DETECTIVE COMICS #426, #429, & #435

"KILLER'S ROULETTE!" | "MAN-BAT OVER VEGAS!"
"MASTER CRIME-FILE OF JASON BARD: CASE OF THE DEAD-ON TARGET!"
Story & Art by: Frank Robbins

And now the actual, honest-to-goodness conclusion to my look at "Batman in the Seventies", featuring Frank Robbins' final three stories as writer/artist. The first of these is by far my favorite: "Killer's Roulette" sees Batman investigating a string of suicides. Three of Gotham's wealthy citizens have killed themselves with a bullet to the head, and the Caped Crusader wants to know why. Batman goes undercover as a high roller at an offshore casino, where he meets a man named Conway Treach, who challenges him to the biggest game of chance anyone can ever play: Russian Roulette.

Batman and Treach head to Treach's cabin, where the villain explains the rules of his challenge: they will each write out a suicide note, then begin their game with a single bullet in Treach's revolver. After each pull of the trigger, one bullet will be added, until one of them dies -- at which point the survivor will take his own note and depart. At this point Batman reveals his true identity to Treach, but insists on playing the game anyway, and this is where Robbins' already excellent artwork becomes brilliant, as he captures the intensity on each man's face with every pull of the trigger, until Batman finally emerges victorious, deducing that Treach has a trick gun which will never kill him.

Even though this story's subject matter would never have cleared broadcast censors for a kids' show in 1992 (or today), I can't help feeling it would have been a really great adaptation into an episode of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. I can't really explain why, but something about it just feels like a B:TAS story.

BATMAN #245 & DETECTIVE COMICS #429

"THE BRUCE WAYNE MURDER CASE!"
Story: Denny O'Neil | Art: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano | Editor: Julius Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

The Ra's al Ghul saga is done, the villain has been brought to justice, but there's one loose end yet to tie up. Back when Batman started his crusade against the Demon in issue 242, he faked Bruce Wayne's death via a plane accident in South America. Now it's time to resurrect Wayne, but the deed is complicated when two rival political bosses get involved, one of them accusing the other of murdering Wayne. What ensues is a mystery Batman doesn't want to solve. He must, in order to bring Bruce Wayne back from the dead, but he knows that to do so will pave the way to get a dirty politician into office. However Batman does what he must, and by the story's final page, Gotham is as corrupt as ever and Bruce Wayne is alive again.

This is one of those stories that I feel should be included in any printing of TALES OF THE DEMON, but at the same time I understand why it isn't. Ra's al Ghul is never mentioned at any point; the entire saga is pretty much ignored. But it does show us how Batman brings Bruce Wayne back to life following his "death", tying up the one remaining plot thread from the O'Neil/Adams opus of preceding issues. But at the same time, TALES does not include issue 242 either, and that one is far more essential -- plus, without it, this story is even less important. If you're not gonna print the story that actually does further the main plot, why print a story that wraps up a sub-plot from it?

Otherwise, this is a decent story -- a nice palate cleanser after the globetrotting of the previous installments, it plants Batman firmly back in Gotham and sets him against that staple of his early seventies adventures: normal, everyday criminals in business suits.

GREEN LANTERN #89 AND THE FLASH #217-219 & 226 (BACKUP SERIAL)

Script: Denny O’Neil | Art: Neal Adams | Editor: Julie Schwartz
Inks: Dick Giordano (backup serial only)

“…AND THROUGH HIM SAVE A WORLD…”

And then GREEN LANTERN was cancelled…!

I always find it bizarre when a series I consider to be perennial is cancelled or even on the verge of cancellation. Around the mid-seventies, DETECTIVE COMICS hovered at the edge of oblivion, and I believe it was only the belief that DC simply couldn't cancel the comic their company was named after which kept it afloat. Over at Marvel, by the eighties, CAPTAIN AMERICA hovered just under the axe, and I believe the same held true for DAREDEVIL in the seventies. And then of course there's X-MEN, which while not outright cancelled, was reduced to being a reprint magazine in the early seventies.

Such would be the fate of GREEN LANTERN as well, as not even the socially relevant stories of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams could save it (which I believe lends some credence to my belief that kids have no interest in, nor any need to know about, a lot of the stuff covered in this run).

GREEN LANTERN 89 is the series’ final issue, and ugh – it may well be the single preachiest, most ham-handed installment of the entire O'Neill/Adams run, and that title comes with some stiff competition. The story involves out heroes meeting up with a young man named Isaac, who's been vandalizing a Ferris Aircraft plant over the pollution it causes. By our tale’s end, Isaac – who bears a passing resemblance to Jesus Christ – has crucified himself outside the plant in protest and died overnight as Green Arrow and Green Lantern are unable to save him.