DETECTIVE COMICS #511

"THE 'I' OF THE BEHOLDER"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Frank Chiaramonte
Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: Batman, Robin, and Alfred watch a news broadcast of newly-elected mayor Hamilton Hill's victory party. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a masked man named Mirage uses an illusion-casting gem to rob the Raytona Raceway's box office. Vicki Vale, present to photograph the race, gets some pictures of Mirage's illusions before he escapes. But the next morning, she finds that the pictures show nothing but the raceway.

That night, Batman responds to the bat-signal, and Commissioner Gordon tells him about Mirage's recent crime spree. Word comes in that Mirage has been spotted on Long Island, and Batman leaves to find him. Meanwhile, Dick Grayson is already there as a spectator at a fashion event/jewelry show, and when Mirage appears, Dick changes to Robin -- but is quickly waylaid by Mirage's illusions. Batman arrives a moment later as is quickly defeated as well, allowing Mirage and his henchmen to escape.

Back in the Batcave, Batman devises an earpiece to counteract Mirage's illusions, then he and Robin canvas the city for the villain. Robin eventually returns to the Batcave empty-handed, but Batman finds Mirage robbing an armored car. He attacks and his earpiece works, until one of Mirage's men slugs him and breaks it. But Batman still overcomes Mirage's illusions and easily defeats him.

Continuity Notes: The above summary only accounts for about half this issue's content. There are also sub-plots galore! But before we get to them, there are a few footnotes: first, Batman recalls Arthuer Reeves' campaign was undone by the sham photos he tried to use to unmask Batman in BATMAN #344. That same issue is invoked a few pages later when Bruce recalls Vicki Vale showing up at the Wayne Buidling "day before last." Later, Dick recalls dropping out of Hudson University in DETECTIVE COMICS #495, and then notes that he spent six months with the Hill circus, with a note pointing to BATMAN issues 337 - 341 (specifically the backup stories). Again, still no mention made of the Teen Titans, which just feels really weird. A couple pages later, Bruce talks to Lucius Fox about "the mess Poison Ivy made of [the Wayne Foundation's] books," with yet another note pointing to BATMAN 344.

Bruce and Vicki go on a lunch date, wondering if they might rekindle their romance, but Vicki thinks about an unrevealed ulterior motive, involving Bruce's secret identity.

Dick has returend to college after "finding himself" on the road. He is now attending Gotham University rather than Hudson U., which I suspect is Gerry Conway's way of planting him close to home so he can remain a regular part of the cast. During his first day on campus, Dick (literally) bumps into a beautiful woman named Dala, and asks her out for coffee.

Reeves goes to confront the mystery man who gave him the fakes photos of Batman, and is doubly shockes to learn that A) his "benefactor" is Rupert Thorne, and B) Thorne himself leaked the undoctored photos to torpedo Reeves' campaign.

When Batman meets with Gordon to discuss Mirage, the commissioner reminds him that the newly-elected Mayor Hill had made ousting Gordon from office a prime piller of his campaign.

Bruce finds himself on the verge of exhaustion due to the amount of time he's spending as head of Wayne Enterprises and the Wayne Foundation, plus fighting crime as Batman. He alleviates the issue by resigning as Wayne Enterprises CEO and naming Lucius as his successor. He notably does not resign as Chairman of the Board after explicitly referring to himself as the CEO and Chairman, so I assume he's keeping the latter position. Bruce also notes that he owns fifty-one percent voting stock in Wayne Enterprises, which I found a little surprising. I always figured it was a private company.

More Gotham City geography: it's "across the bridge" from New Jersey and it has an area called... Long Island. I know Gotham has long been a stand-in for New York City, but this is a little too on the nose! Especially when the afore-mentioned Teen Titans operate out of the actual New York City! (Which I maintain, as I noted years ago when looking at the NEW TEEN TITANS issues, was a mistake. The DC Universe is all about fictional cities. It's just plain weird to see them intermingled with real ones.)

My Thoughts: Something has clicked recently, and I think I realize what it is. As of last week's issue of BATMAN, backup stories have been eliminated from both titles (at least for now), and Gerry Conway is writing twenty-seven page stories. And while I've seen many times in the past where an expanded page count can hamper writers unused to that much real estate, it seems as if Conway thrives in such a situation -- which is perhaps not surprising, given his pencant for soap opera-style writing. When you're doing an ongoing superhero comic, there is a delicate balance to be struck between sub-plots and the requisite action/adventure "A" plot. After all, the target audience is ostensibly kids, and, speaking at least for myself, they aren't usually interested in a lot of talking heads. They just want to see their colorful heroes in action.

But when you've got as many pages as Conway has here, then it becomes much easier to balance the action and the soap opera! In these twenty-seven pages, we have about sixteen devoted to the main Mirage plotline (and some of those feature little sub-plot check-ins of their own), leaving eleven pages for the soap opera. That's a ton of room for Conway's sub-plots to breathe -- which results in the cavalvade of sub-plots mentioned above, which results in (for this reader, anyway) an immensely satisfying comic book; easily one of Conway's best so far.

I don't know how long these twenty-seven pagers will last, but I'm in for as many as we can get out of Conway! I see that next week's story is only seventeen pages (two pages fewer than the nineteen Conway was typically running with up to this point), but hopefully that's just an exception. We'll find out soon enough!