BATMAN #341

It was a dark and stormy night. A perfect night for...
"THE GHOST OF WAYNE MANSION"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: On a dark and stormy night, three kids race out of Wayne Manor, screaming about a ghost, and are found by a passing Gotham policeman. The next morning, Commissioner Gordon asks Bruce Wayne for permission to search the mansion, but Bruce -- worried Gordon might find the old Batcave -- refuses, so Gordon leaves to get permission from the house's cartetakers at the Gotham Historical Society instead. Later, Batman examines real-time footage of the manor on his computer, and finds that the secret entrance to the Batcave behind a grandfather clock is ajar. Batman races to the house to stop Gordon's search.

Meanwhile, Gordon enters the house with Miss Crum of the Historical Society, and with Doctor Terry Thirteen, a paranormal investigator who specializes in debunking ghosts. Gordon tells Thirteen that the night before, his officer saw the same "ghost" the kids saw. Meanwhile, Batman enters the mansion as well. He secretly sabotages Doctor Thirteen's "sonar gun", but when the "ghost" swoops past overhead, he follows it. After losing the ghost, Batman shows himself and asks Gordon for time to search the mansion alone. Gordon agrees, and leaves the house with Crum and Thirteen -- but Thirteen immediately slips back inside. Batman enters the Batcave to find that the "ghost" is actually Man-Bat -- and then the creature quickly subdues him. Meanwhile, Thirteen discovers the Batcave entrance and descends the stairs, to find Man-Bat holding the unconscious Batman.

Continuity Notes: Lots of them this issue! But we'll start with a sub-plot scene, where the mystery man who was released from Arkham Asylum in DETECTIVE COMICS #507 visits the Gotham Tobacconists Club, a group of the city's most powerful political movers and shakers. The man immediately blackmails the club members into backing him, and they declare that he is still the "boss" of Gotham City. The man then says that he is barred from running for office due to his time in Arkham, but that he has one of the mayoral candidates in his pocket and he wants to ensure that candidate is elected. (You probably realize who this guy is by now, but since the story hasn't revealed it yet, neither will I!)

Bruce is still concerned about Poison Ivy, and reminds us that he is unable to breathe a word of her plot to anyone thanks to her post-hypnotic suggestion.

The Batcomputer's map of the Batcave is straight out of WHO'S WHO IN THE DC UNIVERSE (which had actually not been published yet, but nonetheless, it's kind of funny to see here):

Batman is concerned that it was he who accidentally left the Batcave entrance ajar when he battled the Mole last issue (a.k.a. "a few weeks ago" per his thought balloon).

Upon finding Man-Bat, the Caped Crusader recalls that Kirk Langstrom's alter ego hid in the Batcave once before, back in DETECTIVE COMICS #402.

Lastly, it's mentioned a couple of times that it's been "years" since Bruce moved out of Wayne Manor and into the Wayne Foundation penthouse. In truth, in terms of publication time, it had been just about twelve years at this point since the December 1969 issue of BATMAN, "One Bullet Too Many" (which, believe it or not, was also drawn by Irv Novick)! In retrospect, that's kind of crazy to think about. Wayne Manor is such a huge part of the entire Batman mythos that it's hard to believe he didn't live there for well over a decade -- including the entire decade of the 1970s! Certainly writers returned to the manor now and then during that time, but it was not at any point during that stretch more than an occasional one-off appearance.

In any case, it seems a stretch to refer to the in-universe time as "years". Bruce moved out of the manor when Dick Grayson left for college -- so Dick was most likely seventeen or eighteen at that point. And if we take the "teen" in his nickname and in the title of the team book in which he currently co-stars at face value, he must be no older than nineteen at this point. So yes, "years" could have passed, but this probably should have been phrased as something like "a couple of years" in order to avoid incurring the wrath of anal-retentive timeline-obsessed weirdos like me.

My Thoughts: Well, this is a pleasant surprise! With the arrival of Gene Colan, and knowing Don Newton will stick around as well (though at some point I believe they will swap titles), I had thought we'd seen the last of Irv Novick. However he's not gone quite yet, as he turns in this final two-parter featuring Man-Bat -- which is, so far as I can tell from some quick research, his swan song with the Caped Crusader (barring one DC COMICS PRESENTS issue in 1985). So, though I should probably be talking about the issue at hand, and though I already said more than a little about him when I looked at all those 1970s Batman comics a few years back, I'm going to discuss Mister Novick one last time!

Again, sorry if I'm repeating myself, but I can't help it: I really like Irv Novick's Batman. Years ago, I mentioned that, while the likes of Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez tend to be regarded as the definitive 1970s Batman artists, it is to Irv Novick that I believe that honor should belong. And while Adams drew a relatively few Bat-stories in all, Aparo and Garcia-Lopez turned in many more pages featuring the Darknight Detective. Yet it was Novick who was there through all of it. He may have taken some issues off here and there, even occasionally for fairly long stretches -- but even taking that time off into account, he was a mainstay on Batman during the seventies and into the early eighties (like I said above, he drew BATMAN #217 where Bruce, Dick, and Alfred moved out of Wayne Manor, and here he is a dozen years later drawing issue 341 too!), working at various points with nearly every writer who worked regularly on a Bat-comic during that time -- Frank Robbins, Denny O'Neil, Len Wein, and more. It's hard to believe, but Novick actually drew more Ra's al Ghul stories than did Neal Adams!

Look -- I'll admit that when I visualize Batman, I do tend to see the Adams version in my head more often than not -- specifically that world-famous image of him sprinting across the sand from "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge". But when I think about Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson or Commissioner Gordon or nearly any of Gotham's denizens circa the 1970s, it's pretty much always Novick's versions that come to mind. He was not as slick as Adams, Aparo, or Garcia-Lopez, but his style fit perfectly with Batman and his cast. So hats off to Irv Novick! We've got one last issue with him next week, but I wanted to give him his sendoff now.

This issue also features a Robin backup story, "Night of the Coven" -- written by Gerry Conway, drawn by Trevor von Eden and Mike DeCarlo, lettered by Ben Oda, and colored by Carl Gafford. In it, Dick Grayson leaves the circus to head for Gotham City. He hitches a ride with a passing truck, but finds the vehicle's driver, Sharkey, suspicious. So after parting ways at a truck stop, Dick secretly climbs back on top of the truck and rides along until it stops again. Sharkey dons a hooded robe and meets up with several men -- an apparent satanic cult with plans to sacrifive a teenage girl. Robin knocks out one of the men and spies on the sacrifice ceremony -- but the man comes around, sneaks up behind him, and knocks him out.

Not much to say about this one other than that it has a pretty creepy vibe, taking place almost entirely at night. I have a vague recollection of another Robin backup story, back in the seventies, by a different creative team, but which also spotlighted the Teen Wonder taking on some kind of cult. I may be misremembering since it's been well over a decade since I read that story -- but if my recollection isn't wrong, then I guess fighting cults was just kind of Robin's thing for a while!