DETECTIVE COMICS #508

"SECRET OF THE SPHINX SINISTER!"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Dan Adkins
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: Batman enters Selina Kyle's apartment to find it ransacked, and Selina missing. The Darknight Detective brings Selina's cats back to the Batcave, along with a clue that leads him to believe the erstwhile Catwoman was kidnapped by a mummy. Bruce Wayne heads to the Gotham Metropolitan Museum to meet with his friend, Egyptology expert Gregory Griffin -- but Griffin is missing as well, his office in disarray. Bruce and Griffin's assistant, Donaldson, find a secreat passage to an Egyptian-style chamber, where a photo of Selina is hung above an altar. Donaldson translates some hieroglyphics which indicate Griffin believes Selina to be the reincarnation of Kara, Queen of the Sphinx.

Bruce heads to Giza, Egypt, where he confirms that Griffin and Selina recently entered the country. He heads into the desert and stakes out the Sphinx as Batman -- but when he's attacked by a group of jackals, Batman enters the Sphinx and finds Griffin in a burial chamber, now calling himself Khafre, Lord of the Nile. Batman surrenders to Griffin, who reveals his plan to send himself and Selina -- and now Batman as well -- into a deep, deathlike sleep from which they may never emerge. But Batman frees himself and rescues Selina. When Griffin chases them outside, he is attacked by the jackals. The next day, Bruce and Selina meet with an Egyptian policeman, who has found no sign of Griffin other than some scraps of his clothing on the desert sand.

Continuity Notes: The impetus of this story is Bruce trying to reach Selina so they can discuss their relationship -- which some may recall was left in limbo back in BATMAN #335 following the "Lazarus Affair" storyline.

In other news, the mayoral campaign is still going strong, with Bruce driving past an Arthrur Reeves rally on his way to the museum.

During his investigation, Batman tells Alfred that he doesn't believe in "living mummies" -- which feels odd. I have to imagine that in some point during his long history up to this point -- even if as a member of the Justice League of America -- he must have encountered such a creature! (Though he's correct here; despite the clue he finds in Selina's apartment, there is no actual mummy involved in Griffin's scheme.)

My Thoughts: I'm honestly not certain what I make of this one. It's kind of underwhelming, but there's nothing in particular I can point at in order to illustrate that point. It simply feels, for lack of a better term, "phoned in", along the lines of some of Conway's earlier stories before he started playing more seriously with continuity.

Which perhaps -- and forgive me if I'm repeating myself -- reinforces my belief that Conway is at his best with the soap opera material. Don't get me wrong; he's turned out his share of well-conceived, well-written stories since his run began -- more good than bad, to be sure -- but at the same time, I firmly believe that his bread and butter is in the sub-plots. And again, I know I'm covering ground that I've trod before, but I think this concept was best illustrated in Conway's run on WEB OF SPIDER-MAN and SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN in the late eighties. He's said that when he wrote those titles, essentially treating them as one bi-weekly series, he came up with the sub-plots first and then wrote the Spider-action around them. In other words, he treated that run more truly like a soap opera than perhaps anything he'd written before.

And even though it does lead to repetition on my part, I can't help it -- I see this BATMAN/DETECTIVE run as Conway's "prototype" for that later Spidey material. Conway is clearly moving in that direction with his ongoing threads; things like the mayoral race and the return of Rupert Thorne, the (nonetheless weird) Poison Ivy plot, this Catwoman nugget, and other forthcoming material. What's going to be really interesting to me is how far into that later Spider-Man approach Conway gets by the end of his run on Batman!