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| The Caped Crusader in the 1960s by Jack Seabrook & Peter Enfantino |
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| Novick |
"Mr. Freeze's Chilling Deathtrap!"
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Chic Stone & Sid Greene
Bruce Wayne and his ward, Dick Grayson, race to the hospital in an ambulance with Aunt Harriet. She's got something wrong with her but don't ask what, cuz the info is not forthcoming. All we know is that she'll die unless the surgeon uses cryosurgery on the much-loved Harriet. In the middle of the procedure, the "cannula" ("a tube which feeds liquid nitrogen into its diseased target") suddenly ceases to work. Bruce and Dick are crestfallen when they hear the news. Where the heck can they get another tool that shoots a freezing solution?
Meanwhile, not so coincidentally across town, Mister Zero Freeze is pulling a caper using his very own Cryo-Gun, a bazooka that fires a spray of pure ice, when the gizmo suddenly conks out. "No problem," says the newly christened rogue, he'll use the heat modulator on his blaster instead. The villain is now the proud owner of the most celebrated masterpiece of cold weather, "Winter Wonderland." He and his boys head back to their HQ.
Batman manages to grab Freeze's Cryothermal Gun and lobs it to Robin, who hoofs it out of the building and heads for the hospital. Batman and Freeze engage in a little tit-for-tat as each gets the better of the other for a couple pages before Bats lays the cuffs on and hands the hoods to Gordo. Later, at the hospital, Harriet has made an incredible recovery thanks to the Cryo-Gun, but both Bruce and Dick do double takes when it appears that their beloved boarder has aged a few decades and gained a bit of weight.
Jack-This issue really feels like we're on the right track. The art by Stone and Greene is a step up from that of Moldoff and Giella, and it reminded me in spots of the cartoony style that would later be used for the Super-Friends. There are no hoods in fedoras and suits; instead, we get one of my favorite TV villains. There's even a bit of depth to the storytelling, with Aunt Harriet in danger and the need to rescue her with one of Mr. Freeze's weapons. The backup story with Elongated Man has a cameo by the Dynamic Duo and the villain is another TV favorite, the Riddler! All in all, this was an enjoyable comic, made even more so by the house ads for a Supergirl giant that I recall as one of the first comics I ever saw, along with teasers for two new Ditko titles.
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| Adams |
"The Man Who Radiated Fear!"
Story by Mike Friedrich
Art by Chic Stone & Joe Giella
When the Scarecrow confronts Batman, the villain is paralyzed by fear! What's going on? It's a test--one of the Scarecrow's gang is dressed as Batman in order to try out a new pill that causes the person who takes it to radiate fear. A few nights later, the Scarecrow and his gang wait for the Dynamic Duo to respond to a jewelry store robbery. The Scarecrow's new fear pill works like a charm, causing Batman and Robin to collapse from fright and allowing the crooks to get away.
Batman and Robin return to the Batcave, still shaking, and tell Alfred that they might as well hang up their capes and cowls. Alfred helpfully reminds them in detail of their respective origin stories and they snap out of their funk and head to the gym for a workout.
In the nights that follow, the Dynamic Duo happen upon the Joker, Killer Moth, and the Penguin, all separately, and arrest them. Each bad guy has some colored straws on his person that represent clues from the Scarecrow. Batman and Robin intercept him and his gang at a fur store and a battle follows but, once again, the good guys are defeated by fear. They awaken to find themselves tied to chairs with guns pointed at them; the slightest movement will cause the guns to go off. This proves not to be much trouble for our heroes to escape, and soon they have caught the Scarecrow once again.
Fan-turned-pro Mike Friedrich wrote this, which appears to have been his first pro sale. Since it's the 200th issue, he finds a rather awkward way to work in a retelling of the origin stories, but the tale as a whole is thin. The strangest part is the way Batman and Robin happen across three villains and those villains have straws on their persons that are clues to the Scarecrow's plans. The art is definitely a step up from Moldoff's pages, but having Adams draw the cover makes me salivate for his debut on the inside pages.-Jack
Peter-Friedrich had already sold a couple of scripts to DC, but neither would see the light of a newsstand until post-Batman #200. For an early stab at writing, it's not bad, certainly no worse than a Gardner Fox script. But it's also meandering and rudderless and never explains the biggest mystery: how the heck Scarecrow got that straw into Joker's hair. The art certainly proves the point that the proper inker means a lot. Whereas Chic's art in 'tec #373 was impressive when aided by the inking of Sid Greene, it's two steps back with Joe Giella finishing. My favorite bit in this issue has to be the interview Friedrich conducted with Biljo White, one of the founding members of 1960s comic fandom and editor/publisher of Batmania. Nice touch naming one of Scarecrow's goons after Biljo. Funny how these anniversary issues didn't have the impact they would have decades later. No lenticular covers, extra pages, or high cover price. It's just another monthly.
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| Novick |
"Hunt for a Robin-Killer!"
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Gil Kane & Sid Greene
The Lemon Brothers are knocking over yet another warehouse when the Caped Crusaders arrive to put the "squeeze on them" (as Robert Plant might say). Batman sends Robin to the back of the building but then remembers that the rear has been barricaded. The Dark Knight puts the KO on the Bros and then goes to check on his little buddy, only to find him dead, beaten to death in an alley. Yep, definitely dead.
While on his Bat-cell phone making funeral arrangements, the "World's Greatest Detective" notices signs of life from the pre-teen titan, lifts him in his arms, and hoofs it to the local hospital. Exiting the building, he swears to find the party responsible for Robin's near-death experience and to make him pay.
Disgraced, Batman heads back to the Batcave to look through old files. On a hunch, he searches through some of Robin's old cases and discovers that his partner once busted Jim Condors's twin brother, Ed. With some sly trickery, he tricks Jim into confessing to the beating of Robin (as revenge for his brother's incarceration). Batman and Condors trade right crosses and left upper cuts until Bats gets the drop and kayos the teen beater. Weeks later, Robin is up and out of his hospital bed as if he had never even died!
Jack-We all knew from page one that Robin was not going to die, so the real appeal of this story lies in Gil Kane's art. His panels and pages are so dynamic that it's fun to read and see what positions he'll have the characters contort themselves into next. There are a lot of people flying upside down and backwards, but it's entertaining. He still needs practice on faces, though--in the last panel, Batman and Robin look goofy.
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| Adams |
"Doom, What is Thy Shape?"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Mike Sekowsky & Jack Abel
"The Man Called '50-50'!"
Story by David Vern
Art by Jim Mooney
(Reprinted from Star Spangled Comics #128, May 1952)
When a sports car pulls up to a bank's drive-through window, the driver's mirror turns into a long, malleable arm and reaches in to grab a satchel of loot! Batman is alerted and chases the car, but he is befuddled when it disappears and only a deli delivery van is in the area. This is the work of a costumed villain who calls himself the Molder and who helpfully explains to the reader that the car was made of plastic with a memory; it began as a truck, was remolded into a sports car, and then regained its original truck form from memory. The Molder crows about the Age of Plastic and predicts that the material will revolutionize crime.
He next creates a group of Plastoids, human-like forms who rob the passengers on a subway train. Again, Batman is alerted and he flies into the subway on his Bat-Copter, only to have the Molder engulf him in a gushing mass of plastic that cements him right in the path of the onrushing train! Fortunately, Plastic Man has also been tracking the Molder and uses a stretchy arm to stop the subway cars from crushing the Caped Crusader. Plas explains to Bats that the villain was a plastics research scientist who went berserk after a lab accident.
Plastic Man chases the Molder but is zapped by a ray emanating from his helmet that breaks the stretchable sleuth into five pieces. Batman flies up in his Whirly-Bat and doesn't fare much better. He reassembles Plastic Man while the Molder heads back to an abandoned warehouse, where he completes his latest deadly invention. He soon appears outside of Gotham City Hall and begins to cover it in plastic. Plastic Man puts his body in the way of the stream of plastic shooting from the Molder's big gun, but this only causes our hero's molecules to begin to replicate endlessly.
As Plastic Man's body send out tentacles that threaten to destroy every building in Gotham City, Batman confronts the Molder, only to find himself drowning in plastic. Commissioner Gordon enlists police to blast away at Plastic Man's expanding form, causing Plas's head and shoulders to shear off and bounce into the Molder's lab, where he drinks memory plastic solution. The Plastoids attack and his head and shoulders bounce back into contact with the rest of his body, which shrinks back to its normal shape and size. Batman manages to escape suffocation and finds the Molder atop a building, where a good left hook knocks the bad guy off the edge. Plastic Man's giant hand catches him before he goes splat on the pavement and Plas explains to Bats that the memory solution that he drank allowed his body to recall its prior state and return to it.
Peter- Most of the art for the Plastic Man story is strictly amateur hour, in particular the "human" faces, but the script has a goofy, non-stop energy to it that's infectious and the panels with Plasty pasted all over the city are genius. In the best sense, "Doom, What is Thy Shape?" feels like an improv, with Haney one-upping himself as the script progresses. To me, it's the most entertaining B+B story yet. The Molder is as generic a villain as they come; the costume immediately brought to mind Spider-Man's nemesis, Hobgoblin. The back-up, an old Robin solo yarn, is fun but "Fifty-fifty" Finley is strictly low-rent Two-Face.
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| Next Week... Wally! |
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