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Batman #1
Spring 1940

We have several firsts in this first issue of Batman in his own comic. The Batman logo is finally designed and consistent, though it will be tweaked a bit in coming issues. The Joker and Catwoman both make their first appearances in this issue as well, in stories written by Bill Finger. This guy's contribution to Batman in the early days cannot be overstated. And Batman's origin is reprinted from Detective Comics #33, which seems appropriate for a first issue.


The Joker
An elderly couple are sitting and listening to the radio when a voice breaks in over regular programming. The voice predicts that millionaire Henry Claridge will die exactly at midnight, and his famous diamond will be robbed from his wall safe. Claridge calls for police protection and is surrounded, but he dies at midnight, exactly as predicted, and his diamond has indeed been stolen, replaced by a fake. His face is distorted in a hideous grin. The Joker gloats about it in his hideout, noting that he actually committed the robbery the night before, and injected Claridge with a venom that would take 24 hours to work, so he was predicting a crime that had already happened.

So that's the Joker's gimmick in his first appearance: taunting the police, building up his reputation, and murdering men even when they're surrounded by police protection. There's a scene that reminds me of Heath Ledger's Joker posing as a policeman in "The Dark Knight" where the Joker poses as the police chief to kill a judge. Perhaps the movie scene was a homage to Batman #1. Some other crooks decide to trap this upstart Joker and get him out of the way, and he escapes largely because Batman chooses that moment to enter the gangster's house in an attempt to bag them all. The Joker fights ferociously against Batman. Interestingly, Batman is wearing a bulletproof vest under his costume, and gets shot by the Joker multiple times to no effect. In the end, the Joker is captured and put in jail, though he vows to escape. It's a good story and it's readily apparent why the creative team found the Joker to be too good a villain to kill off in his next appearance.

The Giants of Hugo Strange
Already reviewed here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1140&start=340 since "The Night of the Monster Men" crossover was clearly meant to be an homage to this old story, so I took a look at the original.

This is the second appearance of Hugo Strange.

This story was originally set to run in Detective Comics #38, but since Robin was introduced there, it got bumped to this issue of Batman. And it feels like a throwback, even though Robin's only just been introduced, so the gun-toting, willing to kill his enemies Batman has only been gone a few months.

Batman #1, continued

The Cat
This is Catwoman's debut story, though she's called "The Cat" here, and has no costume.

Dick Grayson goes undercover as a boy steward aboard a highly publicized cruise full of wealthy patrons, because he and Bruce are sure someone will take advantage of the trip to rob the patrons. Bruce is working another case, but promises to join Dick later, leaving the boy to carry the first half of the story by himself. Dick does very well, noting suspicious behavior and acting quickly when a gang of crooks board the yacht to rob everyone. Batman turns up not long behind the crooks, having seen them head out to sea and suspecting trouble. There's an odd sequence where Batman lets Robin take on four grown men and beat them handily, before telling the readers "see, they're cowards without guns. Don't be a crook, kids!"

The crooks rounded up, the two return to the yacht, where the famous Travers necklace has been stolen. Batman figures out pretty quickly that an old woman on board is not, in fact, old at all. She's a young woman in disguise, the Cat, and he recovers the stolen necklace from her. He and Robin take her back to shore, but Batman "accidentally" lets her go, mooning over how pretty her eyes were. He has to remind himself that he's got a fiance, Julie. Robin rolls his eyes. So right from the start, Bruce has had a thing for Selina Kyle.

The Joker Returns
The Joker debuts and has his first return appearance in the same issue. Talk about prepared... he's got fake teeth that contain the elements for an explosive, and he uses the explosive to escape from prison two days after he's put there. He goes right back to predicting crimes and carrying them out under the nose of the police. When he and Batman get into a fight at the end of the story, the Joker tries to stab Batman, but ends up stabbing himself in the chest, before laughing maniacally and collapsing. As the ambulance carries him away, the doctor announces that he's not dead, and will probably recover! The Joker was supposed to be killed off for good, but they decided he was too good a villain to kill, and he's been around ever since.

Detective Comics #39
May 1940

The Horde of the Green Dragon!
Two millionaires are kidnapped and held for ransom, while one of their chauffeurs is killed by a hatchet in his head. Batman suspects criminals from Chinatown. He's contacted by Wong (from Detective Comics #35) who has information for him, and is concerned that the Tong of the Green Dragon is bringing opium into Chinatown, and he wants Batman to help him stop it. But he's been overheard, and when Batman returns, Wong has been murdered by a hatchet in the back of his head. I'm sorry to see Wong killed off in his second story. He would have made an interesting supporting cast member, and his friendship with Batman would have been worth developing further.

Batman tries to keep Robin out of this dangerous case (any more dangerous than taking on thugs with guns every other night?), but of course Robin has to involve himself. Between the two of them they discover the villain's lair and shut down the Green Dragon, rescuing the kidnapped men in the process. The people of Chinatown are grateful to the Batman for ending the opium threat. Bruce's fiance Julie makes a cameo appearance in the last panel, walking with Bruce and wondering why he can't be as heroic as the Batman. It's a very "Lois Lane/Clark Kent" attitude and exchange, and maybe that was the plan for Julie Madison at one point. But she's never around enough for that to really happen.

Comparing Superman and Batman's first year, Batman turns out to be a pioneering character when it comes to the superhero genre in a way that Superman was not: Batman fights a lot of colorful, bizarre villains, right from the start.

Superman's first year, which is largely social justice storylines: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1140&p=44187&hilit=superman#p44187

- stopping the execution of a person falsely accused of murder
- stopping a case of domestic violence
- kidnapping a munitions manufacturer and scaring him into ending his business
- forcing a mine owner to improve safety conditions at his mine
- helping the college career of a backbencher while stopping a betting ring
- assisting with the disaster of a burst dam and floods that result
- dealing with a scammer using Superman’s name and image for merchandising
- helping juvenile delinquents by dealing with their fence and demolishing the slums that they live in so the government will build new housing
- avoiding arrest by an out of town detective
- exposing prison cruelty and torture
- stopping the sale of worthless stocks
- dealing (harshly) with unsafe driving in the city
- going to the world’s fair and dealing with crashing trains, charity and jewel thieves

Batman's first year:
- murder over ownership of a chemical company
- Frenchy Blacke and his jewel thieves
- Dr. Death
- Dr. Death again
- The Monk, a vampire/werewolf hybrid
- The Monk again
- Carl Kreuger and the Red Horde - a "supervillain" (has goals of world conquest) and his terrorist gang
- Duc D'Orterre - not a gangster, not really a supervillain, just a weird guy who burns off people's faces, has a flower garden where the flowers have human faces, and a torture/death trap
- thieves in disguise
- Hugo Strange
- spies
- Boss Zucco, gangster, protection racket
- The Joker
- Hugo Strange, his giants
- the Cat
- the Joker
- Chinese Tong

It's a long string of grotesque opponents, some of which stuck and reappear to this very day. Clayface turns up soon as well. Bill Finger and Gardner Fox took Batman in an entirely different direction than Superman.

Detective Comics #40
June 1940

The Murders of Clayface
The original Clayface (of many) makes his debut. Bruce Wayne's fiance Julie Madison is an actress, and she's starring in a horror film remake called "Dread Castle" where some disfigured person known as "The Terror" is going around murdering people. The first few pages of the story are spent with Bruce and Julie touring the set thanks to the director, and several characters are introduced, each with their own conflict and grievances. The director has been fired for being late all the time, so he's angry. The other actress in the movie apart from Julie, Lorna Dane, breaks it off with her boyfriend, who vows to get revenge. A local gangster tries to extort protection money from the director. Basil Karlo (a name obviously meant to evoke Boris Karloff), star of the original version of the movie drops by, and unlike all the others, is pleasant and friendly and wishes the director good luck.

Bruce, not being stupid, is sure there will be trouble given all the bitter, vengeful people involved in the movie, and with his fiance working there, he's keeping an eye on it. As filming begins, the murders start, committed by a mysterious figure lurking in the shadows: Clayface. He's wrapped in a cloak, wears a broad brimmed hat, and a mask made out of clay. He kills Lorna Dane on the set, and one of the other actors at his home. He almost kills Robin by throwing him off the castle set's roof into the moat, but Batman is in time to rescue him. In the end, they're able to capture Clayface, who turns out to be Basil Karlo, his mind warped by years of starring in horror movies. He resented his old role and old movie being remade. Yeah, the guy's crazy. Julie wonders why Bruce can't be as manly as Batman.

This one was pretty good, even if the "setting up all the suspects for the murder mystery" is pretty obvious. But they do only have 12 pages to work with, so there's no room for subtlety. The drawings of Clayface lurking in the shadows with his weird mask are pretty effective, as Bob Kane's art and composition continue to improve. He'll never have the technical skill of modern day artists, but he gets the job done. Of course, later on Clayface will be other people beside Karlo, and they'll be made of clay and be shapeshifters, but here Clayface is just a crazy man in a clay mask. And he works pretty well as a villain. We'll see him again down the road.

Detective Comics #41
July 1940

A Master Murderer/The Masked Menace of the Boys' School
Dick Grayson gets another story in which he plays the lead role, as an escapee from an asylum and a murder and kidnapping near an exclusive boy's school leads Dick Grayson to enroll and go undercover in an attempt to investigate. Much like last month's Clayface story, the first few pages of this story are spent introducing suspects as Bruce and Dick are given a tour of the school by the headmaster (and we even get a panel later on asking readers who they think the culprit is). As the story progresses and Robin creeps around the school picking up clues, it quickly becomes apparent that the escaped lunatic is just a red herring and has nothing to do with what's going on at the school. The culprit turns out to be an art teacher, using the school as cover to make counterfeit currency, and the boy had been kidnapped because he had learned what was going on.

It's interesting to me that even though Robin is clearly the kid sidekick to Batman, he's twice now been allowed to headline a story on his own, both times in ways that make good use of his young age. Bill Finger really was trying to make sense of what really makes no sense: a young boy fighting crime alongside Batman. I applaud the effort to try and work Robin into situations that are appropriate. He really is being developed into a character in his own right, not just a plot device to create drama for Batman.

Batman #2
Summer 1940

Joker Meets Cat-Woman
There's a bit too much plot to squeeze into this 12 pager, in my opinion, leading to a bit of confusion where some important details are easy to miss. But otherwise it's not too bad. Bruce learns that the Joker has survived his self-inflicted wound from the end of Batman #1, and he decides to go to the hospital and kidnap the Joker while he's still weak, and take him to a brain surgeon to cure him. Seriously. Meanwhile some crooks have lost their leader, and decide that the Joker is a smart criminal who would make a great gang leader, so they plot to go kidnap him. To distract the police, one of the gang dresses up as Batman and starts killing police, leading to a chase and the death of the ersatz Batman. The story spends several pages on this sequence, so clearly the idea was to fool the readers into thinking Batman had gone bad.

The criminal gang were planning to steal wealthy gem collector E. S. Arthur's famous Pharoah Gem, and want the Joker to plan the heist. The Cat-Woman is also planning to steal it. As in her first story, she's not costumed, but is in disguse as an older woman. When she goes jewel-hunting, she's wearing a green dress and a hood and cloak. Batman kidnaps her and gets information about the gem in return for promising not to turn her over to the police. The Joker double-crosses the gang who rescued him and escapes Batman and Robin. He apparently arrives at Arthur's house right before Cat-woman, having already killed him when she arrives. He threatens to kill her, but Batman and Robin arrive. During the fight, the Joker starts a fire in the house. Batman, Robin and Catwoman escape, with Catwoman diving into the bay, while Batman and Robin get away in the batplane.

This story starts a trend that will go on for a few stories. The Joker will seem to die at the end, but there will always be an explanation for how he survived when he makes a reappearance. Cat-woman is still a jewel-thief, but nowhere near as bad as the other criminals. She's shown in one panel pleading for Robin's life when the Joker has him down and out. The first ever meeting between two of Batman's rogues is a little disappointing, and the story is a little disjointed because over half of it deals with explaining how the Joker survives and gets back into action, but it still entertains. It's full of interesting scenes that could have worked better if there were more pages to develop the plot, in my opinion. Maybe the return of the Joker could have been one story, and the attempt to steal the jewels another instead of jamming them together.

Batman #2, continued

Wolf, the Crime Master
This is essentially a Jekyll and Hyde storyline, adapted as a Batman crime story. Quiet and meek museum curator Adam Lamb loves his crime novels, but when he slips on loose carpet and hits his head just at midnight after spending hours reading the book, a change happens every night at midnight as his personality shifts into the murderous Wolf, acting out the plot of the Crime novel. Lamb has no idea that this is happening to him. He begins leading a gang and committing crimes which is how Batman and Robin get involved. Batman gets shot in the shoulder, and poor Dick Grayson has to remove the bullet, something you'd expect to see Alfred doing these days. In the end, Lamb is finally seen to change as he's working with his employer at midnight and undergoes the personality shift. Batman has figured it out, and as Wolf runs, he slips down the same set of stairs, breaking his neck and confessing what had happened to him as he dies.

Bruce is still smoking his pipe, and wearing a bulletproof vest as Batman... too bad he was shot in the shoulder. I should keep track of when the pipe disappears. It's just so strange to see a character like Batman who depends on his athleticism to keep him alive smoking a pipe. But it was the 1940s. Even the Flash smoked back then! The story is pretty unremarkable, though it seems odd that Lamb, who really is a completely innocent victim, should die at the end rather than be saved from his condition. Batman expresses regret at his death.

The Case of the Clubfoot Murders
Millionaire Harley Storme dies, murdered by a man with a hook for a hand and a clubfoot. His will is read to his family by the family lawyer, Ward. The Stormes all hate each other, and each is left a message from their dead uncle, with a promise that another letter from him will be read at the end of 30 days, if they can get along. But Clubfoot commits more muders, killing more of the Storme family. Batman finally figures out that it's Ward, the lawyer, in diguise, impersonating a member of the Storme family that has a genuine clubfoot so he'll be blamed for the murders.

Storme's niece in this story is named Portia, and if I remember right, when Bruce's fiance Julie makes it big time as an actress, her screen name becomes Portia Storme, so someone in the Batman creative team must have really liked that name. Bruce still has his pipe, and gets one of the first nicknames I can remember in these stories: The Black Knight. It'll be awhile before they settle on the Dark Knight.

The Case of the Missing Link
This is a bizarre story where Professor Drake has discovered a 15 foot tall giant of a prehistoric man in Africa and brought him back to America. Pygmies from Africa (seriously) follow Drake and try to kill him and recover the giant, but Batman fights them off. When the newspapers spread the news about the discovery, a couple of unscrupulous circus owners try to buy the giant from Drake. He refuses to sell, but they won't take no for an answer and return later, kill Drake, and try to steal the giant. The face of one of Drake's killers is burned into the giant's mind, so when he sees him at the circus, he goes berserk, leading Batman and Robin to try and capture him. Sadly, the giant ends up dying when he falls from a great height.

I can't say that Batman #2 was all that good. The stories are servicable, but nothing to write home about. The one with the "missing link" was particularly strange. I'd much rather see Batman going up against criminals than fighting a stone age giant and pygmies. It seems to me that the Joker/Catwoman story could perhaps have been expanded and one of the others dropped.

New York World's Fair Comics #2
July 1940

Batman and Robin Visit the 1940 New York World's Fair
Fun bit of trivia: the cover of this issue is the first time that Batman, Robin and Superman appeared together, though they don't meet in their respective stories inside the issue. This is the book that will become World's Best Comics for a single issue, and then finally World's Finest.

Bruce and Dick are visiting the World's Fair and enjoying the sights, when news comes over the radio of a bridge collapsing in a very odd way, almost as if it was disintegrating. It might have been taken as an accident, but a blackmail note is delivered to the company who built the bridge, demanding money in return for not destroying another bridge. The demand is refused, and a second bridge is destroyed. Batman and Robin are able to determine (thanks to information from his niece, Ann) that the bridge was literally disintegrated thanks to an invention by Dr. Hugo Vreekill. They stop the destruction of a third bridge and track down Vreekill, who kills himself rather than face prison time.

Apart from the fantastic nature of the device that's destroying the bridges, this is a pretty straightforward extortion plot. Had the crooks been destroying bridges with dynamite, it would have worked equally well. The sequences at the beginning and end where Bruce and Dick visit the World's Fair are just there to justify this story's presence in this souvenir comic, but it's nice to see a bit of their life beyond crime-fighting.

Detective Comics #42
August 1940

The Case of the Prophetic Pictures
The splash page for this story depices a hooded green skeleton painting a portrait, and at first it seems like another typical figurative Golden Age splash page. But it actually depicts events in the issue fairly well, as we'll see.

Bruce gets dressed up and goes to a social event hosted by Mr. Wiley, acting bored and listless in order to keep up his reputation. Wiley has discovered a new artist while in Europe, Antal Ryder. The guests at the party ooh and aah over his work, and want their portraits made. We also get a by now familiar Bill Finger writing convention: a page setting up all the suspects/victims for the story. The various rich people find that their portraits display some method of death, such as a noose or knife, and the next day they're found dead in exactly the manner depicted by the portrait. Batman and Robin take different paths in the investigation, and Robin saves the life of an intended victim as a figure dressed in a cloak and wearing a green skull mask attempts to kill him. Commissioner Gordon's office is filled with men demanding protection. Bruce sets a trap for the killer by having his portrait painted, and capturing him when the killer breaks into his house to kill him. It turns out to be Wiley, who was deeply in debt and hoped to increase the value of Ryder's paintings with his murder scheme so he could make enough money to pay off his debt.

Bill Finger does a good job of allowing Robin to be a capable figure in his own right, even though he's not on Batman's skill level. Bruce makes good use of his friendship with Gordon, as well as circulating in high society to maintain his reputation as a lazy, bored socialite so that he won't be connected with Batman. The villain's "green Grim Reaper" disguise is bizarre in a good way, and overall I thought this was a pretty good story.

Random aside, brought to mind by the cover of World's Fair comics #2. The first time Superman and Batman ever appeared together in a story was All-Star Comics #7 for a single panel, where they helped the JSA raise money for war orphans (off panel) and delivered it in person.

Detective Comics #43
September 1940

The Case of The City of Terror
Bruce and Dick head out of Gotham for a vacation from crime-fighting, but as you might expect, no matter where they go they'll find trouble. Stopping for the night in a small town, they witness some police roughing up a citizen of the town. It turns out that the mayor of this small town is a crook, working with gangster "Bugs" Norton, whose thugs have been installed as police in this small town. Batman and Robin start systematically taking out the protection rackets and gambling dens, and so humilate the crooks that the people of the town go from being afraid of the crooks to laughing at them. The finally takedown of the mayor and Bugs Norton is pretty easy, and after they've gone, the people of the city erect a statue in their town in honor of Batman and Robin.

Detective Comics #44
October 1940

The Land Behind the Light!
This urban crime series takes a bizarre left turn into fantasy. Dick Grayson is home one night reading while the Batman is out working a case. Dick nods off and is awakened by Batman, who tells him to put on his costume, because they're going to investigate an inventor that Bruce has been surveilling. The inventor, Dr. Marko, claims to have a machine that will allow him to travel into "the 4th dimension". He demonstrates this by turning it on and vanishing into the light. Batman and Robin follow and get mixed up with a race of giants, who threaten to kill them. They have all sorts of odd adventures escaping from the giant castle to the land of "the small ones" where Dr. Marko has taken refuge. They fight off the army of the giants with Batman's help, only for Robin to be picked up by a giant who starts to crush him to death....

.... and it's all been a nightmare that Dick Grayson had after reading a fantasy book about giants and dwarves. Bruce says he shouldn't read crazy stuff like that right before bedtime. This is one of the strangest Batman stories to date, and I'm not sure who thought it was a good fit. Maybe if they'd applied some psychology to it, and Dick was secretly seeing the gangsters and villains like the Joker as giants in his dreams, the story might have told us something about the toll this crime-fighting life he's involved with has taken on the boy (though he professes to love it, and love the adventure). Maybe that's too much to expect from a Golden Age writer. In any case, it's pretty much just a straightforward fantasy adventure for a couple of characters who simply don't fit in that genre.

Batman #3
Fall 1940

The Strange Case of the Diabolical Puppet Master
It's a return to form as Batman and Robin fight "the puppet master", a man named Dimitri who is out to steal the Voss Rifle, a new secret weapon being developed by the Army. Dimitri does this by means of a chemical with which he scratches his victims, allowing him to mentally control them. At a certain point in the story one of his thugs is able to do this to Batman, scratching him on the face. The Puppet Master sends him out to commit a robbery, planning to ruin Batman's reputation and render him useless as a crime-fighter. Poor Robin is slapped in the face by the hypnotized Batman. "He hit me! My best friend in the world hit me!" But it does clue Robin in on what's wrong, and he's able to help Batman free himself from Dimitri's control and prevent the theft of the Voss Rifle.

I like this story with its mix of mundane and supernatural elements, and it's one of the earlier references to World War 2, which will appear more frequently here than over in the Superman books.