Retro Comics are Awesome

A general discussion forum, plus hauls and silly games.
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andersonh1
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Detective Comics #150
August 1949

The Ghost of Gotham City!
The 150th issue of Detective Comics has a generic cover with a silhouetted Batman and Robin running to answer the bat-signal and "still your favorite comics magazine!" across the top, but nothing that explicitly marks out the anniversary status. The story inside concerns the ghost of "Rifle" Rafferty, who has returned from the grave to haunt those who sentenced him to die for murder, a crime of which he claimed to be innocent. Batman is skeptical about the ghost, and confirms that several appearances of the ghost are linked to chemically-treated fabric, making it an elaborate hoax. The story throws a curve ball when the "ghost" appears in the Batcave and predicts death for Batman and Robin, but Batman has figured the scheme out. It's all pseudo-science of course, using chemicals and radio waves to make a glowing "ghost" appear and transmit the voice, and the scheme was carried out by a ghost-hunter Paul Visio, who wanted to run all the criminal gangs out of town and take over himself, using the well known "Rifle" Rafferty to do it. A tapestry that Batman had taken to the Batcave for examination gave Visio the chance to project the ghost there.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Detective Comics #151
September 1949

I.O.U. My Life!
When Ben Kole saves two men's lives, Davis and Chaney, he gets an I.O.U. in writing from each. It catches Batman's attention and he files the incidents away for future reference, until he himself is saved by Kole and signs one of Kole's IOUs. Robin figures Kole must be up to something, and when the stock market wipes out Kole's funds, he attempts to collect money for the IOUs, claiming he knew exactly when and where each man would need help. When all three refuse, he says they'll answer to a higher law, and die in the same way they would have if he hadn't saved them. Sure enough, Davis drowns, and Chaney is nearly killed by a gorilla, until Batman and Robin save his life. Batman attempts to trap Kole with a highwire stunt, because he would have died by falling. But the culprit turns out to be Davis, who faked his death in order to avoid paying Chaney a huge sum of money, figuring he could blame Kole if Chaney died. Kole apologizes for the trouble he caused, and leaves Batman an IOU, payable on demand.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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World's Finest Comics #42
September-October 1949

The Amazing Adventure of Batman and Marco Polo!
The final World's Finest issue collected in this volume is another time travel adventure for Batman and Robin, as they enjoy a festival in Gotham's Chinatown, thanks to an invitation by their friend Chung Lum. Chung sets off an old firework dating to 1275 to see if it still works, and the 700 year old firework forms an image of Batman's face. Naturally, it's off to see Professor Carter Nichols to investigate the mystery. Batman and Robin run into Marco Polo rather quickly and end up foiling a plot to discredit Polo and build an army to challenge Kubla Khan, and the Batman fireworks were a signal to warn of the approaching army. There's a lot of standard "use 20th century knowledge to defeat historical bad guys" tricks, and solving the mystery of the rockets is almost an afterthought, coming on the next to last panel of the story. This is not the best of the time travel plots, but it's still fun to see Batman meet famous historical figures.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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I wonder if there was a reference to the time travel plots in the 1989 Batman movie where we see Bruce Wayne in the room with the different "Batsuits". Like the one that looks like a Samurai, one that looks like it's from Africa, etc...
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Shockwave wrote:I wonder if there was a reference to the time travel plots in the 1989 Batman movie where we see Bruce Wayne in the room with the different "Batsuits". Like the one that looks like a Samurai, one that looks like it's from Africa, etc...
I'm not sure, but it's an interesting thought. They put Julie Madison in the fourth Batman movie, and she's a character who at that point had barely appeared in the comics since the early 1940s, so someone writing the script was familiar with some of the more obscure elements of Batman's history. It's possible that was also true with the 1989 movie.

I think Grant Morrison certainly had the time travel stories in mind when he wrote "The Return of Bruce Wayne" miniseries after Final Crisis.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Batman #55
October-November 1949

The Case of the 48 Jokers!
If the story were written today, it would be 50 Jokers, because there's "one for every state in the Union". The Joker, upset that by committing one crime he missed the opportunity of another, decides that one of him is not enough, so he recruits crooks to train them to act just like him, and they all strike at exactly the same time in 48 states when it's time to commit crimes. One of the Jokers is captured and Batman takes his place, but Batman is caught and forced to do humiliating tricks for the amusement of the Joker or watch Robin pay the price. Batman eventually turns the tables and captures the Joker and his gang, but rather than take him straight to jail, proceeds to humiliate him with his own tricks, until the Joker is begging for jail.

If I've counted correctly, this is the 42nd Joker story of the 40s. No other villain even comes close to so many appearances.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Batman #55 concluded

Bruce Wayne, Rookie Policeman!
This story is built around the idea of an ongoing Gotham police tradition: badge 50505, the "glory badge", worn with distinction for 100 years by whichever officer it was assigned to. When Mike Granite, the current wearer of the badge, is shot, who should run to his aid after hearing the shot but Bruce Wayne. The dying Granite makes Bruce promise to wear the badge with honor. Bruce gives his word, and so the amazed newspapers relate the story of socialite Bruce Wayne joining the Gotham police force. None of Bruce's friends in society can believe it. In a nice bit of often-forgotten continuity, Gordon lets Bruce know that even though they're old friends, he can't do any favors for Bruce, who will have to succeed or fail on his own merits. Bruce of course has to stay in character and not do too well and figure out how to be both Batman and a police officer. Bruce actually enjoys the life of an officer, interacting with the people of the district he's assigned to patrol.

But Bruce can't stay a policeman forever if he intends to continue being Batman, so he works out a plan to capture the Longshoreman Kid, who Granite was after when he was killed. He does so, but not before some secret ID problems, with Alfred stepping in to briefly impersonate Batman, showing up with Robin only after Bruce and his partner capture the crooks. Bruce declares his work done and resigns while passing the badge on, despite Gordon telling him he's found his calling in life and should stay on the force. I really liked this one. It's good to see a story that's more about Bruce than Batman, and thankfully secret ID complications are kept to a minimum. And Bruce would no doubt have made an excellent policeman if he had chosen to go that route in his pursuit of justice.

The Bandit of the Bells!
Ed Peale (get it?) has always hated bells. So when he decides on a life of crime, he decides to make bells serve him, and he names himself "the Gong". Yes, it's another psycho criminal with a weird obsession. Sometimes this approach works, sometimes it doesn't, and it's not all that successful here with a character who looks a lot like a Penguin knock-off. He's short, rotund and more cartoonish than the characters around him. And of course, in the end, bells are his undoing.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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Detective Comics #152
October 1949

The Goblin of Gotham City!
Vicki Vale has many pictures of Batman in action, since he's a public figure at this point in his history. While rifling through the old photos to try and get a clue as to who the safe-cracking "Goblin" could be, Vicki's editor decides to run a story about three men Batman saved from dying and what they're doing now. But a destroyed camera and lost negative from a photo of the three men leads to the real identity of the Goblin, who is of course one of the three men. A wounded Batman manages to trick him into opening the safe he locked Vicki and Robin into to suffocate, and the police have more than enough evidence to hold him. Not the most formidable of villains, despite the opening caption comparing him to Joker or Catwoman.
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Detective Comics #153
November 1949

The Flying Batman!
It's Batman as Hawkman.... sort of. Taking a break from hunting Slits Danton, Bruce and Dick attend a lecture by bat expert Carl Wilde, who claims to have invented a pair of wings that can be worn as a backpack, allowing human flight, and they're designed like bat wings. When Bruce spots Danton in the audience, he and Dick switch to their costumes and attack, only for Slits' wild gunshots to sever the rope Batman is swinging on, allowing him to escape. Wilde agrees to let Batman test his wings, and what follows is Batman flying around the city in a game of wits with Danton, who keeps trying to capture and kill the flying Batman. Except... it was all a dream. When the rope broke, Batman was knocked out, and an enraged Robin slugged Danton and knocked him out. The prototype wings are nowhere near ready for actual use, and Bruce dreamed it all in the few minutes he was out cold.

And that's it for volume 6. This was Batman story #368, and not quite the last story of the 1940s. There's one more Detective Comics issue for December, and a December-January issue of both Batman and World's Finest Comics, but other than that we're done with the 1940s.
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome

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So I might actually be posting in this thread more often. My fiancé picked up the Wonder Woman Golden Age Omnibus Volume 1 on Friday. I'm definitely interested in reading it with her so I'll post my thoughts on it as it goes.
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