BATMAN #337

"WHERE WALKS A SNOWMAN"
Script Gerry Conway | Plot Assist: Roy Thomas
Pencils: Jose Garcia-Lopez | Inks: Steve Mitchell
Letters: John Costanza | Colors: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: Batman arrives at a sporting good store to help the police apprehend a hoodlum holed up inside. When Batman enters the store, he finds the crook babbling about his friend Jackie. Batman captures the criminal, but also finds Jackie -- frozen solid. Soon, in Commissioner Gordon's office, Batman and Gordon go over the crook's statement: he and Jackie had broken into the store, but Jackie was attacked by a man of snow. Batman leaves police headquarters and returns to Bruce Wayne's penthouse, where a party is in full swing. Among the guests is renowned skiier Klaus Kristin, who arrived while Batman was out, and who Bruce now observes has wet shoes.

The next day, the Snowman breaks into a jewelry store while Batman investigates Kristin's hotel room nearby. He finds and pockets a diary, then leaves when he hears an alarm from the store. But the Snowman has escaped before Batman arrives. Later, Batman and Alfred go through the diary, written by Kristin'a mother, Katrina, in the fifties. It details how she was hiking with friends in the Himalayas and got separated from them. A man found her and took care of her in a cave, and in the darkness they succumbed to their passion together. But the next morning, Katrina saw the man's face by the light of the fire -- he was a yeti. When she was found later on, Katrina was completely insane.

Having deduced Kristin's next destination, Bruce Wayne travels to Austria. He plants the diary in Kristin's room with a note requesting a meeting that night on Summit Peak. When midnight comes, the Snowman attacks Batman on the peak, explaining during their fight that he robs in order to finance his globe-trotting ski trips, since he must remain in the cold whenever he can. Then the brief fight ends, when Batman blinds the Snowman with a flare, and the creature slips and falls off the mountain to his apparent death.

Continuity Notes: None to speak of in this story, though we do learn that Gotham City has an area called Roosevelt Center, which is visually reminscent of New York's Rockefeller Plaza.

My Thoughts: Gerry Conway's first issue of BATMAN (with the aid of co-plotter Roy Thomas) feels more like an issue of The National Enqurier or some other supermarket tablod of its ilk. The only thing missing is a sensationalistic cover with a headline like, "I GAVE BIRTH TO THE YETI'S LOVE CHILD! HIKER'S DIARY CONFESSES ALL!" I mean, seriously, this is Weird with a capital "W" (which is why I just capitalized it). Comic book characters, heroes and villains alike, can have some way-out-there origins, but this is one of the most bizarre I've ever seen. Kristin's mother is rescued by a mystery man, has sex with him in a cave, somehow not realizing in coitus that he's a freaking yeti, and then gives birth to his son nine months later. This is one of those things stories you find yourself half wondering (or heck, even fully wondering) how on Earth it made it past the Comics Code (not to mention editorial)!

Beyond that bizarre premise, the story itself is sort of meh as well. There's no connection to the ongoing continuity Conway has been setting up -- which is fine if the story is great, but in this case it's a lackluster adventure coupled with no sub-plots to speak of, making it really feel like a waste of an issue. Part of that is due to this being a "mystery" that isn't really a mystery. Batman finds out about a snow-monster, notes that the story's one new character has wet shoes, and it becomes a case of, "Yep, this guy is obviously the villain, so let's go through the motions of Batman simply confirming his suspicion." A mystery with one very obvious suspect is no mystery at all.

Perhaps Conway and Thomas were simply banking on their villain's backstory making their tale memorable and engaging in spite of its shortcomings -- but the whole "fathered by a yeti" thing is creepy and uncomfortable, and nothing more. If anything, it makes the story not memorable, but something you want to scrub from your brain as soon as you've finished it!

All that said, the story has some great artwork from Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, so at least there's that!

This issue features a backup story, also written by Gerry Conway, with art from Don Newton and Larry Mahlstedt. In "Murder on the Midway", we catch the Teen Wonder lurking inside the big top at Hill's Circus. As he waits for someone, he flashes back to the events which brought him here: Dick Grayson received a letter from an old friend named Waldo and came to the circus, where Waldo, a clown, introduced him to some of the other performers. Among these was Cleveland Brand, a.k.a. Deadman. Brand was injured during practice and Dick volunteered to take his place in the night's show. But as Dick auditioned for the circus's owner, Lourna Hill, Jo-Jo the clown was shot -- and Waldo appeared to be the culprit.

Waldo was arrested and Dick learned that the bullet that killed Jo-Jo was missing. He changed to Robin and staked out the big top, hoping someone would return to search for it. And sure enough, as the story returns to the present day, Robin spies a shadowy figure entering the tent. He drops to the ground to find his suspect is Lourna Hill.

We're told that Waldo previously appeared in DC COMICS PRESENTS #31, and that Cleveland Brand is the brother of the original Deadman, Boston Brand, who is nowadays a ghost capable of inhabiting the bodies of the living.

Not much else to say about this one yet, other than that it's much more palatable than the issue's A-story!. We'll check out the conclusion next week, though I do want to note that this is apparently the genesis of Robin's foray to the circus mentoned in NEW TEEN TITANS #, as mentioned a few weeks back. It's explicitly stated in that story that Robin is re-joining the circus, and in this issue he finds himself thinking about doing exactly that.