DETECTIVE COMICS #526

Presenting: the 500th appearance of the Batman in the pages of DETECTIVE COMICS.

"ALL MY ENEMIES AGAINST ME!"
An ending -- and a beginning, presented by:
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Alfredo Alcala
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Len Wein

The Plot: Penguin arrives at a meeting of Batman's enemies called by the Joker. Joker explains that Killer Croc is out to kill Batman, and wants to beat him to it. Catwoman, present but hiding, leaves to warn Batman. Talia, in attendance, voices her objection and the villains turn on her, but she escapes by using Captain Stingaree as a shield when Mister Freeze tries to blast her. Talia and Catwoman both soon show up at the Batcave to warn Batman, though the Caped Crusader needs to separate them from fighting each other first.

Meanwile, Dick Grayson is on his way home from the Circus when Waldo the Clown and Jason Todd catch up with him. Waldo tells Dick he has the license plate of Croc's right-hand man, Slick, so Dick has Waldo and Jason come back to Wayne Manor with him. Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon arrives at the theater where Joker's meeting was held, with his daughter, Barbara, tagging along. They're shocked to find Captain Stingaree frozen inside. Barbara finds a cigarette on the ground and leaves to change into Batgirl. Dick, Waldo, and Jason arrive at Wayne Manor, where Alfred tells Dick that Batman just left with Talia and Catwoman. Batgirl then appears and shows Dick the cigarette, which she believes belongs to the Pengin. Robin and Batgirl head out on their motorcycles, asking Commissioner Gordon to put out an APB on Slick's car.

Batman, Catwoman, and Talia arrive at an abandoned train station leased by the Riddler, and find him inside along with the Cavalier, the Mad Hatter, and the Scarcrow. The heroes defeat the four villains easily, though the Hatter vanishes. Meanwhile, Jason Todd finds the entrance to the Batcave and figures out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Out in the city, a mocked-up Bat-Signal summons Batman, Catwoman, and Talia to Gotham Park, where Signalman, the Spook, Mister Freeze, and Black Spider are waiting for them. The trio makes quick work of the villains, and Batman finds a piece of a city map in Signalman's pouch.

The police have found Slick's car at the Gotham Zoo, where Robin and Batgirl arrive to join them. Gordon leads them into the reptile house, revealing that Croc has fed Joe and Trina Todd to the crocodiles. Robin leaps into the pen and swats the reptiles away, dragging the Todds' bodies away from them. Meanwhile, Joker visits Croc at the Gotham Men's Club and tells him that the other villains are trying to kill Batman before he can. In the Batcave, Jason finds an old Robin-esque costume and puts it on. Just then, Batman, Talia, and Catwoman return to analyze the map. Jason sneaks into the Batmobile's trunk while the Batcomputer informs Batman and friends what part of Gotham the map depicts. The trio heads out again.

At the Gotham Tobbacconists' Club, Robin and Batgirl question Filbert Hughes about Croc, and Hughes gives up the villain's location at the Men's Club. But when the duo heads there, they find that Croc has moved on to the recently closed Adams Brewery. Meanwhile, Batman, Catwoman, and Talia have arrived at the brewery, where they find the Getaway Genius, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Cat-Man all beaten up. Then a water pipe sprays the trio, knocking them out. Jason emerges from the Batmobile to see Killer Moth, Two-Face, Clayface, and Gentleman Ghost arriving at the brewery too, and watches as Clayface assumes the identity of Tony Falco.

Inside the brewery, Batman awakens to find himself, Talia, and Catwoman tied to a tank full of hops. Below, ther Joker gloats over them. Croc appears and orders Batman cut down so they can fight one-on-one. Meanwhile, Clayface's Falco disguise gets him and his associates past Croc's guards and into the brewery. Jason secretly follows them and takes a shortcut to find Batman and Croc dueling. When Jason spots Catwoman and Talia caught in a fog of steam, he closes the valve to save them. At the same time, Joker is on his way out when he finds Two-Face and the others have been beaten by Robin and Batgirl. Robin chases Joker back into the area where Batman and Croc are fighting, and Croc accidentally knocks out Joker. When Batgirl appears and tells Batman that Croc killed the Todds, Jason leaps down, distracts Croc, and Batman knocks him out.

Later, back at Wayne Manor, Dick tells Bruce that he wants to adopt Jason -- but Bruce admits that he shoulders the true blame for the Todds' death, and takes Jason for a walk, while Dick tells Alfred to open up his old bedroom.

Continuity Notes: As packed as this issue is, there's only space for one very minor sub-plot, as Vicki Vale is hit on by one of her employees while burning the midnight oil at the Picture News office. She elbows him in the gut and then calls Wayne Manor to give Bruce a piece of her mind, but when Alfred tells her that he's out, she angrily hangs up.

There are a few bits of continuity, though. Notably, if it wasn't obvious in her last appearance, this issue makes it crystal clear that Catwoman knows Batman's secret identity. She knows where the Batcave is and, after her adventure with Batman and Talia, it is Bruce Wayne who sees her off -- in a scene I really like, by the way, as Selina and Talia drive off in Selina's car, having apparently made amends since they were at each other's throats the last time we saw them together. Somebody really should've done a mini-series about these two having wacky adventures on a road trip.

Scarecrow is said to still be out of his mind with fear following his last encounter with Batman, and here he is a mindless automoton controlled by one of the Mad Hatter's mind-control gadgets.

Batgirl reveals to Robin that she knows his secret identity (and Batman's), with Robin commenting that he had thought the Dynamic Duo had thrown her off figuring it out months ago.

And of course, this marks the point where Jason Todd becomes an official member of the Bat-family, with the implied promise that he will eventually become Robin. However, we're still some time away from that development! Dick Grayson doesn't give up the Robin identity for nine more months, in NEW TEEN TITANS #39 from February of 1984, which is the same month in which Jason takes on the identity of Robin in BATMAN #368 -- following a brief, informal foray in the costume in issue 366. (And for the record, Dick would not adopt the idenity of Nightwing for another five months, in July of '84's TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44. Personally, I like that DC took sort of a "slow burn" approach to such a monumental transition, though Dick giving up the identity of Robin and Jason adopting it in the exact same month feels a little rushed to me. They could've coordinated to spread that part out a bit.

My Thoughts: First and foremost, the question which is likely on anyone's mind after reading this issue: what happened to the Penguin?! He's our POV character for the opening couple pages, wandering into the Joker's meeting late. And it's his cigarette that sets Batgirl on the case. But he, himself, completely vanishes after the very first scene! Conway makes a point of working all the other villains from the opening two-page spread into the story. They all show up in smaller groups to be dispatched by our Bat-family. But Penguin vanishes off the face of the Earth! I guess maybe he wasn't into the Joker's scheme?

Now, with that out of the way, this is a really good issue, and a wonerful note for Gerry Conway to wrap up his run. He has a lot to accomplish here -- celebrate Batman's five-hundreth (!) issue of DETECTIVE COMICS, introduce the boy who would be Robin, and finish the Killer Croc storyline -- and he accomplishes all of it in spades. Even with the addition of Batgirl to the already large cast, Conway delivers satisfying moments for everyone. We get a Batgirl/Robin team-up. We get Jason's costumed debut. We get Batman teaming up with the loves of his life to take on a bunch of his classic enemies. We get a satisfying final showdown between Batman and Croc.

The first of those, Robin and Batgirl, is just a fun thing to see. I think they were prone to teaming up in the sixties and seventies, but -- perhaps by dint of the fact that we haven't been looking at backup stories as we've made our way through this Conway run, we haven't seen them do anything together since the Scarcrow story in DETECTIVE 503 -- two years ago in publication time! So it's nice to see them out and about in Gotham, running their investigation on a parallel track to that of Batman. Plus, much as I disliked the fact that the Todds were "created to be murdered" as I discussed last week, their fate here gives us the best use of Robin in Conway's entire run. He's driven and relentless, and shows that he's just as capable as his mentor of intimidating anybody who gets in his way. Heck, he gets Filbert Hughes to give up Croc where Batman failed last issue! And the moment where he finds the Todds and lets out an anguished scream over Trina's lifeless body -- well, it's sad and shocking and horrific, but it's also a amazing bit of art and script by Conway, Don Newton, and Alfredo Alcala.

Jason's big moment is a great payoff as well. Not only does Conway do a wonderful job of estabishing him as a worthy sucessor to Dick, by showing how flawlessly he trails the bad guys and sneaks into the brewery, then rescues Catwoman and Talia, but he uses Jason to drive home the point he's been hinting at for the past few issues: Batman needs a Robin. Now, whether I agree with that statement is a different matter; as I've said before, I prefer Batman operating solo and occasionally teaming up with Robin. But the fact remains that Conway believes it, and he hammers the fact home by showing that, where Batman failed to defeat Croc one-on-one no fewer than three times so far, when Jason steps in to lend a hand, Batman easily finishes off his foe. It's really a perfect payoff.

Then there's Catwoman, Talia, and Batman going up against the classic rogues (though to be fair, Robin and Batgirl take out several of them too). I aready talked about Batman's distaff partners above, so I'll speak to a moment about the villains. It's an occasional staple of anniversary issues to feature the hero taking on his united enemies, and Conway handles that perfectly here as well. Joker crafts a triple-cross to ensnare Croc, and all the bad guys in Gotham go along with him because they evidently hate the idea of some rando from Florida horning in on their action. I love that. Though it's interesting to see how many of these "classic" villains have faded into obscurity nowadays. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Signalman, Black Spider, and the Spook? They were once apparently prominent enough to rate inclusion in a star-studded extravaganza like this, but I'd be shocked to see any of them pop up in a similar story today.

(Though I actually love the Spook -- one of my great regrets about my look at the 1970s Batman stories a few years back was that there were none of the original Spook stories written by his creator, Frank Robbins, reprinted for us to look at. But I've read his early appearances in SHOWCASE PRESENTS BATMAN, and I just really like him for whatever reason, so I was quite happy to see him here.)

Anyway -- this wraps it up! Gerry Conway's BATMAN/DETECTIVE run is one I've wanted to read for several years now. I'm not certain when I first became aware of it, but I would guess maybe somewhere around 2008 or so. I knew it involved Rupert Thorne and was a bit of a sequel to Steve Englehart's run, and I knew that it introduced Killer Croc and Jason Todd -- but that was all I knew about it, other than that from what I saw online, people generally seemed to like it. And a lot of it lived up to or exceeded my expectations. It certainly had some low points, or perhaps dry spells, amid all the good stuff, but I'd be hard-pressed to find any genuine missteps. Conway even managed to redeem his own ill-conceived Snowman!

I should note that I've also long wanted to read the run by Doug Moench, which immediately followed this one. As of this writing, DC has never reprinted that run in its entirety. It's longer than Conway's, I believe, running all the way up to 1986's CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS reboot, but I would imagine it could be collected in another series of hardcovers as DC did with Conway's material. I believe that if nothing else, it's available on DC Infinite, the Distinguished Comptetition's answer to Marvel Unlimited. I don't have a subscription to Infinite, but someday, when I can't wait any longer to read Moench's issues, I might just have to get one.

And that's it! With this post, Gerry Conway's BATMAN/DETECTIVE COMICS run comes to an end... and so, perhaps, does something else? Stay tuned for next Monday's post for more on that cryptic comment.