DETECTIVE COMICS #404

"GHOST OF THE KILLER SKIES!"
A tribute to the great Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher
Script: 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).

It's 1988. You're nine years old. Tim Burton's BATMAN movie is due out next year. BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES is still four years away. You've "grown up" (insomuch as a child can be considered to have done so) with Batman, but never actually read a comic book featuring the character. Your only exposure to Batman has been via reruns of the Adam West TV show, the Filmation cartoon, and SUPER FRIENDS. But you've come to like the character quite a bit through those incarnations, and somehow you wind up with a copy of THE GREATEST BATMAN STORIES EVER TOLD, a trade paperback (published by Warner Books rather than DC Comics) collecting, ostensibly, some of the best bat-material of the past four decades.

So you start reading. You merely skim some of the early chapters because the artwork doesn't appeal to you. But soon you find yourself reading stories from the fifties and sixties. This is the Batman you recognize from TV. Colorful! Fun! Battling zany villains and accompanied at all times by Robin, the Boy Wonder!

Then you get to page 162, and suddenly things change. The artwork is more realistic. Batman looks different; longer ears, darker colors. The tone of the story is considerably moodier than what came before. Robin is nowhere to be seen. And, on the very first page -- murder! A mystery unfolds! You've seen Batman solve mysteries before, in the stories earlier in this book, but you've never seen him try to unravel a murder. Before the story is done, two more people have died. You wonder if you're supposed to be reading this stuff! Did they slip some kind of "grown-up" Batman story into this book by mistake? What would your parents say if they knew you were reading about people getting strangled to death?

Congratulations, reader -- you're me, and you just relived the moment I realized there was more to Batman than the "kiddified" version with which I had spent the first near-decade of my life. And I should note right now, for the record, that I have no objections whatsoever to the Adam West/Filmation/SUPER FRIENDS Batman of my childhood (Olan Soule is right behind Kevin Conroy as my favorite Batman performance). There are multiple valid interpretations of the character (except the current one; that's never been valid), but until this point, I didn't realize that was the case. This was the story that introduced me to the "Darknight Detective" version of Batman, and it's probably no wonder, based on that, that I hold the decade of the seventies in such high esteem with regards to the character.

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"You are standing on a windswept cliff somewhere in central Spain, looking through the eyes of a solitary watcher... observing a speck of an aircraft in the distance...

It is closer, and you hears its engine sputtering--you see that it is a French-made Nieuport 17--a motorized kite that was used in the world's first air-combat in 1916...

Suddenly it flips over and hurls toward the rocks below you... and you know with chill certainty, that you are witnessing a murder--

The ground shudders as the plane splinters against the cliff's snowy face...

Leave, now the eyes of the dread--Batman and follow the caped avengers through a tangle of crime and into the bleakest corner of a man's soul... a man who must become... ghost of the killer skies!"

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"Ghost of the Killer Skies!" finds Bruce Wayne jet-setting again -- as noted a couple weeks ago, this was not uncommon for the O'Neil/Adams version of the playboy -- and this time he's in Spain, where he has dipped his toe into the world of movie production. The film is a biopic on German pilot Hans von Hammer, known during the first World War as the Hammer of Hell (and known to DC readers as the star of the Silver Age comic book series ENEMY ACE, though I didn't know that when I read this story as a kid). But somebody is out to sabotage the production, killing the movie's stunt pilot and later its director. I know this issue is almost fifty years old, but nonetheless I won't spoil it, as it's a decently plotted mystery by O'Neil and Adams, complete with a red herring.

Suffice it to say, however, that the story climaxes with a thrilling dogfight between Batman and the killer in World War I era biplanes, featuring one of the coolest stunts of the O'Neil/Adams run, in which Batman leaps from one plant to another in midair.

Look -- the above reminiscence should make it clear that I harbor a great deal of nostalgia for this story; perhaps more than I have for any other Batman tale. Nonetheless, I think I can be objective enough to look at it on its own merits. And, for my money, "Ghost of the Killer Skies" is easily the best-plotted of the O'Neil/Adams collaborations we've look at so far -- and possibly, in fact, of all six Batman stories we've examined. It's tight but doesn't feel too short, and the mystery is a genuine one, played mostly fair with readers. Plus, O'Neil's script is excellent as usual and Adams' artwork is astounding as always. Unlike their previous efforts, which I've described as being somewhat uneven and greater than the sum of their parts, this may well be the first O'Neil/Adams story which can truly be called a classic in all respects.

Next week, Batman meets the League of Assassins and their diabolical leader, Doctor Darrk!