Retro Comics are Awesome

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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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It's good to see that GA Batman volumes 8 and 9 have appeared on Amazon. It's amazing to think that we may have the entire Golden Age era of Batman reprinted by the end of this year. Here's hoping! In the meantime, we have maybe a dozen stories left to finish off volume 7.

Detective Comics #171
May 1951

The Menace of the Giant Birds!
Script: Bill Finger? Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

Every time he's ever "gone straight" it's masked some cunning crime-scheme.

The Penguin is paroled, again, and promises to go straight, again, though of course he's still up to no good, as always. He starts a bird refuge in downtown Gotham. Batman and Robin investigate, but Penguin is busy running the refuge and returning money and jewels that he stole years before. He protests that Batman is persecuting him when all he wants to do is to reform, but of course it's all a trick as the Penguin has placed knockout gas bombs in all the items he returned. He sets them off and goes to rob those he had supposedly returned stolen items to, only for Batman to use the Batplane and some acrobatics to round up Penguin's gang, catching them in the act. Penguin attempts to hide inside a giant egg at his bird refuge, but is bluffed into revealing himself and is returned to prison. It's a well-worn Penguin formula, but entertaining and well-drawn by Dick Sprang, who probably draws the definitive Penguin for this era.
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World's Finest Comics #52
June-July 1951

The $1,000,000 Star Club!
Writer: David Vern Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Bob Kane Inks: Sy Barry

Seven people in Gotham are insured for $1,000,000 each for their valuable special talents, including baseball pitcher Lefty Stone, pianist Paul Bond, etc, and for some reason, Bruce Wayne. Washed up local Gotham artist Jan Marki is unable to buy supplies to produce his art and wants to "join the club", but there isn't enough evidence of his talent and the insurance company turns Marki down. When he turns to theft and injures his hands trying to use explosives to get into a safe, Marki decides it's all the fault of the $1,000,000 club for rejecting him, and he takes one member hostage, using him to lure the rest into his house which he's filled with death traps, intending to kill them all. But because Bruce is able to escape and return as Batman, Marki is foiled as Batman has each of the "club" members use their special talents to blind Marki to what they're doing and find a way to where the artist is hidden, capturing him and ending the threat.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Upcoming volumes:

Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 7
The Golden Age of Superman tales are collected for the first time in their entirety in this oversize omnibus series, continuing with stories from the early 1950s in Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 7.

As the 1950s began, the Man of Tomorrow was faced with new dangers big and small! In these stories that are reprinted here for the first time, Lex Luthor invents a device that banishes Superman to the fourth dimension, while Mr. Mxyztplk makes the entire city of Metropolis forget that their hero ever existed. Plus, Superman becomes a super-cowboy and meets a mighty caveman who was frozen in an iceberg.

This new hardcover collects the Metropolis Wonder's tales from Action Comics #125-143, Superman #55-65, and World's Finest Comics #37-47.

Batman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 8
Batman's adventures from the early 1950s are collected for the first time in new hardcover omnibus series, continuing here with Batman: The Golden Age Vol. 8.

These Batman stories from the early 1950s are dominated by the Gotham City underworld, the mysteries of Batman's own crime-fighting techniques and Batman's foes The Joker, Two-Face, the Penguin and Catwoman. Along the way, Batman and Robin venture into the underworld bank, meet the underworld crime committee, explore an undersea hideout for criminals and investigate a rash of robberies in the Batcave. Plus, The Joker starts a newspaper of crime, Catwoman meets the King of Cats and the Penguin claims to go straight by opening an umbrella shop.

Collects the Batman stories/covers from Batman #67-75, Detective Comics #175-191 and World's Finest Comics #54-62.

Batman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 9

Batman's adventures from the mid-1950s are collected for the first time in hardcover, continuing here with Batman: The Golden Age Vol. 9.

These stories from the early 1950s feature alternate versions of the Caped Crusader, as well as Batman's foes The Joker, Two-Face, the Penguin, and Catwoman. Along the way, the Dynamic Duo travel back in time to meet "The Batman of Yesterday," and encounter another Batman in modern-day Gotham City. Plus, Batman joins the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Catwoman stalks a beauty pageant, The Joker directs his own movie crimes, and more.

Collects Batman #76-84, plus stories from Detective Comics #192-208 and World's Finest Comics #63-70.


World's Finest Comics #71 is where Superman and Batman stopped having solo stories in World's Finest Comics and started having team-up stories every issue, and it looks like that arbitrary point is where DC is going to start "Silver Age" branding, so volume 9 could well be the last "Golden Age" Batman volume. DC published the first Superman volume several years before the first Batman volume, but there have been some major gaps between volumes 5 and 6, so Batman is well ahead at this point.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Batman #65
June-July 1951

A Partner for Batman!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

I had read this story before, probably in one of the volumes that collected the Batman Annuals. Robin breaks his leg while apprehending some crooks, and then thinks he's being replaced by Wingman (who also wears shorts, oddly). Bruce says he's just training the guy at the request of his government, but more and more Dick becomes convinced that he's being pushed out by Batman and Gordon, who is in on the training plan. It gets to the point where Dick is actively rooting for Wingman to fail. But of course there is no twist ending here. The situation is exactly as Bruce described it, with him training Wingman while Dick was out of action so Wingman could return to his home country. Robin's role as Batman's crime-fighting partner is safe.

Bruce Wayne - Crime Reporter!
Script: Bill Finger Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

Gotham Gazette editor Jack "Five Star" Thorpe is determined to expose the identity of the crime boss of the Artisans, a criminal gang that Batman is of course also after. Thorpe is the type of newspaper editor who gets out on the street and still looks for news. Batman is impressed with him and so are the police. At a police league dinner honoring Thorpe, a bet between him and another editor leads to Bruce Wayne agreeing to spend three months as a reporter in exchange for a donation to charity. Bruce sees it as a chance to learn a new skill, which seems very much in character to me. Thorpe personally shows Bruce the ropes, and Bruce is determined to use the opportunity to further his attempts to bust the Artisan gang. As it turns out, Thorpe himself is actually the Artisan boss, and Bruce had been a part of his plan to frame the editor he made the bet with, something Bruce figured out by the way the unseen Artisan boss phrased his written messages to the gang. It was just Thorpe's bad luck that he unknowingly picked Batman to carry out his scheme.

Catwoman - Empress of the Underworld
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

Selina Kyle, the reformed Catwoman, now runs a pet shop that specializes in cats. Underworld Czar "Whale" Morton tries to pressure her back into a life of crime, but she wants no part of it. When cats turn up as part of a series of crimes, Selina hopes no one suspects her of being involved, but she's afraid her amnesia may have returned and that she's been acting as Catwoman without knowing it. When Whale Morton makes his offer again, she accepts, and Batman is dismayed that she's returned to her life of crime. But it was all a trick by Selina, who had figured out that Whale was framing her and played along, roping Batman and Robin unknowingly into the scheme to help her in stopping him. I like the reformed Catwoman, so I'm glad they maintained that status quo for this story rather than returning her to a true life of crime. And it's good to see her take some initiative, with even Batman not in on her scheme until the end.
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Detective Comics #172
June 1951

The Outlaw Who Had Nine Lives!
Script: Bill Finger? Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

At the Gotham Airport after escorting a group of foreign dignitaries, Batman and Robin see a man about to jump from the top of the control tower. The man screams that his name is Paul Gregorian, and he cannot die. Of course the police have nets all around the base of the tower to catch him, but rather than jump, the man climbs down, slips through the cordon, steals a plane, and then crashes it into high tension wires on takeoff, destroying the plane. Batman assumes the man is dead, case closed, but he shows up soon after, alive and well. Gregorian appears to touch the wires at an electrical station and survive, and fall off a bridge, proclaiming that he still has seven lives left.

The catch is that Gregorian is a stage magician, and everything he's done so far is an act, designed to build up publicity for his new show. But his brother, a gangster in Gotham, blackmails him into using his skills for crime. Just when Batman's figured out the magician angle, a crime wave starts. But using radioactive floor was (I am not making this up) which he and Robin use on the art museum floor which the gang boasted they would rob, Batman is able to track the gang back to headquarters. Gregorian attempts to escape by jumping out a window, but in so doing he hits the brick wall across from thd window and breaks his neck. Batman notes that he's been counting Gregorian's escape, and that this really was his ninth life. Later the press ask Batman if he wishes he has nine lives with all he's been through, but Gordon says Batman is the man of a thousand lives.

Great Dick Sprang art and an interesting mystery for the first half of the story turn into a fairly standard "Batman out-thinks the villains" in the second half with a pretty unlikely tracking device. But it's not a bad story, all in all.
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Detective Comics #173
July 1951

Batman's Double!
Script: ? Pencils: : Lew Sayre Schwartz, Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

Cameron Van Cleer/Killer Moth escapes from prison after being captured by Batman at the end of his last appearance. With his identity publicly known, he decides that he must have a new one, and he decides to impersonate a respected member of the community. He rejects a few, then checks the society pages and settles on... you guessed it... Bruce Wayne. Van Cleer spends the last of his money to have a plastic surgeon alter his features to make him look like Bruce Wayne. Then he kidnaps Bruce and locks him away in an old bank vault. Why not kill him? It's the old "I don't want a murder rap" pretext that we've seen before, because of course Bruce has to survive the story.

So Killer Moth heads to Wayne's house and discovers everything, and is delighted that he randomly chose Batman's identity to adopt. Dick notices that Bruce is not quite himself, but doesn't think much of it at first. Killer Moth uses the fact that he's impersonating Batman to convince doubtful crooks that he's finally able to run Batman off when he appears. He promises to deliver Batman and Robin to one of the crooks, but of course Bruce has escaped. He rescues Robin from the vault when the Moth has gone out looking for him. The crooks, convinced the Moth led them into a trap, gun him down. Batman rushes him to the hospital and surgery saves his life, but in another fairly predictable turn in the story, some of the bullets not only hit his face, ruining the plastic surgery, but one lodged in his brain, so he's lost his memory. Given that Killer Moth looked like Bruce Wayne and knew about Batman, it was either this or kill him, because a crook who knew Batman's secret was never going to be allowed to retain that knowledge. He was doomed the moment he learned Bruce's secret.

Like so many other Golden Age Batman villains, Killer Moth fits neatly into the "2/3/4 appearance then write them out" pattern, though Killer Moth made his return appearances fairly quickly. Most others lasted a bit longer. As the anti-Batman he worked reasonably well, even though his costume is just crazy. I like seeing a crook learn Bruce's secret, but really once he does the ending is a forgone conclusion, so it's just a question of watching things play out.
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World's Finest Comics #53
August-September 1951

The Private Life of Commissioner Gordon!
Writer: David Vern Pencils: Dick Sprang Inks: Charles Paris

Already this year we've seen origins for Catwoman and the Joker, and finally almost 12 years after he first appeared, Batman's first and oldest supporting character gets his life sketched out as well. I'm talking of course about Commissioner James W. Gordon. The splash page gives us a series of photos of Gordon's life: Born January 5, 1900. "Jim" in 1910, a promising third baseman. Graduated law school in 1924. Married on Oct. 11, 1926. Police Lieutenant, "pride of the force" 1931. And in 1951, Gordon is "a man marked for murder", as "Sheik" Hanson, a man Gordon once put in prison as a young policeman, has escaped from jail and is out for revenge, something Gordon is quite worried about. Hanson was before Batman's time and "fancied himself a desert cut throat" who was essentially a thief and a killer dressed like someone out of the Arabian Nights. All the police were after him, but it was young patrolman Jim Gordon who made the arrest, with Hanson getting life imprisonment and swearing revenge.

Gordon says he's not worried for his life, but he wants to survive to testify before a grand jury about Big Dave Ravage's gang. Batman decides that Gordon should go into hiding, and that he will disguise himself as Gordon to keep the secret and deal with Hanson if he should attack. Gordon hides out in an upstate boarding house and Batman uses his disguise skill to make himself look like Gordon. This being comics, the disguise and impersonation is good enough even to fool Gordon's wife (never named, she's always Mrs. Gordon) and his son Tony. The Sheik does indeed attempt to kill Gordon, but Batman is not able to capture him. There are some great atmospheric panels in this section of the story with Gordon's bedroom and the Sheik in silhouette since it's the middle of the night, and even the color is subtle with several panels only blue and black. After a few more dilemmas such as Tony wanting to see "dad's" bullet scar in his shoulder (which Batman naturally knew about and added to his disguise) and a dinner where both Gordon and Batman have to speak, Batman let's slip where Gordon is hidden so the Sheik will make another attempt on his life, and this time they capture him. Only it turns out not to be the real Sheik at all, but Ravage, who Gordon was supposed to testify against. Ravage used the Sheik's escape as cover to try and kill Gordon, thinking he would not be blamed. The real Hanson died while attempting escape, but no one found his body or knew he was dead until Batman became suspicious of some things about the Sheik and went investigating. From there he was able to use the fingerprints on Gordon's windowsill to pin the attempted murder on Ravage.

Gordon himself gets a couple of good moments in this story, despite largely being out of the action. He speculates early on that Batman is probably one of his real-life friends, given how much he's done for him. Later on, when Batman sends him a letter reporting his progress, there's a laundry ticket in the letter. Gordon thinks for a moment that he could trace the ticket and learn who Batman really is, but he decides that would be ungrateful and burns the ticket. It turns out at the end of the story that Bruce had deliberately dropped that in the letter as a test, and even if Gordon had traced it, he wouldn't have learned who Bruce was.

It's interesting to contrast his wife and son Tony with the modern-day Gordon who is divorced with his daughter Barbara/Batgirl and son James Gordon junior. Golden Age Gordon came up through the ranks and was a patrolman when his son was an infant, while "Year One" has lieutenant Gordon arriving in Gotham for his first assignment with their police department. This story has some great art, and despite Batman's impossibly good disguise skills, it tells a decent story that finally gives Gordon some background and character. This guy's been around since the very first Batman story, and this is the first time we've seen anything about his history or family.
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Batman #66
August-September 1951

The Joker's Comedy of Errors!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

So! They laugh at my boner, will then?! I'll show them! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make! - the Joker, little knowing he was creating an internet meme

It is time to wrap up Golden Age Batman volume 7 with three stories from Batman #66, and the first one is a story made famous in the internet age as the one about the Joker's boner. In 1951, that term meant "making a stupid mistake" of course, and the Joker's big mistake that gets everyone laughing at him is cutting the power to rob the electric company (a concept which amuses the Joker), only to realize that with no power, they can't use the elevator to escape. Angry that his blunder appears in the newspapers, the Joker decides to base a crime spree around famous boners in history, such as the battleship Missouri getting stuck in the mud, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And he claims he will force Batman into making "the boner of the year", which he does by sending the Batplane wrong information via a "navigational direction beam" so Batman flies to England instead of California. One would think being over the ocean would have given Batman a big clue, but the story tries to cover this by making it a foggy day... I doubt the entire North Atlantic would be fogbound. The Joker is delighted to have made Batman look foolish, but Batman had been using the Joker's directional beam to home in his location and he makes the arrest.

I know it's juvenile, but it's hard not to laugh every time the word "boner" appears in the story. It does add some amusement to an otherwise standard Joker runaround from this era.

The Movie Stars Who Died Twice!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Dick Sprang Inker: Charles Paris

Griffin Balfor, reclusive silent movie director of a bygone Hollywood era, arrives at the premier of a movie series about crime fighters, which Batman and Robin are participating in. Balfor says that soon everyone will remember his genius. When movie stars begin dying in real life exactly as their characters died in the movies, Batman investigates and finds out that the stars did not die, but were kidnapped by Balfor and their deaths faked. Unable to get the use of studios to make a movie, the crazy director decided to make his own on location. He's hired gangsters to keep the stars there until he's done. Batman tracks the missing stars down, but Balfor has prepared by placing explosives at a nearby dam that will flood the valley and kill everyone unless he is allowed to finish his movie. After a few days, Batman uses movie trickery to fake a dam burst, allowing everyone to escape. Balfor figures it out and tries to kill Batman and Robin by triggering the real dam explosion, but Balfor dies in the flood when he can't leave his film behind and goes back for it and is unable to escape.

Batman II and Robin, Junior!
Writer: Bill Finger Pencils: Lew Sayre Schwartz, Bob Kane Inker: Charles Paris

Legacy characters are the theme of this story, which opens by noting that Batman can't fight crime forever, and when he retires, Dick Grayson will be his successor. The story opens with Batman and Robin taking on some thugs, when Robin sees what he thinks is an opening and he disobeys Batman's instructions, only to nearly get himself killed. Batman saves the day, but Robin gets lectured when they return to the Batcave. Bruce tells Dick that he's like a son to him, and asks him to think about how he would feel lif he had a son who disobeyed him?

The rest of the story is a dream as the question clearly hit home and Dick dreams about the future when he's married and has a son. In the far future year of 1975, Batman retires, but in a special session of the UN, he is appointed "Police Commissioner of the United Nations". Dick Grayson takes over as Batman, wearing the same costume as the original only with the Robin "R" on his chest instead of a bat, while his son becomes Robin II. Dick trains Richard Grayson Jr. as Robin and the two begin their crime fighting partnership. In this dream, 1975 is a world of scientific and technological marvels including elevated roadways and rocket travel. Long story short, Robin II disobeys his orders once too often, and ends up dooming him and Batman to die in a rocket crash due to a half-empty fuel tank. Dick wakes up from this nightmare and resolves to do a better job obeying orders in the future.

And that's it for this book. We've seen 432 Batman stories in 7 volumes. Bring on volume 8!
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Since I've finished the most recent Batman volume, back to Superman volume 1.

Superman #6 continued...

Racketeer Terror in Gateston
Writer: Jerry Siegel Art: Paul Cassidy

You can't go wrong with a good old "protection racket" storyline. "Brute" Bashby and his gang move into the small town of Gateston and set up a protection racket. They terrorize the small town and Jim Tirrell, editor of the local newspaper, the Gateston Gazette, goes after them in his newspaper. At the Daily Planet, the editor thinks this would be good copy for the paper, so he sends Lois and Clark to Gateston to work with Tirrell. Just when they arrive, Tirrell is killed with a car bomb and the presses are wrecked, but it's Clark rather than Superman who procures help from the publisher of the Daily Planet (name of Mason, I don't think we see him before or since) who sends press equipment via truck. But it is then Superman who stops the truck from being run off the road. The pacing of this story is non-stop, and there's plenty of opportunity for both Clark and Superman to engage in action and fight the good fight against the gangsters. I love the scene where the gangsters are going to run Clark off the road and he simply opens the car door and kicks their car off the bridge. Without going through every plot point, in the end Superman is able to prove that Brute is in league with the head of the citizens' committee and that they killed Tirrell.
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Superman #6 continued....

Terror Stalks San Caluma
Writer: Jerry Siegel Art: Paul Cassidy, Paul Lauretta

Why don't you fall dead?
Perhaps that first bullet didn't take effect. Try again!


Natural disasters ravage the "small South American country" of San Caluma, and in the United States, donations of aid and supplies are gathered to be sent to the suffering citizens. Editor George Taylor sends Clark Kent to cover the departure of the relief ship after he stops at the airport to get a statement from the arriving relief officials. At the airport, one of the pilots attempts to crash the plane, only for Superman to intervene and prevent both the crash and a mid-air collision with another plane. The pilot refuses to talk, and so do the officials, who are late for the ceremonies. At the docks, the ship carrying supplies has been sabotaged.

As Clark gets ready to investigate, we get an interesting filler scene, and I call it that because it has nothing to do with the main plot. A sneak thief catches Clark in the act of changing into his Superman costume. First the thief tries to rob him, then shoots him to no effect, then when he figures out who he is, tries blackmail. Superman threatens the man, who panics, runs, trips down some stairs and conveniently breaks his neck, so Clark's secret is safe. It's an entertaining sequence, but has zip to do with the relief plot.

Back to the main plot, Superman heads to the local jail and roughs up the pilot to try and get some answers, but the guard shoots and kills the pilot before he can talk, though one of his own bullets ricochets and kills him as well. Having obtained no answers, Superman decides to push the crippled boat to San Caluma and has to fight off a plane attempting to bomb the ship. He leaves the ship at San Caluma and heads back to Metropolis, where 11 pages into the story, we finally see Lois, who gets into trouble while investigating the supply warehouse and has to be rescued from burning to death by Superman. Everything is explained on the last page as a plot by a man named Mumsen who wants to force San Caluma to accept him as ruler before they get food and supplies. Mumsen explodes the building in which he and Superman are standing preferring to die rather than be captured, but of course it only kills him, not Superman. Taylor congratulates Clark for a great story.

So this one's all over the place in terms of plotting, and the title isn't really an accurate description of the story. We barely spend any time in San Caluma at all. There's nothing wrong with the basic idea of a poor country needing relief, someone trying to stop it for nefarious reasons and Superman trying to get to the bottom of things, but it all needed to be better set up and plotted. Having Lois show up on the next to the last page and need to be rescued feels like last minute box-ticking. She didn't even need to be in the story. It's not a well told tale, but it remains enjoyable anyway.
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