TF Views

Batman #99
April 1956
Cover art: Win Mortimer, Stan Kaye

The Golden Eggs!
Script: Bill Finger Pencils: Sheldon Moldoff Inks: Charles Paris

It is nice to see the Penguin again. I believe the last time we saw him was in Batman #76, "The Penguin's Fabulous Fowls" from April-May 1953, drawn by Lew Sayre Schwarz, so there's been a three year gap between appearances. This is his only appearance in this final Golden Age omnibus. Like Batman's other familiar costumed villains, the series seems to be largely leaving them behind at this point.

Batman and Robin are on the trail of the penguin, but when they reach his hideout he's already escaped, taking with him just a few eggs. The Penguin decides that he will base his next series of crimes off of whatever bird hatches from these eggs. He of course has to challenge Batman, who figures his many encounters with the Penguin have made him a "bird expert." And he is indeed far too good at figuring out the Penguin's clues, figuring out several of them in plenty of time to either stop him before he commits the crime, or before he can carry out the whole scheme. The Penguin's third scheme works, but Batman had tagged a cash box they figured the Penguin would steal and tracked him to his lair. The "mystery egg" the Penguin has wondered about all story saves them as an alligator hatches and bites him on the ankle. Some egg puns from Robin wrap things up, much to Penguin's dismay.

There was a time when I was tired of how often the Joker and the Penguin showed up and ran through the familiar formulas, but it's been long enough since the last Penguin story that I don't mind the familiarity, and this one was a fun runaround regardless. I liked the idea of the Penguin not even knowing what crimes he would commit until a bird hatched to inspire him, and I like how easily Batman figured each clue out, because he has indeed tangled with the Penguin often enough to know how he thinks.

Batman - Frontier Marshal
Script: Edmond Hamilton Pencils: Sheldon Moldoff Inks: Charles Paris

We don't get a lot of Westerns in the Batman comics, and there's a reason for that. The character is just so out of place in a western setting with all the familiar trappings of the genre. But here we are for the first time in a long time, putting Batman and Robin out west. But I have to say, unless Batman's time traveling is public knowledge, and there's never been any indication that it is, why would reporter Jack Farr see an old paper supposedly putting Batman in the old West as a marshal who shot outlaw Gila Bill, and think it was genuine? Surely he would reject such a thing as impossible. And even more oddly, it's not "Batman! You traveled in time! Give us the scoop!" that Farr sees as a great story. It's "Batman, you liar and hypocrite! You used a gun!" that he wants to publish. And of course Batman's claim that he's never used a gun is demonstrably false. He's "rarely" used a gun, but he has fired a gun on several occasions, most recently two issues ago when he used a rifle to shoot down a hot air balloon the Joker was using to escape!

This is an indication that this is Earth-1 Batman, isn't it? His history with firearms is different. He never shot those vampires or took a shot at Commissioner Gordon to fool some crooks. Or maybe it's just a continuity gaffe.

Batman, who normally could care less what the public think of him, decides he has to disprove his use of a gun or else people will always believe that he did. And so it's off to visit professor Carter Nichols, who has been updating his formerly-used time travel via hypnosis methods, judging by the high tech lab and equipment he uses. He's now "the brilliant scientist who has mastered the secret of the time-space barrier". I will admit, I do like the last image on page 2 as Bruce and Dick tumble through what looks like a whirlpool as the years go by.

Bruce and Dick find themselves in Plain City in 1880. The town has no Marshal, and when Batman stops Pecos Pete from sabotaging a train, the town elects the masked man in the cape town Marshal. Marshal Batman refuses the proffered guns, but takes the badge. We get a nice bit of time travelers dilemma here... is what they saw in the newspaper inevitable, or can history be changed? "Trapped by destiny" is how the story puts it, and Batman wonders if he'll have any say in the matter. Marshal Batman has to help stop a prairie fire and a cattle stampede, started in order to get Pecos Pete out of jail. Batman disguises himself as Pete to learn who his associates are, and thanks to the Robin-created "Bat-coach", races out and stops another attempt to sabotage the railroad by blowing up the trestle. During the pursuit of the crooks, the new town Marshal arrives and shoots the gun out of Gila Bill's hand. No, it's not the Lone Ranger. The new Marshal's name? Bat Masterson... and therein lies the solution to the headline, with the typesetter running Masterson's first and last names together, with part of the paper torn away on the copy that survived to the present day. Batman breathes a sigh of relief as the truth is made known back in the present.

Batman does not belong in a western. In addition to that, so many things in this story are problematic, most of which I addressed during the body of the review. There are a few interesting elements, mainly Carter Nichols's evolving time travel methods and the "can I fight fate?" musings of Batman. And I don't mind on some level having one more entry in Batman's time travel sub-series, which goes all the way back to his trip to Rome in Batman #24. But again, why would Batman care about some old headline that most people are just going to dismiss as fake anyway, because how can Batman have been a town marshal in the old west?

Who was that masked man? Hi-yo Bat-coach, away!