DETECTIVE COMICS #486 & #487

"MURDER BY THUNDERBOLT" | "THE PERILS OF SERGIUS"
Writer: Denny O'Neil | Artists: Don Newton & Dan Adkins
Letterers: John Workman (issue 486) & Milt Snappin (issue 487)
Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Paul Levitz

Two more issues of DETECTIVE COMICS mean two more stories from Denny O'Neil, which -- circa late 1979/early 1980 -- mean Batman is going up against Maxie Zeus and the League of Assassins, respectively, again.

The first of these two stories, in issue 486, isn't half-bad. In fact, the opening is the sort of pulpy sequence O'Neil would have produced with Neal Adams a decade earlier: a skydiver jumps out of a plane, but he lands as a skeleton. Batman, who was on the scene as Bruce Wayne and changed into costume when the skydiver's parachute didn't deploy, watches as the skeleton then spontaneously combusts. Had Adams drawn this scene, it would have meant the promise of another masterpiece from him and O'Neil. But, much as I like Don Newton, he's no Neal Adams -- and the story that follows never quite lives up to its opening scene.

We follow Batman from this point as he investigates the strange death and learns that Maxie Zeus was behind it. Zeus, incarcerated at Arkham Asylum, is still insane, and is now predicting how some of his former associates will meet their ends. The mystery turns out to be twofold: how did a skydiver turn into a skeleton in midair, and who is carrying out these killings on Zeus's behalf? Unfortunately, the solutions to both questions are quite easy to discern -- the skydiver was already dead and a skeleton was simply dropped out of the plane (which is basically what Newton's art makes us see from the start), and the killer is the most obvious choice.