DETECTIVE COMICS #518

"THE MILLIONIARE CONTRACT"
Writers Gerry Conway & Paul Levitz | Artists: Don Newton & Bruce Patterson
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: In the Batcave, Robin, Alfred, and Father Green watch over Batman as he recovers from his vampiric condition. Father Green soon leaves, bringing Dala and the Monk, imprisoned, with him. Alfred and Robin (after changing to Dick Grayson) head up to Wayne Manor, where Dick is startled to find Bruce Wayne enjoying a cocktail with Vicki Vale. Bruce and Vicki leave for a date at Gotham's Crystal Ballroom, and Alfred reveals to Dick that he hired the Human Target to impersonate Bruce Wayne in order to throw off Vicki's suspicion that Bruce is Batman. Elsewhere, Rupert Thorne dispatches Deadshot to kill Bruce Wayne, who he believes to be Batman thanks to photos stolen from Vicki.

In the Batcave, Batman takes a call from a prison official who informs him that Deadshot has escaped. Despite his weakened condition, Batman heads out in the Batmobile to find the villain. He interrogtates Deadshot's weapon manufacturer, Augustino Coppola, and soon catches up with Deadshot outside the Crystal Ballroom. Batman and Deadshot fight, their battle taking them into the ballroom, where "Bruce" and Vicki are dining. Vicki is shocked to see Bruce and Batman in the same place and decides she was wrong about the Caped Crusader's true identity. With some help from "Bruce", Batman defeats and apprehends Deadshot, and departs.

Continuity Notes: When Doctor Loom-- I mean, Father Green leaves with the Vampiri siblings, he drops some very cryptic comments which lead Robin and Alfred to speculate as to how he know so much about them. This is quite intruguing, but so far as I can tell, none of these characters would ever appear again.

Alfred explains to Dick that he hired Christopher Chance, the Human Target, the night Batman was held prisoner by Two-Face -- but there is no footnote referencing the issue.

After sending Deadshot on his mission and kicking his underlings, Mayor Hill and Commissioner Pauling, out of his office, Rupert Thorne again sees the ghost of Hugo Strange, this time reflected in a window.

The issue's sole footnote (in spite of more than one reference to prior issues) comes when Batman recalls fighting Deadshot in DECTECTIVE COMICS #474.

Private investigators Gordon and Bard wander the Gotham streets at night, discussing their meeting with the photographer Squeeze, when they are interrupted by a trio of corrupt cops who have beef with Gordon. The officers knock out Bard, and beat the former commissioner.

Following the fight with Deadshot, Batman talks to "Bruce Wayne" about the "odd chance" that brought him to the Crystal Club, suggesting that he knows who is masquerading as his alter ego (though he still does not know why).

My Thoughts: We're running out of sub-plots! We still have a wrap-up of the Human Target bit coming next week, but for all intents and purposes, the "Vicki has photos she thinks prove that Bruce Wayne is Batman, but those photos have fallen into the hands of Rupert Thorne" storyline is over as of this installment. Likewise, with the conclusion of the Vampiri saga last time, so ends the story of Dick and Dala, which you'll recall began as a sub-plot as well.

Which isn't to say Gerry Conway has nothing more to work with! The above-mentioned Gordon & Bard plot is still running, as is Thorne's repeated sightings of the Hugo Strange apparition. And while the latter was begun a few years earlier by a different writer and has been adopted by Conway, the former is Conway's longest-running sub-plot of his own creation -- if you link all the iterations together, that is. It fascinates me how these things work: shortly into his run, Conway developed the sub-plot of the mayoral race. It consumed much of his first year writing the Batman titles, culminating with Hamilton Hill's election.

From there, that sub-plot morphed into Hill demanding Gordon's resignation and getting it, then Gordon wandering aimlessly for a handful of issues before he linked up with Jason Bard. And now the plot has come full circle, as we see Gordon and Bard investigating potential corruption in the race. Perhaps more than anything else in this run, this reminds me of the soap operas my mother watched when I was a child. Where most comic book sub-plots have a limited run and come to an end -- whether concluding as they lived, in the form of a sub-plot, or coming to a finish as the sub-plot becomes the main plot for an issue or two, true "soap opera" plotlines run for a really long time, evolving as they go in terms of subject matter, characters involved, and more, until they ultimately somehow resolve.

And that's how the saga of the mayoral race reads. In its way, it is the true backbone and throughline of Conway's run. All the rest -- whether it's Batman fighting the villain of the month, Vicki trying to prove his secret identity, or whatever else, comes and goes -- but it's all built around and on top of the race between Hill and Reeves, the election of Hill and appointment of Pauling, and everything that has spun out of all that.

Maybe I'm overselling the importance of this plotline -- certainly, there are issues where it's barely a factor at all -- but that's the way I see it, at least.

(You'll notice I have nothing to say about Deadshot here... that's because he's sort of a non-entity. His purpose is to act as little more than a plot device to facilitate Vicki seeing Bruce and Batman in the same location and therefore tie off that plotline.)