DETECTIVE COMICS #522

"SNOW BLIND"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Irv Novick & Pablo Marcos
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Len Wein

The Plot: In the Himalayas, Batman and his guide, Chi, are nearly buried by an avalanche. Batman spots a large figure escaping into the night, then he and Chi find a shelter and settle in for the night. As they rest, Batman recalls the circumstances that brought him to the icy mountains: in the Gotham Picture News, he spied a photo of Klaus Kristin, the Abomninable Snowman, traveling with a group of Tibetan pilgrims. Batman took the Batplane to Tibet, where he linked up with Chi and began his search for Kristin.

Morning comes and Batman and Chi continue their trek. Eventually they find Kristin at the Lake of Buddha. Batman attempts to apprehend Kristin, but he and his quarry fall into the lake and Batman is knocked out. Kristin saves him but is shot by a Tibetan guard in the process. He falls into the water and swims away. Batman and Chi follow him again, to Mount Kalais, where the Abominable Snowman attacks on a mountain path. The Snowman defeats Batman, then lumbers away. But Batman survives and again takes up his pursuit.

The Caped Crusader finds Kristin in a small Buddhist shrine, where the Abomnibale Snowman also shows himself and attacks again. Batman blinds this Snowman as he realizes that he must actually be Kristin's father, the true Yeti. Kristin, dying from his gunshot wound, begs Batman to let him stay. The Yeti picks up his dying son and walks away, leaving Batman to watch their departure.

Continuity Notes: For those who need a refresher on Klaus Kristin, we get a helpful recap (which thankfully leaves out the freakish circumstances of his conception):

As Batman sits in shelter with Chi, he thinks about a few things troubling him: his semi-love triangle with Selina Kyle and Vicki Vale, the impending trial of Rupert Thorne (suggesting that perhaps that storyline isn't quite over yet??), and "...the growing distance [he] feel[s] from Dick Grayson...!" That last one is news to me. There's been nothing in recent issues to suggest any friction or distance between the Dynamic Duo. True, Robin hasn't outright participated in much of the action lately, but the relationship between the two seems fine.

But -- I did find the following passage in my look at NEW TEEN TITANS #29 from some years back: "Meanwhile, Robin becomes more and more obsessed with living up to the shadow of his mentor, an attitude which is beginning to drive a wedge between him and his teammates." That issue of TITANS was published roughly contemporaneously with this story (this is January 1983, and the TITANS issue is from March). As I noted in my TITANS post, we're still about a year away from Dick Grayson hanging up the Robin costume to become Nightwing, but we're fairly close to the debut of Jason Todd, who will become Dick's successor as Boy Wonder. It seems the team at DC wanted to start planting seeds early for Robin's transition, and this is the first we're seeing of it in a Batman comic.

(Though I find it odd that, from what I've read, Conway wanted Robin to restore the classic Batman dynamic, and even gave him this long arc where he went out and found himself and returned to Gotham as his own man -- yet since that happened, he's used Robin quite sparingly, while in NEW TEEN TITANS, Marv Wolfman -- to the best of my recollection -- ignored Conway's arc and has continued to present Robin as living in Batman's shadow.)

There's a brief flashback scene where Batman spends some time with Vicki, confirming what we saw in Catwoman's dream a couple issues back -- she is now the editor of the Picture News. Also, further to what I just wrote above, Robin offers to join Batman on his mission to Tibet, or to call in the Titans for help (their second mention since Conway started his run!), but is rebuffed.

My Thoughts: Well. Based on the first Abomniable Snowman tale, I didn't have high hopes for this one. As I noted at the time, the first story was weird and creepy, and also a pretty underwhelming mystery. But this one, while I would still not call it perfect, is a vast improvement! First, as mentioned above, there's zero mention of Kristin's freakish backstory. We are of course told that the yeti is his father, but we're spared the details of how that came about. And even better, the story is surprisingly touching, too. Kristin was "reborn" after his last battle with Batman and changed his ways. He simply wanted to go home and find his father. And find him he does, dying in the yeti's arms.

As far as I can see, no one has ever bothered to bring Kristin back, thus keeping his fate intact. Which probably makes sense since he's such an oddball character; I was surprised to see he got even one return engagement, even from his own (co-)creatior! But at the same time, I'm glad he did. If his original appearance had been the final word on the Snowman, I would've remembered him as nothing more than an ill-conceived weirdo from a sub-par story. But this coda by Conway elevates him a bit to a sympathetic villain. So for that reason, I'm glad he came back.

Next week Hugo Strange is back, so let's get ready for the resolution of a storyline dating back to the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run, five years earlier in terms of publication time (which, weirdly, is just about as long as it's been since I looked at those issues here as well)!