Batman in the 1960s Issue 32: March/April 1965

 

The Caped Crusader in the 1960s
by Jack Seabrook
& Peter Enfantino

Infantino/Giella

Detective Comics #337

"Deep-Freeze Menace!"

Story by Gardner Fox

Art by Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella

Fifty-thousand years ago, two Cro-Magnon gentlemen, Krag and Brugg, fought over territorial rights to Heap Big Mountain and Brugg won, with Krag taking a header into a deep rock crevasse. But the joke's on Brugg since the "minerals from the stalactite ceiling" above Krag's inert form kept the brute in suspended animation until an earthquake released the frozen Magnonsicle into the air of present day.

For some reason, the ice has formed a shield around Krag and absorbs the powers of the elements around him. It's also given the caveman ESP (!) and the gift of flight. With only one thought in mind ("Kill Brugg!"), the scantily-clad redhead takes to the skies in search of his old enemy.

Cruising over Africa, Krag sees a Sikh hunter trailing a tiger and, immediately knowing (despite his ESP) that this man must be Brugg in disguise, dives in for the attack. With super-human powers, Krag quickly defeats his enemy and then has a look. "Nope," sighs the brute, "He no smell like Brugg!" Disappointed, Krag takes to the air once again, with his ESP sonar telling him that the real Brugg is hiding out in Gotham City. The ESP just needed to be fine-tuned, I guess. Krag suddenly realizes he can harness the power of lightning, whether it's storming or not, and the bolts send him speeding to Gotham.

It's only a matter of time before the Dynamic Duo are informed by the man with the easiest job on the planet, Commissioner Gordon, that there's a semi-nude, ice-sheathed caveman flying through the streets of Gotham. Batman and Robin speed to the scene, expecting to find the caveman looting the Gotham Cotton Candy Factory, and instead find Krag atop one of the city's tall buildings, just chillin'. As the Dark Knight swings in on his Bat-rope, Krag addresses him as Brugg and tells him that, even though he's wearing a mask and cowl, he recognizes him as his true enemy. Batman, his super-tuned hearing aid having been left back in the Cave, mistakenly hears the monster call him "Bruce!" and becomes alarmed. How would a giant popsicle know his true identity?

Robin joins in the battle and flings tear-gas at Klag, but the beast's ice shield sends it right back into the Teen-Age Thunderbolt's face. Momentarily forgetting that the Dynamic Duo have fought aliens from outer space, supermen from the future, and women dressed as cats, Batman declares that they've "never fought anything like him before!" End of Chapter One!

Klag gets the better of the Duo, knocking both out with his super-powered club. With his sworn enemy prostrate before him, Klag unmasks Batman and... "It no Brugg!" Really riled up, Klag flies away in search of the real Brugg. Robin reaches his unconscious boss and pops his mask on just as the cops show. Coming to, the Masked Manhunter orders his teenage flunky to gather any clues (including ice drippings) so they can go back to the Cave and study this menace.

Back at the cave, the duo agree that Klag is 50,000 years old and the minerals which bathed his body gave him "strange and unusual powers." Just then, an Interpol message comes through, informing the pair that Klag had attacked a Sikh in Africa; the picture reveals... a Bruce Wayne twin! "Holy double danger, Batman," screams a suddenly very smart Robin. Batman declares he now knows how to defeat the primitive menace. Another Interpol message informs our heroes that Klag has been sighted flying over the Atlantic toward Spain.

Shortly thereafter, Klag lands smack-dab in the middle of a ring in Malaga, Spain, just as a bullfight is about to commence. One of the matadors looks just like...Bruce Wayne! As Klag is about to clobber the cow-killer, a Bat rope descends into the arena and stays the mighty club. Reasoning that the ice sheath around the mighty Samson-ite allows him to breathe somehow, Batman sprays a plastic sealant around the ice and the caveman becomes solid rock. Batman declares that they'll take Klag back to Gotham, where scientists and doctors will clean him up and educate him. Then he'll run for Mayor of Gotham and, who knows, perhaps become the President of the United States sometime in the 21st Century.

As noted plenty of times before, I roll my eyes at most of these goofy scripts, but Gardner Fox must have had a few extra Coronas before he sat down in front of his Smith-Corona to type out the classic kitsch known as "Deep-Freeze Menace!" I love how Fox just throws out anything resembling common sense (how does a man move while he's encased in ice?) and decides he's going to give the ten-year-olds that make up the bulk of his audience a thrill ride. And what a thrill ride this is! A caveman who can survive a stories-high plunge. Lightning bolts that spring out of nowhere. Cavemen who don't question their sudden mastery of flight. Bat-computers that can analyze ice particles and tell the boss that minerals in a cave gave this big guy super-powers. Oh, and if Robin can collect drip specimens, that means the ice is melting, correct? Would Klag's super-powers have eventually worn out? Alas, the follow-up where we see Klag cleaned up and reporting to work as Gotham's new D.A. never materialized.-Peter

Jack-Those must have been some amazing minerals in that cave if they could give ESP and the power of flight to a frozen caveman! Why did he stay sheathed in ice the whole time? Wouldn't it melt? I guess the super minerals resisted the sun's rays. Batman really needs to get his hearing checked. Imagine how bad this story would be if the art weren't so sharp!

Infantino/Giella

Batman #170

"Genius of the Getaway Gimmicks!"

Story by Gardner Fox

Art by Sheldon Moldoff & Sid Greene

"The Puzzle of the Perilous Prizes!"

Story by Bill Finger

Art by Joe Giella

Batman and Robin chase a trio of crooks who robbed a factory payroll but fail to catch them because the criminals were aided by the "Genius of the Getaway Gimmicks!" Roy Reynolds has figured out that most crooks can't resist trying to kill the Dynamic Duo when they should be focused on escape. When the same crooks rob a department store safe, Reynolds ensures their getaway with a handy oil slick on the road in front of the Batmobile.

Batman figures out what's going on and sets a trap. A story in the paper reports that a villain called the Hexer has vowed to use the Bat-Signal against the Caped Crusader and, when the crooks steal a valuable chess set and are chased by Batman and Robin, the Bat-Signal seems to emit a ray that causes the Dynamic Duo to be wrapped in their own expanding uniform emblems. Reynolds keeps running but the other two can't resist the seeming golden opportunity to do away with the good guys once and for all. Batman and Robin easily overpower the crooks, who are so annoyed at Reynolds that they tell Batman where he's hiding. Batman and Robin find and apprehend Reynolds in two panels!

Moldoff and Greene provide art that is marginally better than that of Moldoff and Paris, all in service of an uninspired story. The main thing I took away from this one was that Batman and Robin were not wearing seatbelts in the Batmobile as of 1965, since when the Batmobile hits the oil slick they are both thrown from the car before it runs headlong into a telephone pole. It's probably for the best, because they didn't have air bags, either.

Aunt Harriet tells Bruce and Dick about her friend, a retired nurse named Mrs. Tompkins, who won first prize in a contest without ever having entered! Batman and Robin set out to solve "The Puzzle of the Perilous Prizes!" Traveling to Hillvale, where the winning entry was mailed, they accidentally stumble across criminal activity and barely survive the Batmobile being blown off the side of a cliff. Crooks try to run them over with a bulldozer and again the Dynamic Duo are nearly killed.

Batman analyzes a wristwatch he finds at the scene and it leads him to the town's riverfront dock, where they confront the crooks. Stilts, the gang's leader, sets a grizzly bear on Batman (don't ask), but to no avail. Batman discovers that the gang was using animal cages and a showboat to transport stolen loot from city to city to fence it.

But what of the contest? It turns out that Jimmy Statten, a young gas station attendant who Mrs. Tompkins kindly nursed back to health before she retired, entered the contest in her name, hoping to win and pay her back. In the end, Bruce wonders if Aunt Harriet suspects him and Dick of being Batman and Robin.

So much for the New Look! This story stinks like a dead deer on the side of the road. Now we know what it looks like when Joe Giella inks his own pencils--come back Sheldon Moldoff, all is forgiven! Bill Finger penned this terrible tale and I wonder if it was a leftover file story, since we haven't seen much of Finger's work lately. Also, two stories in one issue where the Dynamic Duo are thrown from the Batmobile and the car is wrecked! Who is their mechanic? Do they have an unending supply of new Batmobiles?-Jack

Peter-Neither one of these dim-witted adventures rung my bell. What a great gimmick for an arch-villain: do everything you can not to hurt Batman. We never got a moniker for our new criminal mastermind. How about the Eluder? The Neutral? The Sissy? Two juicy nuggets I learned in "Getaway Gimmicks": the newspapers somehow get hold of action photos of Bats and Robin they couldn't possibly be witness to and, as shown during the big oil skid, the Caped Crusaders do not wear seat belts. "Perilous Puzzle" should have been titled "Slow Crime Day in Gotham." Seriously? The boys are putting all their investigative skills into finding out how poor Mrs. Tompkins received a free car, fridge, stove, freezer, and Ginsu steak knives? The Dynamic Duo are in for a lot of work when Dick Clark and Ed McMahon start sending out their Publishers Clearing House packets in a few years! 

Infantino/Giella

Detective Comics #338

"Batman's Power-Packed Punch!"

Story by Gardner Fox

Art by Sheldon Moldoff & Joe Giella

A lab accident leaves Batman with a power-packed punch. Bruce Wayne is visiting one of the labs assigned to the Alfred Foundation, learning about Dr. Orval Manning's new potion, which, when applied to a wooden surface, makes that object invulnerable to rot and termites. The nutty professor accidentally spills some of the liquid onto Wayne's hands, but there is no visible damage done. 

Dr. Manning then introduces his boss to another invention, the Encephitector, a gizmo that enables bank presidents to detect when a person is thinking of committing a robbery. "Holy Minority Report!" thinks Bruce. Later, in the Bat-Cave, just to show off to Robin, the Caped Crusader whips up an "improved" version of the Enchephologramitizer and installs it in the Batmobile.

While on patrol, the boys run across a band of thieves running from a bank and give chase. The criminals head into a construction yard and use a crane to level Batman with a wrecking ball. The thugs get away but the Teenage Thunder-Bolt notices the ball has a fist imprint in it. Somehow, the wood-protector formula has transformed Batman's hands into fists of fury. Suddenly, the Enciphipecktor goes off again and the boys head to yet another heist. Bats uses his strong fists to bust through a wall and discovers two of the knuckle-headed thieves who had just robbed the bank, now cracking a safe. Don't these guys know when enough is enough?

Meanwhile, Robin has run down the rest of the bank gang and, with a returning Batman, makes quick work of the bozos. The boys haul the crooks to jail and Robin suggests they go see Dr. Manning and find out how long "Batman's Power-Packed Punch!" will last. Batman slaps the kid on the back, breaking Robin's shoulder, and admits the Teenage Tomato has a good idea now and then. 

I'd have liked Prof. Manning (or Batman) to explain to me why the Enchiladizer can possibly focus in on only bank robbers and not all crimes in general, such as men who are about to murder their wives or embezzling accountants or Avatar sequels. Is there a part of the brain reserved just for heists? As Robin says, the Duo "waste a lot of time driving around Gotham City on our patrols night after night..." Imagine a world where Bats and Robin can arrest the Penguin before he's even released from jail for his previous crime!

I'm not sure if visiting the scientist who spilled serum on Bruce Wayne's hands, while dressed as Batman, is really a good idea. My favorite scene is where Bats and Robin detect a crime going down behind a brick wall and our law-abiding detective exclaims, "No need to waste time looking for a door, Robin! I'll blast a door in that stone wall--with a power-packed punch!" Oh, and the crooks who are cracking the safe look like two of the guys who were robbing the bank but forgive me if I'm wrong. Shelly & Joe have a very limited amount of facial features and three-piece suits from which to work with.-Peter

Jack-This is just as bad as the stuff we were being subjected to before Infantino and the New Look came to Gotham. It's hard to believe Gardner Fox wrote the story. In the caption on page seven, the narrator refers to "rock 'em and sock 'em fists," which has to be a nod to the popular toy boxers, the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, which were introduced in 1964 and which I got for Christmas several years after that. The fact that there is an Alfred Foundation suggests that our favorite butler won't be rising from the dead anytime soon.

Next Week...
Hardboiled Sci-Fi!