BATMAN #352

"THE KILLER SKY!"
Plot Gerry Conway | Script: Paul Kupperberg
Artist: Don Newton | Inker: John Calnan
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Carl Gafford | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: In the North Atlantic Ocean, a zeppelin emerges from the fog and uses a tractor beam to steal a military submarine. The next night, Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale are in attendance at a party abaord a cruise ship when the same zeppelin appears and steals a nearby battleship. While Vicki takes photos of the incident, Bruce ducks away and changes to Batman. He snags the airship with a batline, but the vessel's commander, Colonel Blimp, dispatches his henchmen to deal with the Caped Crusader.

The men attack Batman and eventually knock him off their craft, but they're unaware that he has left a tracking devise lodged in the hull. Later, a battered Batman arrives at the Batcave and explains to Alfred and Dick that he fell through a canopy of trees, using the foliage to break his fall. Despite his injuries, Batman insists on following his tracker, and Robin insists on joining him. Soon, the Batmobile drives through the morning light in the New Jersey countryside, in search of Blimp's blimp. But the Dynamic Duo drive over a landmine, which detonates and totals the Batmobile. After escaping this deathtrap, Batman spots his tracking device attached to a nearby tree. Elsewhere, in a long-abandoned zeppelin hangar, Blimp addresses his men with a speech about having killed Batman and making the world pay for what it has done.

Continuity Notes: In the story's opening pages, Batman visits Jim Gordon's hospital room, where the former commissioner is recovering from the beating he received in last week's DETECTIVE COMICS #518. As Batman lurks outside the window, he sees Barbara Gordon and Jason Bard visit Gordon, followed by the arrival of Commissioner Pauling and Officer McClosky, the man who led the beating. Batman enters the room and scares off the corrupt cops, after which Gordon asks the Masked Manhunter for help in exposing Mayor Hill's corruption.

(On a side-note, I feel like Paul Kupperberg's script this issue could've used a bit more input from editor Dick Giordano. In the span of two pages and eleven panels, Batman thinks to himself, "What have they done to you, old friend?" then greets Gordon verbally with "How are you feeling, old friend?", followed two panels later by Gordon saying, "Jason and I've gone as far as we can on this, old friend..." I get it, Paul. They're old friends.)

Shortly after Batman returns to Wayne Manor, Christopher Chance shows up to collect his payment from Alfred. Bruce, playing his "bored playboy" routine to the max, orders Alfred to pay Chance, who declares to Alfred and Dick that the "pompous clown" wasn't worth saving. Thus apparently ends the Human Target sub-plot, which feels like a waste, when over the past couple issues, Chance displayed suspicion that there was more to Wayne Manor than met the eye, and later, Batman implied he planned to confront Chance regarding the latter's impersonation of Bruce Wayne. If neither of those tidbits goes any further (and I strongly suspect they will not), I'll be disappointed!

At the office of Gotham's Picture News, Rupert Thorne berates editor Morton Monroe over his failure to deliver on photos that would prove Batman's secret identity. Vicki shows up as Thorne is leaving and snaps a photo of the crime boss, who the general public believes is still incarcerated at Arkham Asylum. Meanwhile, Monroe realizes he's in too deep with Thorne and takes his own life with a gun, leaving Vicki to find his body seconds later.

My Thoughts: This is a weirdly structured story. It's an issue-length tale, unlike many of the installments to date, clocking in at twenty-three story pages. And all of the above sub-plot material takes place across six of the issue's first nine pages, after which it's all Batman versus Colonel Blimp through to the end.

That said, this is a fun one. Though he has added Robin to the full-time cast, Conway still gives readers a lot of solo Batman time. Sometimes Dick hangs around Wayne Manor or at Gotham U., doing his own thing while Batman fights crime, and other times, as here, Batman has a solo outing early on, then Robin appears to lend a hand for the remainder of the story. I like this approach; it gives us the classic Batman and Robin partnership, but also allows Batman time to operate solo, as had been his regular status quo for well over a decade until Conway brought Dick back to the fold. It reminds me of the way the BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES producers handled their episodes after the Fox network demanded more Robin and the series' title was changed to THE ADVENTURES OF BATMAN AND ROBIN. Even in those episodes, there was frequently time for Batman to have some solo action when Robin was sidelined for various reasons.

Though I still have a hard time reconciling this material, where Robin seems to live full-time at Wayne Manor, with NEW TEEN TITANS, where he pretty clerly seemed appeared to live in Titans' Tower!

I will admit, however, to being shocked by Morton's suicide. I'm probably misremembering, but I can't recall ever seeing such an overt suicide scene in a comic -- he pulls a gun out of his desk, panicked thoughts flashing thought his head, and then we get the "BANG" sound effect and Vicki finds his body. The actual suicide and corpse are not shown, but there's nothing ambiguous about it, as a page later, Vicki tells Bruce exactly what happened. Frankly, I found it all a little troubling for a comic book!

Nonetheless, overall I liked this one, which is something I never thought I'd say about a comic where Batman fights a guy named Colonel Blimp. I look forward to the next installment!