DETECTIVE COMICS #400 & #402

"CHALLENGE OF THE MAN-BAT" | "MAN OR BAT?"
Story: Frank Robbins | Art: 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).

For the vast majority of his Batman output in the seventies, Neal Adams worked with Dennis O'Neil as writer. But he did illustrate scripts from a few others as well: Mike Friedrich, in a Christmas backup story we skipped. Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, and then Wein alone, in a pair of stories we'll eventually cover.

And, of course, Frank Robbins. According to Adams in the introduction to BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS Volume 2, Robbins had expressed interest to editor Julie Schwartz in working with Adams. Adams, meanwhile, had been doodling and come up with a character called Man-Bat. Adams and Robbins crossed paths at the DC offices, and Adams asked Robbins to write the creature's debut appearance -- which brings us to "Challenge of the Man-Bat" and its sequel, "Man or Bat?"

In the first story, Batman fights a group he calls the "Lights Out Gang", who commit robberies in complete darkness. When they bait Batman into a trap at Gotham's natural history museum, the Caped Crusader is joined by a mystery bat creature to fight them. The gang is defeated in the end, and Man-Bat escapes into the night.

The story ends with a blurb advising readers to watch for more Man-Bat in an upcoming issue of DETECTIVE COMICS. And sure enough, two months later, DC published a sequel. This was far too short a time for sales figures on Man-Bat's premiere to have reached DC, so it seems likely they were just hoping for the character to be a hit. "Man or Bat?" gives Man-Bat a first name -- he was referred to only as Langstrom in "Challenge", but here is identified as Kirk Langstrom by his fiancee, Francine Lee, in her first appearance.

In this story, Batman encounters Man-Bat again and attempts to capture him when he tries to rob a chemical shop. Langstrom escapes, however, with plans to mix up a cocktail and cure himself. Batman, unaware of this plan, intervenes, and the glass containing Langstrom's formula shatters. Batman chases Man-Bat, who finds his way into an underground cave which turns out to be the Batcave.

We'll pause here for a moment to note that it was only about eight months earlier that Robbins mothballed the cave and Batmobile as he set up Batman's new status quo in "One Bullet Too Many". But it seems likely Adams really wanted to draw those trappings, if only for an issue or two. "Challenge of the Man-Bat" features the Caped Crusader driving a stylish new Batmobile, with a caption -- apparently lettered in after the story's other letters -- informing readers that it's an "experimental car" loaned to Batman by a manufacturer for testing. Then, in "Man or Bat?" the car returns, and the Batcave with it. And if there's any doubt Adams really wanted to draw these things, I point only to his two glamour shots of the Batmobile, one in each story, and the big establishing image of the Batcave, which goes out of its way to show the giant penny, the Batcomputer, etc.

Interestingly, and also on the artistic front, Adams draws these two stories differently from his collaborations with Denny O'Neil. In particular, and especially in "Challenge", he uses way more panels per page, usually smaller than is typical of him. I suspect that O'Neil and Adams collaborated, "Marvel Style", on their stories -- plot first, then pencils from Adams, followed by a script from O'Neil -- while it seems evident that Adams is working from a full script when drawing Robbins' stories. Mind you, I could be totally mistaken here, but the differing art styles depending on the writer certainly makes it seem like O'Neil and Robbins were doing something different, at least.

And now back to our story: "Man or Bat?" wraps up when Batman stuns Man-Bat inside the Batcave, then takes him over to his lab to try and find a cure. A blurb tells us we'll learn whether our hero was successful in a future issue of DETECTIVE COMICS -- which brings to mind an oddity of these Julius Schwartz-era Batman comics. We'll see more of it very soon as O'Neil starts into his Ra's al Ghul saga: a lot of the time a story will end on a cliffhanger of sorts, but there's no immediate resolution in the next issue. Eventually, the cliffhanger will be resolved, but not until some amount of time has passed. Case in point: Man-Bat's fate is left unresolved as this story ends, but he won't appear in another story for five more months.

This is obviously still a form of continuity between stories, but it's not the sort of serialized continuity readers have been trained to expect from comics. I don't know if this was uniquely a DC thing at the time, or perhaps even simply a Schwartz thing -- but I do know that Marvel had been running with serialization for years at this point, so perhaps DC was simply slow to catch on. For the majority of these seventies stories, we'll see one-off adventures, with only occasional two-or-more-part arcs, all the way up to the latter part of the decade. And while I don't mind done-in-one stories, my preference in comics generally leans toward full-on serialization (though I will say the done-in-ones of the seventies, coupled with its status quo, remind me quite a bit of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, which is never a bad thing) -- but this halfway approach feels disjointed and weird, and it's one of my least favorite things about the seventies Batman.

Next time, Adams reunites with O'Neil for a story that means a great deal to me, "Ghost of the Killer Skies!"