DETECTIVE COMICS #513

"...IS BETTER THAN NONE!"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Frank Chiaramonte
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: Batman has been missing for a week, and Robin and Alfred are concerned. Unknown to them, the Caped Crusader is prisoner of Two-Face, who has been flipping his coin every day, hoping it will let him execute Batman. But so far, the hero has been saved by each flip. After his daily coin toss, Two-Face assembles his gang and takes them out to raid the Duo Records office building, leaving his girlfriend Margo behind to watch Batman. Soon, Robin hears a police band call about the attack on the record company and arrives to stop it. As he fights Two-Face, the villain reveals that he has Batman prisoner. This sends Robin into a rage, and he takes out all of Two-Face's men.

But the villain escapes back to his halfway house hideout, where he flips his coin again. The scarred side comes up and Two-Face prepares to excute Batman, but the Masked Manhunter breaks a pipe in his cell, filling the chamber with steam. When Batman emerges from the haze, his face is half-scarred by the steam, like Two-Face. Two-Face flips out and releases Batman, who promptly knocks him out. Robin and the police arrive at the halfway house as Batman emerges. He removes the "scarring" from his face, explainng that he meleted a food service tray and used it to create a scarred appearance to trick Two-Face. With the criminals all rounded up, the Dynamic Duo head home.

Continuity Notes: First off, please note that the titles of the prior chapter and this one form a single phrase: "Half a hero... is better than none!"

Batman's disappearance is not known only to Robin and Alfred; the newspapers have reported on it as well. Which seems odd. Surely, Batman has gone off on missions that lasted a week or more in the past. Does the press just assume every time he's out of sight for a while that he's gone missing?

Vicki Vale shows up and tells Alfred she's concerned that Bruce Wayne is missing, revealing the process that she knows Bruce and Batman are one and the same.

Rupert Thorne's puppet police commissioner, Peter Pauling, has assumed office, and intimates in a statement to ubiquitous reporter Olivia Ortega that he will no longer tolerate the Gotham P.D.'s reliance on Batman. Meanwhile, Thorne meets with Mayor Hill, who is concerned that Batman has gone undercover in an attempt to build a case against Hill. Thorne suggests that if this is the case, Batman must be killed. (He makes it sound so easy!)

A moment later, Thorne sees and hears the ghost of Doctor Hugo Strange, who he had ordered beaten to death during the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers DETECTIVE COMICS run. Thorne saw Strange's ghost then as well, though so did Batman at one point.

Barbara Gordon visits her father in Gotham Park, telling him that he's become a shell of himself since he resigned his post as the police comissioner. Gordon is inclined to agree with her assessment (though he still has enough dignity to dress in his suit for a walk in the park, which I find highly amusing).

On the story's final page, Bruce says that he did a lot of thinking while imprisoned in Two-Face's cell, and decided that Bruce Wayne is too "accessible" in Gotham City, and it interferes with his ability to function as Batman. To that end, Bruce declares that he's moving his operation back to Wayne Manor. We'll talk about that next week!

My Thoughts: Overall this issue is fine, if a little thin. But I don't want to go into the same complaints I made last week. Suffice it to say that the story is resolved, but the entire affair, outside of the sub-plots, feels too... simple. Like Conway could've done more with this if he were truly interested.

Instead, I will complain about something different! And I don't think it's something I've discussed previously during this run of issues, but forgive me if I'm repeating myself... Two-Face captured Batman with knockout gas in the previous chapter, then emptied (but for some reason did not take) his utility belt. Then he locked him behind some kind of clear barrier (plexiglass?). And that was that. Apparently at no point did he remove Batman's cowl!

Now, I get it. Some villains aren't interested in that sort of thing. Frankly, I don't think the Joker cares one whit who is under Batman's mask, and I doubt he'd ever bother to peek under it if he captured him. A few issues back, Doctor Death knocked out Batman, and presumaly also did not look under his mask. I thought about discussing this issue then, but opted not to. However now, I feel I must speak up. Two-Face absolutely would look under Batman's mask if he found himself in a position to do so. Don't ask me how I know this, but I just do. That's totally something Two-Face would do (he might flip his coin to determine if he should, but he would definitely be interested). And if he did so, he'd bee even more shocked than many other villains, since he was a personal friend of Bruce Wayne!

But I'm getting a little carried away. The point is that you see this a lot in comics -- a masked hero is knocked out for an indeterminate amount of time, but no one looks under their mask. I know it's happened occasionally where someone specifically does try to look under the mask and is stopped -- but you'd think it would occur more often! I believe it was Len Wein who got a really long sub-plot out of the idea that Jonah Jameson might have looked under Spider-Man's mask, and Peter Parker was uncertain whether he actually did! Imagine something similar here, where Batman is constantly wondering if Two-Face, his one-time friend, knows who he really is and is saving the information for a rainy day!