DETECTIVE COMICS #504

"THE JOKER'S RUMPUS ROOM REVENGE!"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Dan Adkins
Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Paul Levitz

The Plot: A shadowy figure arrives in Gotham City and visits the shop of a toymaker named Papetto, who has built some special toys for him. The figure kills Papetto and takes the toys. Later, Batman arrives to find Commissioner Gordon and several detectives combing the shop. Papetto's corpse lays on the floor with the Joker's calling card attached. Just then, City Councilman Arthur Reeves arrives with a news crew, but Batman and the commissioner pay him no heed. Batman grabs some mud from a footprint on the floor and departs. The next day, Bruce Wayne attends the grand opening of a high-end department store. The Joker appears and gases the patrons, but Bruce changes to Batman and goes after Joker. However the Clown Prince of Crime escapes, leaving his boot behind.

Back at the Batcave, after inspecting the boot and the mud, Batman determines that the Joker is hiding out at a ice cream factory in nearby Malcolmville. After seeing a news broadcast about the Joker having struck again, Batman departs for the factory. There, he knocks out some goons and makes it inside, to find the Joker waiting. Joker traps Batman in his "rumpus room", filled with toys -- all of which are programmed to kill. Joker closes the rumpus room door and waits until he hears no more sound. Then he opens it up to find Batman waiting. The Caped Crusader traps Joker in a mound of ice cream, then explains that he used the toys against each other until they were disabled.

Continuity Notes: As described above, mayoral candidate Arthur Reeves puts in another appearance, demanding to know why Batman is assisting the police. Prior to this scene, on the story's splash page, we see a Reeves billboard, showing that he is running on an anti-vigilante platform.

My Thoughts: Gerry Conway was in a really punny mood when he wrote this one. First, the toymaker is named Papetto, an obvious reference to Gepetto from PINOCCHIO. Later, three of the Joker's four henchmen are named Donald, Mickey, and Horace (I assume everyone gets the first two; the third would be Horace Horsecollar, a member of Mickey's supporting cast from the very early years). Further, at one point Joker is said to have stolen a stuffed bear called "Puff", from the famous "Chris Readbreast" stories written by "A.A. Milner". I'll just let you look up Winnie the Pooh to sort out all those references. Finally, while perhaps not puns per se, Conway names a municipality outside Gotham after DC's stalwart Paul Levitz, and notes that the Batmobile emerges from the Batcave via "Finger Alley" (i.e., Batman co-creator Bill Finger). Based on this, I assume "Malcolmville" is a reference to someone as well, but I have no idea who! There may be even more here that I'm missing, but I have no way to know.

This is probably the first of Conway's stories that I can say I don't particularly love. I mean, it's okay, but feels very run-of-the-mill as far as Joker stories from this era go. After Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams reinvented the character nearly a decade earlier in "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge", the bar was raised. Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers met that bar with their Joker story in DETECTIVE COMICS years later, and there were certainly some other good Joker stories throughout the ensuing several years, but they tended to be the exception rather than the rule. (I know I covered a cherry-picked assortment of 1970s Batman tales a few years back, but over a decade ago, I read the majority of 1970s Bat-material, so I have some idea of what was published, even if I don't recall all of it that well.)

And this one is just par for that unremarkable course. It's not awful, but it's just not that good, either. Hopefully Conway recovers next week as he begins writing BATMAN as well!