn't make it far before being picked up by three men driving a meat truck, who are in reality protection mobsters in disguise, trying to get past a police dragnet. Tommy becomes their hostage, but he leaves a trail behind the truck that Batman is able to follow. Forced to surrender so the flower-loving gang leader won't shoot Tommy, Batman and Robin break free of their imprisonment and take down the gang. Tommy is taken home, and his parents never realize he's been gone all night, but are delighted that he is now vowing to be a better student. I thought this was a decent way to add a little human interest to what is otherwise a fairly straightforward protection racket story. The gang leader's flower appreciation makes him a little more interesting than the standard gangster.

[Sparky Prime]

It all turns out to be a movie set, and the director was secretly filming Batman and Robin in action, knowing they'd never agree to appear in the film.

I can sorta understand the motivation for luring them to the set to secretly get them to star in the film, but if this director wanted to make a film about Batman and Robin... Why does he have them fighting dinosaurs and the like?

[andersonh1]

It all turns out to be a movie set, and the director was secretly filming Batman and Robin in action, knowing they'd never agree to appear in the film.

I can sorta understand the motivation for luring them to the set to secretly get them to star in the film, but if this director wanted to make a film about Batman and Robin... Why does he have them fighting dinosaurs and the like?

It was opportunistic on the director's part. He hadn't planned on having them in his dinosaur movie at all, but when they happened to arrive on the island in the middle of filming, he seized the chance to secretly film them in action, figuring if he asked permission they'd have said no. Though that still begs the question of how in the world Batman and Robin are supposed to fit in a movie about prehistoric men and dinosaurs... I suspect he's going to have a lot of footage that doesn't mesh with the rest of his film.

[Sparky Prime]

It was opportunistic on the director's part. He hadn't planned on having them in his dinosaur movie at all, but when they happened to arrive on the island in the middle of filming, he seized the chance to secretly film them in action, figuring if he asked permission they'd have said no. Though that still begs the question of how in the world Batman and Robin are supposed to fit in a movie about prehistoric men and dinosaurs... I suspect he's going to have a lot of footage that doesn't mesh with the rest of his film.

Ah, that makes more sense. But yeah, still doesn't explain why he'd film Batman and Robin in a prehistoric setting, especially if they're not supposed to be in it. You'd think he'd be pissed they ruined the shot rather than keep rolling. Certainly the producers should be pissed at the director for wasting money and film.

[andersonh1]

I still intend to finish reading and reviewing Batman vol. 2, but I want to re-read all four Superman volumes as well, and I thought I'd take a break from Batman and read some Superman. I have to admit, I really like the early social justice Superman. I'm looking forward to getting back into these.

Action Comics #14
July 1939

Superman Meets the Ultra-Humanite
A subway tunnel collapses, and Superman is sure something's wrong. He investigates and finds that the subway was built with substandard materials, just as he suspected. As he's down on the tracks, he sees another man investigating, and that man is attacked by some thugs. Superman rescues him from death by subway train, and learns that he's inspector Hughes. Superman tracks down the men who attacked the inspector, and forces their boss, Lyons, to write a confession. When the henchmen escape again, Superman follows them, only to encounter the Ultra-Humanite once again. The Humanite escaped the plane before it crashed as seen in Action Comics #13, and he tries and fails to imprison Superman in a block of solid crystal. The Lyons Construction company is shut down, but the Ultra-Humanite escapes again.


Action Comics #15
August 1939

Superman on the High Seas
Clark Kent is sent to interview the founder of Kidtown, a home for wayward children. The founder reveals that he needs a couple million to pay off the mortgage and to expand to meet all the requests for enrollment that he's received. Superman decides to help, and his method of raising money is to locate the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon and recover the gold. At this point, Superman still doesn't really fly, so I guess that explains why he hires a boat and heads out to sea. Two different groups of gangsters plot to get the gold as well. One steals a submarine and heads for the galleon location, while the other substitutes themselves for the crew of Kent's ship. Superman spends most of the story in his Kent identity, and he has great fun foiling the plans of the murderous crew, as well as recovering the stolen sub.

Clark still works for the Daily Star, and the editor is still George Taylor.