Batman 1975

Let's make up for the relative brevity of my last post with a double-sized extravaganza for Batman '75. Pour a cup of tea and settle into your armchair, lots of ground to cover.

This was a transitional year for the Batman. 1974's 100-page experiments came to an end (although a couple of them will be covered here, since they have 1975 cover dates) and three, count 'em, three new Bat-titles were introduced. One of which only lasted two issues and which I won't be covering.

Sorry, Man-Bat.

There's some fun Ditko art, but it's just such a silly inversion of the concept. ("Whoah, what if he's, like, a literal Bat-man? MAN-BAT!") Well within the bounds of Bronze Age acceptability, of course, but I'd be the wrong guy to argue its merits or demerits.

As mentioned elsewhere, though, I greatly enjoy playing the character in Lego Batman.

As for the other two:

BATMAN FAMILY

(Issues 1 and 2)

Writer: Elliot S. Maggin. Artist: Mike Grell

What would prove to be the best-selling Bat-series of the '70s debuted somewhat modestly at the end of the year with a Spirit of '76 story and a whole bunch of reprinted material. As I'll be ending this blog with the other notable Spirit of '76 Bat-story that appeared in the at the tail end of 1975, it seemed like a logical place to start.

That will be the last place "logical" applies in this section.

The countdown to America's bicentennial was observed by most comics and tv series of the day. Each of the major networks ran an "And that's the way it was, 200 years ago tonight..." segment in its respective nightly news. (Something referenced in issue 1 by Congressman Barbara Gordon - fun little contemporaneous detail.) What distinguishes the Batman Family observation of the bicentennial from all others in any medium is the appearance of both Benedict Arnold and Satan himself.

As the story goes along, it is reiterated that this is actually supposed to be Benedict Arnold. One gets used to these sorts of things as robots, illusions, etc. But nope - this is the actual guy. This is problematic only because the Arnold we see sure knows a lot about cameras and television and other things from after his time. The explanation? He has spent his post-mortal-coil time being tortured in Hell, where apparently the Devil has kept him up to speed on the latest technological achievements. (Perhaps to torment him with news of man's scientific progress? All the nifty inventions he was born too early to appreciate? Who knows.)

I find it encouraging that the Devil thinks so much about the American spirit that he even bothers. But more importantly, I find it marvelously batshit. As I do the other Bat-centennial (and sorry for all the Bat-puns; it's just too difficult not to do) story, which we'll get to later.

Here's a fun pin-up from 1961 reprinted in issue 2. Four of the folks in this picture had been missing from Batman's pages for years - was this a sign that Batman Family intended to bring back some gone-from-the-charts but-not-from-our-hearts familiar faces? This would indeed be the case in the years to come.

THE JOKER

(Issues 1 - 4)

Writers: Denny O'Neil, Elliot S. Maggin. Artists: Irv Novick, Dick Giordano, José Luis García-López, Ernia Chua

The Clown Prince of Crime got his very own series in '75.

The good news? The art is lots of fun, and there are a few fun moments here and there.

The bad news? Publishers still kowtowed to the Comics Code, so an ongoing series about a super-villain was compromised from the go. Every issue, for example, had to end with the villain in prison. Kind of hard to keep inventing scenarios where the Joker leaves prison at issue's beginning and is back behind bars at issue's end.

The Creeper issue is pretty good, though, easily the best of the lot.

I mentioned the art, most of which is handled by Ernie Chua and the immortal José Luis García-López. When I was growing up, his style guide was to DC what John Romita Sr.'s character models were for Marvel; when you saw the characters licensed on drinking cups and underoos and elsewhere, it was their versions of the characters you most often saw. García-López, along with Curt Swan, George Perez, and Jim Aparo more or less remain what I think of when I think DC art.

I imagine for most younger folks, it's Bruce Timm? That'd be my guess.

WORLD'S FINEST

(Issues 227 - 234)

Writer: Bob Haney. Artists: Dick Dillin, John Calnan, Curt Swan, Tex Blaisdel

All in all, another year of World's Finest Comics that makes you wonder if the title of the book is meant ironically. I had high hopes for one of the 100-pagers that starts the year off:

but neither the anti-Superman nor the anti-Batman turn out to be especially interesting. (The Rip Hunter story on the left is actually pretty fun, though, if you don't mind the Gee-willickers silliness of Rip and his sidekicks.)

The only gem of the bunch - and it's a gem that shines much differently than its creators likely intended - is issue 233, where the Super-Sons descend upon a Town Without Men...

"Holy --! A police chick??"

I recently re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald's Taps at Reveille, a book which contains for my money one of the best short stories of the 20th century, "Babylon Revisited." It also contains "Family in the Wind," which like every other story collected in the book is brilliantly constructed, but the racism of its era (and perhaps its author) is transmitted loud and clear. It's a thorny issue. One of the least interesting things in the world to me is banging on and on about racism of yesteryear. It's only ever the racism of the present that actually matters, and all too often people transfer a one-to-one understanding of the former to the latter and think they've proven something. Which is not always the case.

Why am I bringing all this up? Because, I feel - as Hemingway and Fitzgerald and many of the so-called Lost Generation writers did - that a writer only has an obligation to the truth. Which is to say that sometimes in order to accurately recreate one's time, one has to remove those portions of one's writing that editorialize, lest the writing become at best silly and at worst propaganda. (Contemporary literary appraisals are almost comically failing in this regard, but that's a rant for a different day.) So, part of me thinks when I read something like "Family in the Wind" or a lot of Hemingway's stories, Wow, this is crazy-racist, because there is no attempt to insert an "And this is wrong" into any character's mouth and its absence is jarring to 21st century eyes. But there's another part of me that knows it's not just unfair (and sometimes completely at odds with intent) to evaluate the author him-or-herself by the racist circumstances on display but also potentially very dangerous: that's lynch mob thinking.

What I'm trying to say is: there are stories you read from yesteryear where you can safely assume the author shares the prejudices of his or her era/ on display, and then there are ones where that assumption is much more problematic. This is important and distinguishes those who truly care about social justice and fairness, etc. from those who simply maintain the appearance of doing so.

And then there's stuff like World's Finest 233.

It would of course be unfair to evaluate this issue alongside short-story-heavyweights like Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Comics just weren't written with that sort of context in the 70s. (Which is what makes the Relevance movement a little silly in retrospect - necessary and admirable, sure. Like JM DeMatteis has said, it kicked down walls for other writers. But the characters and conceits of the medium were horribly abused in pursuit of its concerns.) But this is an example of one of those stories where the author doesn't seem to truly understand the sexism of either himself or his era but nevertheless tries desperately to make a point about it all. And the resulting train wreck is just fascinating. Amusing, horrifying, and, certainly - perhaps even more than an academic examination - very illuminating about the feminist concerns of the era.

I'm tempted to let this one speak for itself, but some things are worth pointing out.

Bruce and Clark, Jrs., stumble onto a small town, Belton, that appears to be run entirely by females. Bruce, Jr., in particular, can't believe it, and immediately revolts against the town's strictly-enforced rule of No Touching of the Females. He and Clark, Jr. allow themselves to be captured so they can get to the bottom of all this (i.e. "isn't there a man we can talk to?!")

Indeed there is. Not just a man but...

An enormous, phallic, slimy alien from outer space!

Clark, Jr. puts it all together.

All that it takes to reverse this complete abomination of the social order is some hot lips-on-lips action with Batman, Jr.

"Oh, brother!" - how right you are, sir.

After presumably a giant Super-Bat-orgy, the Super-Sons leave the town. Time has resumed its shape; all is as it once was. The chicks are back to needing men to figure shit out for them. Crisis averted.

I mean, even for its era, the implications here are just staggering. I've spent a bit more time on this than intended, and you can undoubtedly see for yourselves. But man. (No pun intended.)

JLA

(Issues 115 - 125)

Writers: Cary Bates, Elliot S. Maggin, Martin Pasko, Gerry Conway. Artists: Dick Dillin, Frank McLaughlin

A fair to middling year for the world's greatest superheroes. The JLA/JSA two-parter is worth a mention, though. It opens in the office of Julius Schwartz, as Cary Bates and Elliot Maggin pitch different ideas for the year's traditional crossover story.

This all leads to Cary and Elliot descending into the two-dimensional reality of our heroes and getting superpowers themselves, before things are put back to normal.

Your enjoyment of this one will depend on how flexible you are with the concept. Myself, I can see how this sort of thing must've been fun at the time, but it didn't do much for me. I like Grant Morrison's appearance in the pages of Animal Man because it served a very real point to the goings-on in that title, but more often than not, when an author appears in his or her own story, I find myself cringing a little. But it's all harmless enough.

BATMAN

(Issues 260 - 270)

Writers: Denny O'Neil, Mike Fleischer, David Reed. Artists: Irv Novick, Dick Giordano, Ernie Chua, Rich Buckler, Berni Wrightson, Tex Blaisdel

Answers below.

Even more concussions! (At least he's almost alerted in this first panel.)

And despite the pop art majesty of this particular panel -

all told, it's not an especially fantastic year for Batman.

How'd you do?

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD

(Issues 116 - 123)

Writer: Bob Haney. Artist: Jim Aparo.

While The Brave and the Bold is often the unsung hero in the year-to-year Batverse of the '70s, that's not the case this year. There's some typically wonderful Aparo art:

And this story where the Batman and the Spectre battle a modern-day Thuggee points to the conceptual terrain of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

But with one exception, most of the stories are fairly run of the mill. Not a bad mill, but worth boring you with recaps and screencaps? Nah.

I was intrigued by this team-up.

but it doesn't really go anywhere. One of these days - perhaps even here at the Omnibus - I'll explore Kamandi from top to bottom, but this Brave and the Bold story doesn't add much to the mythos.

DETECTIVE COMICS

(Issues 444 - 454)

Writers: Len Wein, Denny O'Neil, Elliot S. Maggin, David Reed. Artists: Jim Aparo, Ernie Chua, Walt Simonson, José Luis García-López, Dick Giordano, Mike Royer.

The stories from this stretch of Detective can be summed by one panel:

Half the year is devoted to one storyline: Batman is framed for the murder of Talia and has to prove his innocence.

It leads to some repetitive cover design.

 

Actually, that last one comes just after the storyline I mention. As does this one:

but the "Bat-murderer" theme is still going strong.

The Batman clears it all up and delivers perhaps the clumsiest of all his considerably-clumsy-wrap-ups/all-is-revealed on the very last page of the storyline.

I think my favorite issue was this bit of weirdness where the Batman becomes... well, the cover says it for me:

This Mickey McConnell fella, though, decidedly disagrees.

And the concussions continue.

AND THE GREATEST BATMAN

STORY OF 1975 IS...

Well, "greatest" is not quite accurate. But the one worthiest of comment? This:

As 1975 drew to a close, the countdown to America's bicentennial was in full swing. But it was also the middle of the 1970s, when the cultural revolution of the previous decade was arguably at its peak. Only a few years earlier, Easy Rider and M.A.S.H. had shocked audiences with their unapologetic criticism of traditional American values. By 1975, the considerably more controversial Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon and Deep Throat were being discussed at the dinner table (well, some dinner tables) and round the proverbial water cooler. In the wake of Watergate and other revelations about widespread and entrenched abuse of power by American officials charged with upholding both domestic and international law, cynicism was as mainstream as it was ever going to get.

America couldn't quite look back on two hundred years of itself without waving away some of the smoke in the air, whether from the still-smoldering wreckage of certain assumptions and attitudes or from Cheech-and-Chong sized spliffs, take your pick. And steaming into the fray? The Doomsday Express:

Not a very subtle title. God bless 'em.

I'll present this one with a minimum of commentary and just let the screencaps do the talking. (Minus my captions.) What follows is a highly-parsed version of events - let's jump right in.

Oh, they certainly will, Batman...

Telegram!

Knocked unconscious again! Sorry if I hit this note too much, but how many will we catalog before decade's end?

And here's where we go a bit kablooey.

I did not add the arrow pointing to "Crime," in case you're wondering. Nice Easter Egg, though, however unintentional.

Batman and the Metal Men team up to thwart this existential threat from outside America's borders. They search the train (leading to an overview of Americana as cherrypicked as this here screencap-a-thon.)

Shown up by Charlie White Wing! Where were you on that one, World's Greatest Detective?

Completely absent from this metaphorical look over America's shoulder? Black people. Brown people. The atomic bomb. (Well, there is a bomb, I guess, and for dramatic purposes, I suppose we can think of it as an a-bomb, sure. Just saying.)

Why stop there? Women, flappers, jazz, Emperor Norton, the Alamo, Hernando de Soto, etc. Not that "The Doomsday Express" had to include each and every one of these things to be relevant or anything. It's just an interesting collection of omissions.

As a firm believer in the inevitable messiness of social convention, I for one champion its incongruent blend of cynicism, innocence, indignation, patriotism, and silliness more than I would if it were more Billy Jack-like. Moreso than the Town Without Men story from World's Finest 233, at any rate, though perhaps equal to that one in its failure to thoroughly vet its own assumptions.

For better or worse, this is how the Batman observed the bicentennial of the United States.

Batman '74

When I sat down to corral 1974's Bat-titles onto my flash drive, I discovered that we've arrived at the 100-page-giant era. Perhaps a word on why and how this dramatic page-count increase came to be is in order. As recounted in greater detail here:

"One of Martin Goodman's outrageously successful business moves during the last years of his tenure at Marvel was to trick DC (...) into committing an ultimately disastrous page-count and pricing change (...) resulting in what then DC editorial director (soon to be publisher) Carmine Infantino characterized as a "slaughter." In an audaciously daring move, the House of Ideas raised the page count of its regular titles 75% from 32 to 48 pages, accompanied by a 75% price hike from 15¢ to 25¢ on its October and November 1971 cover-dated books. Immediately DC followed suit, though significantly increasing their page count 100%, from 32 to 64 pages. But within a month, in a move that sent shockwaves through the industry, Goodman immediately dropped page count back to 32 pages yet only reducing the price per book to 20¢, still a 25% price increase from two months prior.

The results of Martin's gambit? Marvel was able to give wholesalers a 50% discount off the cover price of their line, as compared to DC's mere 40% price break. And whose titles would the retailers be more likely to push, do you think? Plus, what kid could resist getting five snappy, all-new Marvels for a buck, compared to four DCs, padded with moldy, old reprints? Also, as DC had to lock into ordering huge quantities of paper-a full year's supply-the publisher was trapped at the 25¢, 64-page format for an entire year. (...) Those 12 months were all the time DC's competitor needed to come out on top and, for the first time in their decades-old rivalry, Marvel surpassed DC in sales, only rarely looking back in the quarter-century passed since that fateful year. The DC supremacy on the comics racks ended in 1972 after an astonishing 35-year reign, a dynasty suddenly in disarray, scrambling to get back on top, while Martin Goodman sat very prettily indeed, ensconced in his new role as the King of Comics in this New Marvel Age."

Part of DC's "disarray" resulted in these 100-page giants. Martin Goodman's good fortune didn't last long, but that is as they say a story for another day. DC's fortunes would continue to plummet, but as the so-called Implosion happens a bit later in our countdown, we'll cover that in the blogs to come.

Just an ad for the Menomonee Falls Gazette - apparently a very popular eBay item. Dangerous info, that.

What all of that means for me is that instead of the usual number of pages to read for any given Bat-year, I was looking at something like 2700 pages (!!) for 1974: an insurmountable (or at least unexplainable, to self or wife) number of pages to tackle.

What to do? Focus only on stories written that calendar year, i.e. no reprints? But the reprints are a lot of the fun in these things. Focus only on stories starring Batman? No way - '74 is the year of Manhunter. Split all of this up into 5 different posts, one for each title? The best of the bad solutions, but one that would still entail me taking several eightballs of Batman to the brain. Sounds awesome! But inadvisable.

So, I chose to reprogram the Kobayashi to my own imperfect specifications, namely to review only Detective Comics.  Before deciding this, though, I grabbed a few things worth sharing:

From Batman 257, another haunted castle tale.

Not a huge fan of the character, but Ditko.

I've been enjoying the evolution of Daisy BB Gun ads over the decade. This one has nothing to do with BB guns that I can see, except this kid in the plaid reading the comic looks kind of squirrely to me.

Perhaps too high-concept. I cropped out the text, but this is the image that accompanies one of the ads. Presumably, the boy's abandoned his bike and gone off in a Daisy delirium? But... kind of ominous, especially in 2014 but even for '74.

Over in The Brave and the Bold, Batman's concussion-woes continue:

Wrap it up - I'll take it.

Also of note, (incredulous Troy McClure voice) The Batman teaming up with the Joker?!

That is one long-ass thought balloon bubble-trail.

With security measures like these, it's no wonder that Ra's Al-Ghul was able to just waltz into the Bat-cave so easily a few years back.

The first issue of Batman to be a 100-page giant advertised its new approach somewhat amusingly:

And one for trivia night:

DETECTIVE COMICS

(Issues 438 - 443)

Writers: Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart. Artists: Vin and Sal Amendola, Jim Aparo, Alex Toth, Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Dick Giordano

Things get started with the sort of supernatural-mystery story we've seen often enough in these pages.

It's a competent story with some great Aparo art but ultimately nothing special. Ditto for #439, the first Bat-story Steve Englehart wrote for DC.

We'll be seeing a lot more of Mr. Englehart in the years to come.

Most of the 100-pagers have fun Table of Contents pages. (from 440)

This issue has Bruce Wayne hanging out at the Playboy Playhour Club where conveniently enough, hi-jinks ensue.

The yokels with guns are there to retrieve their sister who as seen below has been "hidin' in the city, takin' on airs."

Batman really has to work on detecting people sneaking up behind him and knocking him unconscious.

This is a fun little story. The Batman mixes it up with a small-town sheriff and his excitable deputies, as well as an Appalachian cult that worships a legendary mountain monster.

Mud on the boots = may be an important clue.

# 441 is notable for another fine table of contents:

I've been reading this Bare Bones blog by Jack Seabrook and Peter Enfantino as I make my way through these. Their 70s Batman overview is much more in-depth than my own and has been a fantastic resource. (They're also responsible for A Thriller A Day, something which was very much a part of my daily routine a few years back.) Jack and Peter had opposite reactions to this story, but I agree with Peter: "A story that has a few too many plot holes, way too much exposition in its climax, and a few too many roads that wind up at dead ends." Still, it's fun enough.

#442 isn't the greatest story, but it's illustrated by Alex Toth, so, you know, 'nuff said.

 

Finally, running as a back-up throughout Detective Comics in '74 is "Manhunter" by Archie Goodwin and Wat Simonson.

Along the way we get some reprints of the Simon/Kirby Golden Age version.

Appearing at the height of America's fascination with kung-fu and ninjas, the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter was originally not meant to be the same person as the 1940s character, but this was later established to be the case. For those unfamiliar with the character, here's a quick origin story:

Paul Kirk was believed to have been killed by an elephant on safari in the 1940s, but in actuality, his body was captured and cryogenically preserved by the mysterious "Council," a secret society that (of course) dabbles in assassination and espionage pursuant to controlling the world. He is injected with nanobots that give him an accelerated healing factor and trained in ninjutsu, the last master of which (Asano Nitobe) is believed to have been killed in the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. Nitobe teaches Kirk everything he knows, but when Kirk balks at an order to assassinate an Interpol official, they become mortal enemies. Until they inevitably team up to go after the Council.

The series is notable for its cinematic action sequences and tight paneling, which Walt Simonson has always maintained was designed almost exclusively by Archie Goodwin. (A side note - if there is anyone in comics who is better-liked by his peers than Walt Simonson, it is Archie Goodwin. I have never read or heard a single bad word about the man; moreover, almost every word I have read or heard is lavish with praise.)

The story is a pretty standard espionage affair to 2014 eyes, but that's not to say it's not well-told. And the art is still loads of fun.

Some random panels and pages submitted for your approval.

The back-up and feature combine for the lead story in Detective 443:

 

As Walt Simonson would later recollect, "There was no organized fandom like there is today, no comic book shops back then. But we were very well received by fellow professionals." (It won a number of Shazam Awards from the short-lived Academy of Comic Book Arts.) "Archie got a letter from somebody who came across our Manhunter story in reprint, and he wanted to know how we'd been able to steal Frank Miller's ninja idea 10 years before Frank."

That anecdote (How did you so perfectly anticipate Frank Miller's use of ninjas?) has always cracked me up.

The "Gotterdammerung" story ends with Manhunter's death. Goodwin and Simonson were later asked to create a Final Chapter to be included in a Special Edition collecting the original stories, but the project was terminated when Goodwin died while it was still being developed. Walt's wife Louise (née Jones) suggested they release it without dialogue as a tribute to Goodwin, and such is how it appeared in 1999.

R.I.P. Archie Goodwin.

It was this Special Edition that introduced me to the character/ this story. I had no idea of any of the above. I recall mentioning it to a few people who told me bemusedly that this was among the most critically-acclaimed stories in comics history and where the hell had I been? Search me - I'd never even heard of it. Late to the party or not, it's still one helluva shindig.