This City Needs Me

This is the second post of three, looking at the contents of  DC Showcase Batman vol. 6. As we saw in an earlier post, this is an interesting period where the "dread Batman" is shaking off the campery of the 60s tv series by immersing himself in the Gothic imagery and Youthquake topics of the very early 70s.

Not only do the award-winning team of Adams and O'Neil provide some strikingly cinematic stories,  this is also the dawn of the 100-page Super-Spectacular ( here is an image of the classic Forte/Swan LSH by Adams; it reminds me of my very first and favourite stories of the Legion in Adventure)

It's important to remember that only the O'Neil stories have any kind of internal continuity, as we would understand it today and that is employed to flesh out the Bondian mastermind Ra's al Ghul.

Batman for a Night is a rather 1950s story in which boxer Jan Paxton stands in for Bats with tragic consequences. The Batman Adventures comic did this "faux Bats" story much better in the early 90s.

One of these days, I'll post a blog about the Marvel/DC crossovers that revolved around the Rutland, Vermont parade. Here are two episodes from one unofficial collaboration that I have read- I still have never seen the Amazing Adventures/Beast segment.

DC's first visit to the parade is, in fact, a grim Holocaust story; the serious nature of the tale is emphasised by a number of silent panels. Oddly,however, there's an overt note of stoner humour among Dick Grayson's pals, Gerry Conway, Berni Wrightson and Alan Weiss which jars in the context of Night of the Reaper. Adams sneaks in a couple of appearances of Alex "Havok" Summers, X-fans.

The Creeper, like the Hawk and the Dove, is a Steve Ditko creation who never achieved any real success at DC but, like the warring brothers, was revived from time to time.

And Be a Villain features the return of the Creeper, to my knowledge for the first time since the Sixties. An evil relative of Dr. Yatz is manipulating Jack Ryder with a cure which actually changes him back into a human being in the denouement. Happily for Ditko fans, the Creeper returns to action ( and I would read about him for the first time) in the spring of 1975.

 I was struck by how much the Creeper's face and hair resemble the Joker in this story; I wonder if it was the inspiration for his origin as a Joker-victim ( written by Steve Gerber) in the animated series in the late 90s?

The middle section of this volume is not hugely memorable; I prefer the Robbins artwork to the Novick/Giordano stories,

Secret of the Slaying Statues is a tedious and caricatured episode in Gotham's Irish "Erin Hill"community where Bats encounters a father exploiting his deformed son.

In Silent Night, Deadly Night, a petty criminal is poised to murder a toy manufacturer but is redeemed by the love of his little niece. Batman experiences a sleigh ride miracle in a very corny seasonal adventure. 

 By contrast, from the Batman logo to the one-eyed man leering from a coffin, Forecast for Tonight-Murder! is a macabre Robbins masterpiece.

Vengeance for a Dead Man is a bizarre and grotesque rematch with Ra's al Ghul. With a tormented, disembodied brain, it's more Roald Dahl than Fu Manchu, however. It also introduces the malign medico Dr. Moon ,who would later work with Dr. Cyber in Wonder Woman. Because it's O'Neil, there's a character named Flinky Davenport.

Blind Justice, Blind Fear by Robbins is a Toth-style adventure of the Crime Crusader in a barricaded prison block. It's easy to forget that Marvel didn't have a monopoly on Relevance. The message of this comic, with its Black Power and "honky" references, is that true justice is colour blind.

Highway to Nowhere is a truck hijack story, years before the brief CB radio/ trucking fad brought us Convoy, Smokey and the Bandit and Every Which Way But Loose ( you're singing them now, in your head!). Bats in disguise discovers drugged coffee at a truckstop cafe where, because it's O'Neil, he's called "Bubbie" by the proprietor.

These stories are fairly entertaining but the remainder of this book contains a couple of real milestones. We'll revisit them in a future post.

Next: Blindly Through the Madhouse: the Dark Knight, the Black Knight, Virgin of the Secret Service and Conan in the Nineties

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