"THE SECRET OF THE WAITING GRAVES" | "PAINT A PICTURE OF PERIL!"
Story by: Denny O'Neil | Art by: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano
Story by: Denny O'Neil | Art by: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano
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).
And there definitely is a mood here! While "One Bullet Too Many" was a decent introduction to the setup of the seventies and the sorts of Batman stories the decade would present, it also felt very straightforward and not all that different from what had come before. Even though the action was set mostly at night, it was still a fairly bright four-color adventure. But thanks primarily to Adams' artwork, "The Secret of the Waiting Graves" and "Paint a Picture of Peril" both drip with the sort of dark, gothic atmosphere one would expect from a Darknight Detective.
The first story is set in Mexico, where Bruce Wayne attends a lavish soiree thrown by socialites Juan and Dolores Muerto at their family crypt (the idle rich do weird stuff, after all). But Bruce suspects something is amiss and prowls the grounds as Batman. He saves a party guest from being killed by vultures, then rescues him again from a band of assassins. Eventually we learn that the Muertos are immortal thanks to a garden of illegal and mystical flowers, over which the guest -- government agent Pedro Valdes -- has arrived to arrest them."A bleak hillside in central Mexico... a pair of open graves... and the shadow of the dread Batman... mark the beginning of an excursion into the eerie, the terrifying, the deadly! Stand still, and hear the wind howling like souls in torment... see the rise of an ashen moon... breathe deeply and sniff the scent of death... as you prepare to learn... the secret of the waiting graves!"
Batman arrives and gets stuck in a death trap with Valdes, but manages to destroy the flowers. The Muertos immediately begin aging, transforming into desiccated corpses, and Batman marks their graves.
Here's the thing about Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams: not all their stories were winners. But on Batman, they had some kind of magic which turned nearly every story into something greater than the sum of its parts. Don't get me wrong -- there's great stuff ahead for this team, but there are also some clunkers in the offing. Yet somehow, O'Neil's pitch-perfect prose and Adams' unbelievable artwork combine to make even an iffy premise such as this one feel like a masterpiece.
Incidentally, the O'Neil/Adams Batman is a bit of a globetrotter, as we'll see moving ahead. While Frank Robbins and other writers of the seventies would keep Batman pretty much firmly entrenched in Gotham City, O'Neil and Adams will send the Caped Crusader to various spots around the world in his pursuit of justice. Of course Gotham will remain his main stomping ground under their purview as well, but these occasionally interjected travels give their Batman a bit of a "James Bond jet-setter" look, which is a lot of fun to see.
The story's ridiculous coda has Bruce realizing that his cleaning lady is the woman who left Payne all those years ago, and promising to keep her secret -- a revelation which practically sinks the entire story. It's an utterly ridiculous coincidence and, while I'm generally fine with coincidences if they add something -- anything -- to a story, that's not the case here. There's nothing gained by it other than to leave the reader scratching their head and trying to figure out why O'Neil and Adams felt this would make for a good ending!
Still, as with "The Secret of the Waiting Graves", "Paint a Picture of Peril!" may not represent the O'Neil Adams Batman at his finest, but somehow, thanks again primarily to Adams' art, after you're done with it, you somehow feel like you've read one of the greatest Batman stories ever told."A gentle twilight at Gotham Bay... A stillness broken only by distant echoes from the nearby streets and the gentle lapping of the sea. It is the eve before the opening of the annual Marine Festival--an event that pours millions into worthy charities... an event that now brings from the depths--evil!"
Next week, Adams and Frank Robbins join forces to introduce the Man-Bat!
Great review on more '70s Batman.
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ReplyDeleteDetective Comics #395
“The Secret of the Waiting Graves”
I absolutely love the lettering of the story title. Ben Oda is someone whose work I had mixed feelings about when I was younger because his word balloons were, I thought, often formed in rather haphazard lumps, but the older I get the more nostalgic I become over his work and I feel a visceral comfort in the roundness of the letterforms in the balloons.
Folks talk about how novel it is to have a party in a graveyard and nobody, including Batman, mentions that the couples’ last name is Muerto. And they’re in Mexico so no translation is involved for the native guests. When you’re asked about your plans for the evening and you reply Vamos a la casa de los Muertos, I would think eyebrows are going to be raised.
It's hard for me to imagine this version of Batman with any letters other than Oda's.
DeleteYou make a good point, and it's not something I actually noticed -- nobody comments on the Muertos' last name! Though it occurs to me that Denny O'Neil loved to give characters really weird names sometimes, so maybe in his world, something like that isn't unusual.
ReplyDeleteThe resolution of them dying because they get agitated, canceling the flowers’ supernatural effect, would have been more effective if that catch had been shared with the reader before Juan exclaims it while running after Dolores on the last page. And the fact that they age to dust in moments curiously goes without comment from Batman.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, I don’t think I cared about any of it when I read this story as a kid in that Batman from the ’30 to ‘70s book mentioned in previous comments; it was a freaky, gothic story that worked exactly as intended on me, complete with bittersweet compassion for the murderous antagonists.
I’m sorry for all the separate comments.
I know I criticized the story a bit up above, but I do like it nonetheless. As I said, there's something about the O'Neil/Adams pairing that can make almost any story feel special. I never had the opportunity to read this one as a child, but I know I would've enjoyed it if I had.
DeleteNo problem on all the comments, by the way!
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ReplyDeleteDetective Comics #397
“Paint a Picture of Peril!”
I’ll have to disagree with you on the spear to Batman's shoulder. Why does he just stand there and let himself get shot if he didn’t have a better plan than to dodge stealthily behind his cape — not even sure what that means, either, at least as depicted — just as he was struck? There are times when he’d take his arm being useless for a day as a best-case outcome given the situation but it seemed like he had more options here. You’ve talked before about your love of characters operating with the highest degree of competence, and Batman’s kind-of the epitome of that, but as he said to himself he blew it here good.
Also odd to me is that the arm injury isn’t brought up again when Batman grabs onto the window sill or falls into the hidden chamber (deliberately on his back and forearms, we’re told), only when he catches Payne later. I do suppose he makes up some ground in his weekly competence metrics on that trick with the chandelier.
I’m with you on Bruce Wayne’s cleaning lady being Payne’s obsession, though.
While she’s named Catherine rather than, oh I dunno, Rosalind, by the way, a wealthy recluse called “Orson Payne” living in his own castle sure seems like a nod to Orson Welles and Charles Foster Kane. His look does not disabuse me of this notion.
Payne must have a really strong ceiling to be swinging around a block that weighs two tons for crushing intruders, but I admit that it's not the sort of thing you'd think about twice with a supervillain and, hey, wealthy recluse living in his own castle,so...
I do like that "uber-competent" character thing, but at the same time I do think it goes overboard sometimes, especially with Batman. Writers tend to handle him these days like some sort of omniscient being who can never be blindsided, never be one-upped, and so forth (or at least that's how it was the last time I checked in with him). So in a weird way, when I see a story like this that shows us a slightly less effective Batman, I view it as retroactively countering the modern-day interpretation. (I'm weird, I know.)
DeleteI do find it odd the injury never comes up again until the end, though -- and I agree on the Orson Payne/Citizen Kane thing. I actually meant to mention that in the post and forgot.