Retro Comics are Awesome

[andersonh1]

Batman #13 continued

Comedy of Tears!
All together now: the Joker is back again. No attempt is made to explain his survival, he just dives right into his new scheme, making people cry in various ways. It's another misdirection scheme to allow the Joker's gang to steal a document with certain signatures, which they forge to obtain entry to exclusive places in order to commit theft. One Batman figures out the gambit, he has Dick disguise himself as an autograph hunter, and among the autographs he collects are Joe Dimaggio and Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman. Never mind that Batman has met Superman over in All-Star Comics. It's a fun little scheme, but I'm really tired of the Joker at this point. He was such a good villain at first.

The Story of the Seventeen Stones!
Rocky Grimes is being released from prison after twenty years. He served time for murder, but he swears all along that he is innocent and has no memory of the event, despite witnesses putting him at the scene of the crime and being identified by his fingerprints. It turns out that during a bank robbery, he kills a man, and his gang decide to get rid of him since the police know his name and they would be accessories to murder. A blow to the head gives Rock amnesia, which a chance blow to the head reverses once he's out of prison. He remembers everything, and determines to take revenge on the former members of his gang. And since a stone to the head took his memory away, he'll use a stone to kill the gang members. The first to go is killed when Rocky collapses an archway on him, killing him with a keystone, on which he's carved "I finally remember". There's a pretty good silent panel of the dead man, lying in an alley with the stones piled around him. A few more gang members are killed, but once Batman and Robin get involved, Rocky has a much harder time with his plan. In the end, he falls to his death, slipping on a hailstone. Jack Burnley, one of my favorite Golden Age artists, drew this story, so the art is great. It's a good revenge plot, and it's a shame when these minor one-shot villains are more effective than villains like the Joker.

[andersonh1]

Batman #13 concluded

Destination Unknown!
This is another variation of "group of strangers in an isolated setting, drama ensues" type of storylines, and it's a pretty good one. Various people board a train for the west coast: a rich eccentric and his secretary, a man in an iron lung and his male nurses, a detective taking a man (falsely) wanted for murder to be booked, and the president of the railroad disguised as a hobo. There are mysteries about each grouping of characters that reveal themselves over the course of the story. Batman gets shot again, making this maybe the fifth time it's happened to him? The various mysteries are solved, a disastrous crash is prevented, and it's a pretty solid adventure for Batman and Robin. The only real issue I have is the iffy timing as the train goes out of control, and Batman and Robin are called for help. It has to take hours for them to see the Commissioner, go back home, get the Batplane and fly out to the train, but which point it really ought to have crashed.

[andersonh1]

I should keep track of all villain appearances in the three volumes I own. I know Two-Face gets three appearanes, and so does Hugo Strange. The Scarecrow shows up twice. Catwoman turns up maybe five or six times. It's the Penguin, and then the Joker that get the most return appearances, and I honestly think the Joker gets more stories than every other villain combined. I can only guess that the character sold well, given how often he appeared.

The Joker appears in the following stories from 1940 to the end of 1944:

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!
Detective Comics #62, Apr 42 - Laugh, Town, Laugh
Detective Comics #64, June 42 - The Joker Walks the Last Mile!
Batman #11, June-July 42 - The Joker's Advertising Campaign
Batman #12, August-September 42 - The Wizard of Words!
Batman #13, October-November 42 - Comedy of Tears
Detective Comics #69, November 42 - The Harlequin's Hoax
Detective Comics #71, January 1943 - A Crime a Day!
Batman #16, Apr-May 1943 - The Joker Reforms!
Detective Comics #76, June 1943 - Slay 'Em with Flowers
Batman #19, Oct-Nov 1943 - The Case of the Timid Lion!
Batman #20, December 43-Jan 44 - The Centuries of Crime!
Detective Comics #85 March 1944 - The Joker's Double
Batman #23, June-July 1944 - The Upside Down Crimes!
Detective Comics #91, September 1944 - The Case of the Practical Joker
Batman #25, Oct-Nov 1944 - Knights of Knavery (Joker and Penguin)

That is 25 stories in five years. That's just crazy.

[Shockwave]

That's 5 stories per year, maybe they were just setting him up to be Batman's main villain?

[Sparky Prime]

Wow, that is crazy. I can't think of any villains that have appeared in so many stories in such a short amount of time.

[andersonh1]

Detective Comics #69
November 1942

The Harlequin's Hoax!
It is just impossible to escape the Joker, who returns for his 15th appearance, and looking back he's been in either Batman or Detective for six months straight. The reader got a break in December, and then he'd be back in January. I guess the character sold books. He's now giving out strange gifts to various people in Gotham and then committing related robberies. It turns out that the gifts were a form of blackmail, letting each recipient know that he knew a secret about them.

Detective Comics #70
December 1942

The Man Who Could Read Minds!
An accident during surgery turns fake mind-reader Carlo into the genuine article, and as is so often the case in these old stories, the man uses his new abillities in a criminal way. Batman and Robin find out the hard way his abilities are real, as he calls Bruce and Dick by their names when the two are masked, and threatens to expose their secret. They decide of course that they have to take him down anyway, even if it ends their careers. They track him to an island, where fighting him does no good, since he can read their minds and counter every move as they're making it. Batman is caught in a death trap where he'll be crushed by closing walls, while Robin is dropped under the ocean in a bathysphere with dwindling air. A fight on the deck of the boat sends Carlo plunging into the bay when he's shot by the man he came to the island to rob. He lives long enough to make it to the beach and write "Batman is really Bruce Wayne" on the sand before expiring, only for the incoming tide to erase most of the words. Carlo is a pretty good villain, though as always it's pretty obvious that he would die at the end to keep Bruce's secret ID from being made public.

Batman #14
December 1942-January 1943

The Case Batman failed to Solve!!
This great little story involves Dana Drye, a detective who is famous in detective circles, who invites some of the best detectives in the world to a conference. Naturally, Batman is invited, and so are western Sheriff Ezra Plunkett, Chinese detective Dr. Tsu, crime writer Grace Seers and Sir John Bart of Scotland Yard. Drye, an old man, gets up to speak and is shot and murdered in front of the assembled group, leaving all of them to investigate the murder. Some red herrings are thrown out for the reader in the form of the Graves gang, looking for whatever evidence Drye had on them, but in the end it's Batman who puts all the clues together and solves the mystery: Drye killed himself rather than die of a terminal illness, and he left a mystery for the other detectives as a parting gift. Batman pretends he has not solved the case, because he finds that Drye had actually worked out who he really was, and written that down in his case log. So that's two stories in a row where someone has learned Batman's secret ID. It's nice to see the detective side of the Batman character given a strong focus in a storyline.

[andersonh1]

That's 5 stories per year, maybe they were just setting him up to be Batman's main villain?

He clearly was. I just assume that the Joker on the cover sold books, so they used him as often as possible.

[andersonh1]

Batman #14 continued

Prescription for Happiness!
Another genre we see in these old stories is when the writer takes an ordinary member of the community and shows how valuable they are, even though they can't see it. In this case, the focus is on pharmacist A. B. Chalmers, who runs a small phramacy in a low-rent neighborhood. He never makes much money because he's too busy helping the people of the neighborhood, often at his own expense. His shop is invaded by hypochondriac gangster "Pills" Matson after an encounter with Batman and Robin. Matson decides the pharmacy is the perfect hideout and base to commit crimes, plus he can get all the pills he needs for his ailments. Batman gets captured while investigating, and Dick Grayson gets a job at the pharmacy so he can help Batman escape. Chalmers enlists the aid of the policeman with hurting feet that he's always helped, and the psychiatrist who has been working out of his back room, along with Dick Grayson and Batman to round up the gang, after which the neighborhood holds a parade to show Doc Chalmers how much they appreciate him.

[andersonh1]

Batman #14 concluded

Swastika Over the White House!
Fred Hopper angles for a job as a news photographer at the local paper, and tired of being pestered, the editor gives him an assignment: get photographs of millionarie J. Peerless Morton's birthday party and he'll have the job. It's an impossible assignment, meant to get rid of Hopper, but two of the paper's experienced photographers know this, and they help Hopper complete the assignment, landing him the job. But all is not as it appears: Hopper is a Nazi agent, working for a spy ring operating out of Gotham, and the plan is to get around government censorship of photos and film so American military secrets can be delivered to the Nazis. The head of the spy ring is Count Felix, who works in a hidden office with a swastika chandelier, and a picture of Hitler over a picture of the White House. This guy is hardcore. Felix warns Hopper about Batman, so Hopper studies his enemy to try and learn how to defeat him. Batman survives, and saves the life of one of Hopper's fellow photographers. In the end, Hopper gets pictures of bombers and fuel tanks, and the spy ring target them. Hopper's appearance as one of the saboteurs surprises Batman and Robin, allowing the crooks to get the drop on them. They tie them up and set them in a car loaded with dynamite, aimed towards the fuel tanks. Batman and Robin barely escape, follow the saboteurs to their hideout, and take down the Nazi spies, finding info that allows other spies in the US to be captured.

Bargains in Banditry!
"Why take the chance on prison? Let the one and only Penguin guide you!"

While I'm tired of the Joker, I enjoy it when the Penguin turns up. He sets up a flyer full of plans for various crimes, for which he charges a fee. Bank Robberies $1000, Private Mansions $750, etc. Murder by special arrangement Gotham's crooks buy into the scheme and buy the plans from the Penguin. He takes money up front and collects a percentage afterward. The first customers are Hairless Harry and Torchy Blaze, who successfully rob a bank with Penguin's plans. But when he shows up to collect his cut, he kills them both and takes all the money, chuckling at his own cleverness. Batman and Robin get involved, and capture part of another gang carrying out the Penguin's plans, only for the leader to escape. They follow him and actually prevent the Penguin from killing him, though Penguin escapes. Bruce sets himself up in disguise as "Bad News" Brewster, also selling crimes, but he does it to capture crooks, and get Penguin's attention. They walk into a trap and barely manage to escape by using the Penguin's own umbrellas against him. They finally capture the Penguin, taking him to jail.

[andersonh1]

Detective Comics #71
January 1943

A Crime a Day!
I'm going to make Batman the fool... I'm going to shame him... shame him into quitting! HA HA HA

It's another Joker story, but this one tries something a little different, and consequently I liked it more than the last few. Batman is giving a speech on crime-fighting and reflecting ruefully on the downsides of fame (which shouldn't be a problem for a vigilante, sneaking around in the shadows to scare crooks, which sadly Batman no longer is at this point). After his speech, someone asks him about the Joker, to which Batman replies:

"The Joker is tricky, cunning.... a supreme egotist advertising his crimes like a fool... leaves clues. Clues that defeat him! And so I always win, while he loses... all because of his conceit!"

So everyone is laughing at the Joker, wounding his pride. So what does he do? He decides to make everyone laugh at Batman by making him look like the fool, and so he does his usual routine of leaving clues to his crimes and advertising, because he likes to pull them off despite the police and everyone else knowing what he's going to do. And for a good portion of the story it works, to the point that the public starts to question Batman's effectiveness. And even Batman starts to wonder if he's lost his edge, though Robin is able to snap him out of it. In the end Batman does figure out the clues in time, the Joker is captured, and Batman displays him in a cage at his next crime-busting lecture (which is a little strange, if you ask me.) I liked that this story is built a bit around the character flaws of both Batman and the Joker, and that elevated it a bit over the last few Joker appearances.