Couldn't Escape if I Wanted To

Detective Comics #395

In the 70's comics changed. Robots and space men were becoming relics of the past, and comics focused in on what was "real" rather than what was possible. Books dealt with racism, drug addiction, sexism, government corruption.

I think that earnest is the word that sticks out in

my mind when I look at comics from the 1970's -- they're earnest without irony, something that can be incredibly hard to swallow for us modern, enlightened,

bored know-it-alls.

Or maybe not. After all, these are a comic book company's attempts at relevance. Perhaps the struggle for "cool" was as obvious to readers of the past as it is to us today.

Detective Comics, in the meantime, thanks to Dennis O'Neil and the edgy art of Neil Adams as detailed earlier, had focused in on Batman's psychology. That this approach became so popular is due in great part to O'Neil, who was

quite possibly the most influential writer in comics of the 1970's, since he also pioneered the politically/socially relevant story in his work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow, crafting one of the more genuine attempts at this kind of storytelling.

Of course, he also de-powered Wonder Woman, alienating readers everywhere and creating one of the more hilarious periods in the character's history. So.

It bears mentioning that for all the acclaim the O'Neil/Adams Detective Comics received at the time and for all the acclaim it receives

now, sales of Detective comics were declining throughout their run and, in fact, through the entirety of the 70's. So while the book had perhaps improved, the

readership hadn't.

Detective Comics #423

This was the first issue sold with the price of one whole shiny quarter, first with 48 pages and then, a few issues later, with 52. This issue even featured four stories. It's from 1972, when gas was about 36 cents ($1.95 adjusted for inflation). Now a $3 DC book has 32 pages, and gas is about $3.50. I'm not sure what this proves, exactly -- the comic book price is still roughly in line with the price of gas, but doesn't have nearly the same amount of content. But then, comic book storytelling has changed a lot in the past 40 years.

Still, there must have been some sort of outcry over the 10 cent price hike, because a few months later DC dropped the price to 20 cents. Some things don't

change.

The Batman story in this issue, "The Most Dangerous Twenty Miles in Gotham City" was written by Frank Robbins who had been writing comics since the 40's and who is considered instrumental to Batman's 70's revitalization. This particular story is about

Communist spies and right-wing assassins. The cover is by Michael Kaluta, and, in true comic book fashion, appears to have little to do with the story inside, but is

awesome.

Detective Comics #438

And then, BAM! Inflation. 1974 was a rough year, and not only because ABBA won the Eurovision song contest (note: I actually like ABBA). In an effort to reduce costs, DC cut more than 25% of their titles, condensing many into books like "The Superman Family", which consolidated peripheral titles into one handy volume.

With 100 pages the ratio of cost-for-content remained much the same (though in a few months the price raised to 60 cents), but not for long.

This issue of Detective Comics also features stories about The Atom, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Green Lantern and Manhunter.

Manhunter:

ABBA:

Hmmm.

Detective Comics #457

By

1976 DC was really struggling. Carmine Infantino, for all his brilliant decisions (signing Marvel star Jack Kirby, bringing in fresh talent like Joe Kubert, heading up big changes like the Adams/O'Neil work mentioned above) and price changes hadn't managed to improve sales. Now priced at 30 cents, this issue of Detective Comics contained only seventeen pages of story, one about Batman and one featuring Elongated Man and his wife Sue Dibney.

The Batman tale "There is No Hope in Crime Alley!", again by Dennis O'Neil, is quite a lovely one. Here's the synopsis from dc.wikia.com;

"Every night on this date, Batman abandons all other crimes and missions and secretly heads to visit Leslie Thompkins. En route, Batman stops a car radio theft and two muggings. When one of the muggers pulls a gun on him in Crime Alley, Batman loses his temper and knocks the mugger silly while having a flashback of his parents' murder and his "rescue" by a young Leslie Thompkins. He is brought back to reality by the current, elderly Leslie who knows Batman visits her annually but doesn't know why. Batman tells her it's a reminder of who he is. Batman asks Leslie why she stays in Crime Alley and she tells him that once she witnessed a terrible tragedy - a child whose parents were murdered before his eyes - and has devoted her life to trying to prevent another tragedy. Batman kisses her on the forehead calling her the hope of Crime Alley."

This is the type of story we should thank Dennis O'Neil for: it's not about a specific adventure, a specific villain -- it's about Batman the human, his relationship with his childhood self, the dark part of human nature that changed him forever and the darkness he himself developed in fighting it. Good stuff. Lovely cover by Dick Giordano.

Up next... DC Explodes!

Thanks to coverbrowser.com, dc.wikia.com, wikipedia.org and the fabulous "DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle" by Alan Cowsill, Alex Irvine, Matther K. Manning, Michael McAvennie and Daniel Wallace with Alastair Dougall.

Gas prices from AAA's Fuel Gage Report. Inflation conversions made using the Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator.

Times A-Changin'

Detective Comics #306

That's right, folks. Not just robots, but INVISIBLE robots. I guess maybe I can see why Julius Schwartz, the editor I mentioned in the blurb for #251 and who removed some of the more awesomely corny characters from Detective Comics, might have wanted to change things up a bit. Between #300 ("The Bizarre Polka-Dot Man!) and #320 (Batman and Robin the Mummy Crime-Fighters!) you've got "Secrets of the Flying Bat-Cave", Batman fighting Moby Dick, Catman fighting Batman with a giant cat-bot-- and this guy, Professor Hugo, who wants to create an artificial moon in space. Apparently he's also a wizard, and he has 999 menaces other than the invisible robots. Kinda makes you wonder what exactly he was a professor of, doesn't it?

This issue was released in 1962, and things were about to change...

Detective Comics #327

Carmine Infantino. Honestly, I never saw what the big deal was until I looked at this cover beside the last. Sheldon Moldoff worked on Detective Comics for years predominantly as a "ghost artist" for Bob Kane. According to Moldoff, even DC didn't know he had

entered into this agreement with Kane. He emulated Kane's style and followed Kane's instructions. Several of the covers shown so far were drawn by him. And though the Silver Age of comics began in 1956 with the debut of Barry Allen as the Flash and Marvel's Fantastic Four #1, Detective Comics hadn't changed much since Batman's Debut -- certainly the scenarios were

more complex, the covers a bit more busy, more colorful, more flashy. But the basic graphic concepts were almost always the same -- Batman and Robin running, or fighting, or looking, with dismayed

faces, at the maniacal villain who had captured them.

This issue came out in 1964, and it was Batman's 300th issue anniversary. Sales of Detective Comics had reached an alarming low -- all of those goofy sci-fi stories, however fabulously strange they seem now, reflected a post-war boom culture that was slowly collapsing under the weight of first the Korean War and the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the escalation of racial tensions, the arrival of the first American helicopters in Saigon and the start of the

Vietnam war. People felt that the world was going crazy -- though, of course, it always had been.

And even something small, like the cover of a comic book, had to reflect that cultural shift. Things didn't feel the

same, so they shouldn't look the same, either.

Which isn't to say that this was a dark story, naturally not. But it was very modern, featuring a redesigned Batmobile (a roadster!), a hipper looking Robin (though, sadly for him he still had both bare legs and fairy boots) and that beautiful, classic black-on-yellow bat symbol.

It's easy to see why, in late 1966, Carmine Infantino was given the task of redesigning all of DC's covers, and why Stan Lee, upon learning this, offered him $22,000 to move to Marvel. He stayed at DC, though -- they made him art director, editorial director, and, finally, publisher.

Detective Comics #385

You can just taste the 70's when you look at this cover. It's from March of 1969 -- two months before the Stonewall Riots, three months before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Four months after Yale announced that it would begin admitting female students.

The Silver Age was dying. For all that happened in the 60's, comics remained escapist entertainment, comforting and naive. Heroes had been modern, of course, but also bold, and happy, and optimistic in a way that seemed increasingly out of touch with reality. JFK was dead and MLK after him. We had just elected Nixon, who was about as far from that Camelot fever-dream as possible, and the Black Panthers were making statements that were far from gentle admonition.

The world wasn't easily fixed by epic protest or brave revolution, and things were continuing on in much the way

they always had.

The art on this cover by Neal Adams is a hint at the new age Neal himself helped usher in.

Now, let's talk about Batgirl for a moment, because this is, after all, Detective Comics Presents Batman and Batgirl. Bat-Girl Batty Kane, who debuted in 1961 had been Batwoman's sidekick and niece, and the two of them had, naturally, been romantically infatuated with Robin and Batman. When Julius Schwartz took over as editor of the Batman titles, he removed them both. And in 1966, the new Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, arrived. She stumbled into Superhero-dom by wearing a feminized Batman costume to a masquerade ball -- presumably with the intention of annoying her dad, Commissioner Gordon -- and wound up saving Bruce Wayne from the fiendish Killer Moth. She was featured on the Batman television show where she was played by Yvonne Craig, and she was, generally speaking, absolutely fantastic.

Of course, her featured story in these issues revolved

around a man she wanted to date.

But still...

Next time! Comics "get real"...

Thanks to coverbrowser.com, dc.wikia.com, wikipedia.com and the fabulous "DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle" by Alan Cowsill, Alex Irvine, Matther K. Manning, Michael McAvennie and Daniel Wallace with Alastair Dougall.

Those Fabulous 50's

Detective Comics #146

Yes, apparently Batman welded the sensational brand-new Batmobile of 1950 himself! Gee, but he's a talented guy. In the 50's of course, new technology was THE stuff, and Batman got a redesigned Batplane too, which featured a television, radar, crime lab, a "vacuum blanket", and the Bat-Beam... not a Bat-Beam, mind you. The.

This issue also included stories about Robotman (A human brain in a robot's body) and, of course, Pow Wow Smith, a Sioux sheriff in a small Western town. His bios say that his real name is Ohiyesa, but that the white folks in his town always call him Pow Wow, and he gives up trying to correct them. So naturally that's what we call him.

Well, no. I'm betting that the Ohiyesa business was a retcon (AKA cover up) to make the character look less racist when he showed up in more sensitive decades. Though, of course, I could be wrong.

Most of the characters featured in Detective Comics were, of course, detectives. Some were superheroes, others

weren't -- Pow Wow Smith was meant to take advantage of the wild west genre that was becoming incredibly popular with kids. So popular, in fact, that in 1954 Pow Wow moved on to headlining Western Comics for five years before he was booted from the cover by Matt Savage, Trail Boss.

The Superhero was actually waning a bit in the 50's -- sci-fi stories, western comics, war comics, mystery comics were all popular. In the mid 50's concern about morality in comics and the possible effects on juvenile delinquency gave rise to the Comics Code Authority, which prohibited most violence and any supernatural phenomena in comic books. Psychologist Fredric Wertham claimed that, since reading comics was popular among delinquents, those comics must be the cause of the delinquency, and he started writing for Ladies' Home Journal in 1953, where mothers were presumably shocked by all the sex and horror that was in some comics. As a result, DC's books became more family oriented -- Superboy found Krypto, Batman found Ace, there were stories about firefighters and heroes less likely to throw punches, like the revamped Flash, Barry Allen, the fastest man alive. Showcase #9 featured "Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane in Mrs. Superman!", and Lois received her own series the next year, and it lasted 137 issues. In the 70's, the book, like many, began running stories that were a little more "aware"-- Lois Lane WAS a star reporter, after all. In one oft-cited issue, Lois uses a machine that turns her into an African American woman -- silver-age, meet social conscience!

Detective Comics no. 251

That's Vicki Vale exclaiming that Batman is, in fact, not an earth man at all! Vicki was not-quite Batman's Lois Lane. Legend says she was based on the model Norma Jean Mortensen, who later of course, changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, though I imagine that story came directly from Bob Kane, who seems a bit prone to exaggerate. She was a newspaper photographer and was forever becoming suspicious that Batman was Bruce Wayne,

and then

becoming convinced that he wasn't. What was it about this particular sort of plot that comic book writers found so fascinating? The women are nosy and work in news media, the men are secretly incredibly awesome. Don't let the woman find out who you really are! Protect your true self at all costs!

Vicki showed up a lot between #49 and #320 when a new editor decided to clean house -- Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound all disappeared too. When Vicki

showed up again she was usually a television reporter, and then started hosting a show called "The Scene", which is essentially a Gotham version of The View. There's an occasional writer who likes Vicki and wants

her to be Batman's full-time gal -- by last account she seems to have discovered his true identity, but is keeping it a secret because he saved her life. But she's always been sort of a low-rent Lois, if you know what I mean. Now, Catwoman -- SHE'S a love interest I can get behind.

Detective Comics #260

No, "the Mystery of The Olympic Games of Space" is NOT "Whaaaat? Batman? Why?". Batman is simply drafted as a contestant (no word on how, exactly, he got to "space"... I'm betting it was some sort of beam-like contraption), participates in the boxing match and then is accused by the Plutonians -- presumably represented by that goateed gentlemen -- of cheating. And he appears to be guilty! Oh no!

This book also includes a story about Roy Raymond (sadly a "TV Detective", not the guy who founded Victoria's Secret) and "John Jones' Super Secret", about Martian Manhunter, a man from ancient Mars brought to present-day earth by Dr. Saul Erdel via a matter transmitting beam, a silver-age tale if ever there was one. On Mars, of course, they had already abolished crime, and so as he waited for Martian technology to progress enough for him to return home, he used his shape-shifting, super strength and amazing mental abilities to urge Earth towards the same goal. He's basically as powerful as Superman, but green and dressed like a male stripper (underpants, cape, suspenders). Later we found that his entire planet had been wiped out by the psychic terrorism, and J'onn J'onzz (who went by John Jones on earth, imagine that!) became not just a man out of time and space, but a man without a home, the last of his kind. He spends much of his time living different lives (a little girl, and old man, a cat, etc.) and learning about the human experience and the people he now chooses to protect. His first appearance was in issue #225.

He's the best ever.

Next time! Those Spectacular Sixties...

Thanks to coverbrowser.com, dc.wikia.com, toonopedia.com and the fabulous "DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle" by Alan Cowsill, Alex Irvine, Matther K. Manning, Michael McAvennie and Daniel Wallace with Alastair Dougall.

The Switch-Up

A few months ago, DC Comics announced that they would be restarting their books at number 1. Issue 882 of Detective Comics, their longest running title and the namesake of the company, the longest continuously published comic in the country, was instead number 1.

I thought it might be interesting to look at a few covers of this seminal book to get a feel for the DC of the past and the present.

Warning: This is written with the assumption that the reader doesn't know much about comics. Don't be sad!

Detective Comics no. 1

While writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joel Schuster were collecting rejections for their Superman character at other companies, their character Slam Bradley (a hard-boiled freelance police investigator stationed in that cesspool of crime and corruption, Cleveland) was published in Detective No. 1 along with Speed Saunders and another

Siegel/Schuster brainchild, Bart Regan, Spy. Stereotypical Asian villains and hard-boiled adventuring types were all the rage in 1937!

Note that the very fact that these stories are presented in color is presumed to be exciting.

Detective Comics no. 27

Batman first appeared in 1939, a

year after

Superman's debut in Action Comics no. 1 and what is often considered to be the birth of the superhero. "Bat-Man" appeared in a feature called "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" which also introduced Commissioner Gordon. The 64 pages contained 9 stories -- most modern comics only include 32, 8 of which are ads. In 1938, 10 cents was also the price of gas.

Detective Comics no. 38

They called him "The Sensational Character Find of 1940...", whatever that means. Dick Grayson was from a family of trapeze artists, his parents were killed by a gangster, and Bruce Wayne took him in as his "ward", dressed him up in pixie boots and short-shorts, and thus began decades of gay jokes, all of them Hi-Larious. The circus was considered very cool in the 30's and 40's -- kids wanted to join the circus like kids in the 50's wanted to be astronauts, or kids today want to be... well, superheroes, at least according to this. How's that for full-circle?

Detective Comics no. 78

Lest you think that the Tea Party is the first group in history to namedrop the founding fathers, Batman and Robin, along with George Washington, Nathan Hale, and Patrick Henry, team up (at last!) to sell you war bonds. It's "A Timely Patriotic Story with Real Punch!", you see. Possibly more interesting are the Boy Commandos, who were created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who also created Captain America (Kirby also created a lot of other really crazy pointy/blocky/whacko stuff, such as DC's New Gods, and he's pretty much THE Marvel artist, having co-created the Fantastic Four, X-Men and Hulk with Stan Lee). The Kid Commandos were a lot like the Sentinels of Liberty Simon and Kirby had created over at Timely (later Marvel) comics. You know, a group of kids who run around fighting Nazis? They also created a gang called the Newsboy Legion, led by Tommy Tompkins. The other members were Big Words (team smarty-pants), Gabby (team chatterbox), and Scrapper (team tank).

In the 70's they added Flippa Dippa. He loved doing things underwater.

What?

Oh yeah.

Team black guy.

Next Time! The 50's and Beyond...

Thanks to coverbrowser.com, dc.wikia.com, toonopedia.com and the fabulous "DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle" by Alan Cowsill, Alex Irvine, Matther K. Manning, Michael McAvennie and Daniel Wallace with Alastair Dougall.