DETECTIVE COMICS #507

"DRESSED TO DIE!"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Dan Adkins
Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Letterer: Ben Oda | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: Manikin prepares to kill Hoston, but Batman emerges from the flames to stop her. Manikin begins choking on the smoke from Hoston's burning office and retreats while Batman gets Hoston to safety. Manikin is picked up by her brother, Victor, who drives her to their mansion outside Gotham. The next day, Bruce Wayne visits the Gotham Gazette to speak with the managing editor, Bud Raleigh, about a name he heard Hoston mumble the night before -- Miranda. Somehow, Raleigh knows this must be a model from West Germany who had a celebrated career in Gotham for about a year before being disfigured in a horrific car accident just as she was about to move to Hollywood to pursue her fortune in the movies.

That night, Batman prepares a device to help him against Manikin, then leaves for the hospital, where Hoston is recovering. Manikin arrives to finish her mission of killing the designer, but Batman intervenes. Their fight carries them out of the building and then back inside to Hoston's room, where Hoston confesses to planting a bomb in Miranda's car. Batman uses his device to seal Manikin's costume entirely, cutting off her air supply. Manikin passes out just as Victor appears and removes her mask, revealing her hideously scarred face. Hoston then reveals that he tried to kill Miranda because she had abandoned him for the movies.

Continuity Notes: We get a footnote to last issue as Hoston recalls seeing Batman "overcome by the smoke" in his office.

Gerry Conway comes up with one of the goofier prior issue recaps you're likely to run across, as a police officer asks Batman a very simple question: what started the fire? And Batman proceeds, unprompted, to run down the events of his entire evening for the poor gentleman.

There's a brief sub-plot scene where the state's attorney general visits Arkham Asylum to vocie his ire over a certain imate's release. A caption tells readers to see BATMAN #341 for more on this tidbit, and we'll do exactly that in just a few short weeks. (But here's a hint: it's someone Bruce Wayne -- and I -- mentioned last week!)

My Thoughts: This is a decent conclusion to the story begun last issue, though the bizarreness of the Gazette's editor knowing exactly who to tell Bruce about when he says the name "Miranda" is more than a little hard to swallow! I mean, literally Bruce walks up to the guy and says, "Ever hear of someone named -- Miranda?" and Mister Raleigh immediatly opens his filing cabinet and grabs a folder on the exact Miranda Bruce is looking for. He doesn't need anything more to go on! It's bizarre.

That said, I love that Batman needs to visit the local newspaper office as part of his research. There's something to be said for the belief that writing a mystery was easier before the advent of the information superhighway. Nowadays, our hero would simply need to jump into Google and type "Hoston Miranda", and he'd get a bunch of hits identifying the exact young lady he's looking for. Now, while in this case he gets basically the same result from the Gazette's apparently omniscient managing editor, that doesn't dismiss the fact that there was more legwork invovled in the investigation in 1981 than there would be in 2024. Batman's ease of finding his answer here is due only to Conway's laziness.

But again, in spite of that silly scene, this is a fine issue, and I feel like it must have been at least partially the inspiration for the NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES episodes "Mean Seasons", which saw a villainess named Calendar Girl terrorizing the fashion industry after her modeling career ended. The difference is that "Mean Seasons" had one of those classic BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES ironic endiings, where Calendar Girl was her own worst enemy -- she had gotten older and believed herself ugly because of it, while Manikin has a legitimate beef against Hoston and is simply going around killing all the designers she worked for because she's uncertain which of them tried to kill her. Still, the basic story premise is too similar for it to be coincidence, and BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES was never shy about adapting Bronze Age stories to the small screen!