"REQUIEM FOR A HERO"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin
Letterer: Shelly Leferman | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin
Letterer: Shelly Leferman | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano
The next day, Bruce Wayne visits the apartment of Kirk and Francine Langstrom and their daughter, Rebecca, in Gotham's Crime Alley neighborhood. Francine explains that Kirk has been consumed by his Man-Bat persona thanks to his hatred of Batman. That night, Batman goes out in search of Man-Bat. He enters the extended network of caverns beneath the Wayne grounds, and eventually finds his quarry. Batman and Man-Bat fight, and Batman slips an antidote into Man-Bat's mouth -- but it fails to change him back to Kirk Langstrom. Instead, Man-Bat kicks Batman away and flies off, leaving the Caped Crusader behind, vowing to find a new cure for his one-time friend.
Continuity Notes: Commissioner Gordon loses his temper with Batman at the hospital, then reveals why: he received a threatning note in the morning's mail.
The mystery man released from Arkham Asylum is at last revealed to be none other than former city councilman and political "Boss" Rupert Thorne, who we now find residing in a swanky townhouse. Thorne takes his morning paper, to find that Hamilton Hill is leading the polls in the mayoral race. Perturbed over this, Thorne demands an immediate meeting with Hill's rival, Arthur Reeves, to discuss strategy. A moment later, Thorne sees the ghost of Hugo Strange, who longtime readers of the blog may recall was the reason Thorne went to Arkham Asylum in the first place.
My Thoughts: I'm generally not a big fan of Man-Bat. I think I spoke to this when I looked at all those 1970s Batman comics a few years back -- I mean, he's fine once in a while, in small doses (which to be fair, is what this is), but I tend to simply prefer Kirk Langstrom as Batman's "science advisor". I believe at the time, I compared Man-Bat with the Lizard, where the latter's alter ego of Curt Conners was frequently shown over the years as Spider-Man's science guy, without inevitably turning into the Lizard every time he appeared.
So any Man-Bat story is going to need to work a little harder than, say, a Riddler or a Pengin tale to win me over. And unfortunately, this one doesn't quite get there. It's fine; I just feel like we've seen it too many times to count already -- Langstrom turns into Man-Bat, Batman goes searching for him in the caverns beneath his estate, and then either A) cures him or B) fails to cure him and vows to do so again the next time they cross paths. I mean, seriously -- Frank Robbins did this story about twelve times (and he only wrote five Man-Bat stories)!*
This issue also features the conclusion to last week's Robin backup, titled "Burn Robin, Burn" -- with art from Trevor von Eden & Frank Chiarmonte and colors by Carl Gafford (other credits the same as above). In this one, the Satanists who clocked Robin last issue are now planning to sacrifice him along with the young woman they had already captured. But Robin gets free, saves the girl, and takes out some of the cultists, then escapes with the girl in the truck belonging to Sharkey, the cult leader who had given him a ride last issue.
*I'm inordinately proud of this joke.
This was the first Batman story, indeed the first super hero comic, that I ever read.
ReplyDeleteI was nine years old and visiting my aunts who brought a copy of Batman Monthly #19 from London Editions Magazines (LEM). This was the near end of an unusual period in British comics when the Marvel super heroes had basically disappeared from newsagents' shelves, with Marvel UK focused on licenced titles with occasional attempts with US super hero reprint titles that either lasted very briefly or specials that didn't lead to anything. Even Spider-Man didn't have a regular title here from early 1987 to mid 1990. At the same time LEM, an imprint of Egmont who did the UK Masters of the Universe comics, launched a line of DC superhero reprints that ultimately lasted from 1988-995 albeit with some relaunches and an inability to get anything beyond Batman and Superman to last. For its first twenty issues Batman Monthly mainly focused on the early 1980s (with a few dips into 1970s Brave and the Bold), with editorial thinking that an audience who only really knew Batman from the 1960s TV series (which was still heavily repeated) would find the post-Crisis stories jarring without a transition (whereas with Superman they began with the post-Crisis relaunch, perhaps because tonally it was closer to the Reeve movies). After the first Keaton movie came out in August 1989 and proved a hit LEM was looking to shift to the post-Crisis stories (although occasionally pre-Crisis tales were also run - Batman has usually been immune to the great DC resets so they weren't too different) and was in the process of wrapping things up.
Issue #19 was a particular good issue to start with, not only being the first printed in the 1990s but also having several features including Batman's post-Crisis Who's Who entry that gave the detail on the character which was especially helpful for a story that briefly references the murder of Thomas & Martha, Bruce's childhood discovery of the caves below Wayne Manor and his later encounter with a bat inspiring him. The story itself is easy to follow without them but it felt like part of a greater tapestry even if it's not the most spectacular piece (though obviously as a first the unoriginality was harder to spot). I guess that issue did something right as here I am all these years later.
DeleteI’m always fascinated by peoples’ first exposure to various kinds of comics — and the absence of such prominent U.S. characters in the U.K. at certain points in time never ceases to amaze me, despite the lack of exposure to and knowledge about British comics here in the States being so profound for decades upon decades.
Thank you, Tim! I love hearing about people's first comics. I honestly have no idea what my first was for certain, but as I've mentioned here before, the first comic I definitely remember owning is AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #245 -- which may be a large factor in just why I love Roger Stern's Spider-Man run, and in particular his Hobgoblin saga, so very much.
DeleteIt's doubly fascinating to me to hear about how overseas publishers would handle these things. The idea of Conway's Batman and Byrne's Superman being published alongside each other, incongruous as it sounds, really appeals to me!
ReplyDelete// and he only wrote five Man-Bat stories //
Wocka wocka!
Yeah, I agree on the disappointing lack of resolution around Man-Bat. Unless a specific arc is clearly being set up it’s just narratively unsatisfying as well as a step backward to an older status quo.
Speaking of which, Robin at Hudson University with occasional forays back to Gotham was his status quo when I started reading. Detective Comics #450, dated Aug. 1975, is nearly as memorable to me for Robin’s back-up (“The Parking-Lot Bandit”) as the lead Batman story (just a little something called “The Cape-&-Cowl Deathtrap”). Another personal-fave issue from shortly thereafter is Batman #279, dated Sept. 1976, where a kind of low-key big deal is made of Dick visiting home and joining Bruce for a Riddler case. Robin was also teaming up with Batgirl in Batman Family and participating in a short-lived Titans revival during this era. Beyond that, Earth-Two’s Robin was popping up in the annual JLA/JSA crossovers, giving a possible glimpse of the direction — or directions, plural, once he was established as more independent in the relaunched All-Star Comics — the Earth-One version’s life might take. (“One Bullet Too Many” from Batman #217 was among the last and most recent stories reprinted in Batman from the ’30s to the ’70s, to boot, providing a grand arc to the character’s real-world and in-universe histories and a bridge from those older adventures to the present.)
All of that being said, Robin’s backups here are hard for me to reconcile with The New Teen Titans simply from a sort-of stylistic perspective, unlike the short-lived Titans revival from a few years earlier. Plus, while all the stuff in the preceding paragraph is a nostalgic sweet spot for me, Dick Grayson maturing over the next decade as I read along with his eventual assumption of the Nightwing identity and introduction a new Robin as Batman’s partner just blew my mind in the best way.
It suddenly occurs to me that Robin in college was sort of my introduction too, at least in comics. I knew him from cartoons and the Adam West series as Bruce Wayne's faithful ward, living at Wayne Manor -- but I think some of the earliest actual DC comics I read were the little packed-in books with the Super Powers Collection action figures -- and in those, Robin was shown as a college student!
DeleteFunny thing is, I think the SUper Powers figures were released in the very same year Dick became Nightwing, and certainly after the character had left college. I think the pack-in comics were sort of going with "iconic" versions of the characters though. Which I guess at that point probably meant the "Teen Wonder" college student version of Robin.