BATMAN #309 & #310

"HAVE YOURSELF A DEADLY LITTLE CHRISTMAS!"
"THE GHOST WHO HAUNTED BATMAN"
Writer: Len Wein
Artists (issue 309): John Calnan & Frank McLaughlin
Artists (issue 310): Irv Novick & Dick Giordano
Colorist: Glynis Wein | Letterer: Ben Oda | Editor: Julius Schwartz

Picking up from the final scene of the prior issue, BATMAN #311 opens with the Blockbuster, Batman's Hulk-like villain, beating up some purse snatchers and then departing to return the purse to its owner. Meanwhile, Batman and Commissioner Gordon exchange Christmas gifts. But when they find that a desk sergeant is on the phone with a girl attempting suicide-by-sleeping pills, Batman departs in a hurry to find her. It turns out she's the victim of the purse-snatch, and Blockbuster finds her before Batman. The girl faints from the bottle of pills, Blockbuster takes her away to find help.

Naturally, this leads to Batman and Blockbuster crossing paths a few times, and while Blockbuster wants to help the girl, he refuses to let Batman take her to a hospital, since -- following his "death" at STAR Labs last issue -- he believes hospitals hurt people. Nonetheless, when their chase takes them out onto a frozen lake that cracks apart, Blockbuster throws the girl into Batman's arms as he sinks into the water of Gotham Bay. Batman gets the girl to an ambulance and her life is saved.

This is the kind of story where you honestly don't know which way it will go. We're so deep into the Bronze Age at this point, that there's just as good a chance the girl could die as there is that Batman could save her -- which gives the story an air of suspense that might otherwise have been missing were it published a few years earlier. There are no sub-plots in this one, either -- it's wall-to-wall Batman vs. Blockbuster action, which is always a nice change of pace in any sub-plot heavy series. Though I sometimes complain that such issues are "filler" without any sub-plots, in this case, for whatever reason, it doesn't feel that way.

This is also the final issue of BATMAN penciled by John Calnan, who had been the series' regular artist for a couple years up to this point (we missed most of his run due to mainly looking at DETECTIVE COMICS issues rather than BATMAN over the prior few years). I don't know that I can say I'm a fan of Calnan; he's okay but no great shakes. And, on this issue in particular, his Blockbuster just looks really weird. I first encountered Blockbuster in THE GREATEST BATMAN STORIES EVER TOLD, which reprinted his origin drawn by Carmine Infantino, and Infantino's version of the character actually looked like a big, hulking brute. But Calnan's looks too lean, like he's just an oversized version of a normal human.

But any artistic failings on the title vanish with Calnan, as our next issue sees the triumphant return of Irv Novick, one of the "founding fathers" of Bronze Age Batman. (Seriously, if I were making a Mt. Rushmore of 1970s Batman artists, Novick would be right up there with Neal Adams and Jim Aparo.) And I'm happy to say that Novick will remain, with only a small handful of fill-ins, as the regular penciler of BATMAN from now until we finish our retrospective in a few more months.

"The Ghost Who Haunted Batman" (which has a suspiciously similar title to the Wein-co-written "The House That Haunted Batman" of some years earlier) finds the Caped Crusader engaging in that time-honored superhero tradition of going up against another hero's villain -- in this case, it's Hawkman's foe, the Gentleman Ghost. And since I've never read a Hawkman comic in my life, I think I can safely declare this to be the only comic I've ever read with Gentleman Ghost in it!

The story sees Batman fight the Ghost and his men as they steal some old lanterns from Gotham's Riverside Museum -- but the lanterns hold special value for Batman, as they once adorned the gates to Wayne Manor before Bruce Wayne donated them. So when the Ghost escapes with his loot, Batman vows to get it back. But his concern shifts when he gets home and finds Alfred gone from the Wayne Foundation penthouse. The next day, Bruce sends out feelers for his butler and then that night, goes undercover to search for him.

This eventually results in the Gentleman Ghost showing up at the penthouse with Alfred in his thrall to steal Bruce's furniture and return it to Wayne Manor, where the Ghost plans to live. Batman pursues the villain and his gang to his ancestral home and rescues Alfred, but the Gentleman Ghost seemingly perishes during his escape.

After taking an issue off from them, Wein furthers his sub-plots here, both getting Bruce on the phone with Selina Kyle to discuss their upcoming business relationship, and reminding us that the mysterious Gregorian Falstaff has moved into Gotham to become a major competitor of the Wayne Foundation. (In this case, Falstaff is poised to outbid Wayne on some drilling rights, which seems kind of funny, given the staunchly pro-environmental stance that most Batman interpretations have ascribed to Bruce Wayne in more recent years.)

So... that's about it. Neither of these stories is particularly memorable, aside from Batman meeting the Gentleman Ghost for the first time. (And I will say that Batman vs. a ghostly antagonist is a fun idea.) Hopefully Wein is still just finding his feet on BATMAN, because if the rest of his run remains as lackluster as these initial few stories, we may be in for a slog over the next few months!