BATMAN #356

"THE DOUBLE LIFE OF HUGO STRANGE"
Writer Gerry Conway | Artists: Don Newton & Dick Giordano
Letterer: Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Len Wein

The Plot: Inside Wayne Manor, Hugo Strange dons the costume of Batman as Alfred and Dick Grayson look on. Later, Bruce Wayne leaves a date with Vicki Vale and nearly passes out driving home. He regains his senses to find himself parked in front of Wayne Manor. Bruce goes inside, where Alfred greets him with tea -- but Bruce refuses to drink the tea when he realizes it's drugged. Alfred then tries to stab Bruce, and Bruce knocks him out. Then suddenly, Alfred appears behind Bruce to offer him tea, and when Bruce turns, he realizes the Alfred he just fought is gone.

Later, Vicki arrives at Wayne Manor, where she is greeted by Alfred and Dick, who are concerned that Bruce never came home after leaving their date. Dick changes to Robin and heads out to track Bruce's comlink. Meanwhile, Bruce takes a shower and is attacked in his bathroom by Robin. In the ensuing struggle, Robin is killed and Bruce stumbles out of the bathroom in shock, where he finds Dick in the hallway. Inside the bathroom, a hidden panel swivels around, concealing the "dead" Robin, which is disposed of in the Batcave by Alfred at Strange's order. Upstairs, Duck attacks Bruce, and Bruce throws him down the stairs, where his head deatches, revealing him to be a robot. Bruce descends to the Batcave, where Strange, in his Batman costume, is waiting. He hands Bruce a Batman costume and as soon as Batman is dressed, the two begin to fight.

As they struggle, Robin appears, confused at the sight of two Batmen.. Strange, believing him to be one of his robots, orders Robin to kill Batman -- so Robin punches Strange and then Batman unmasks him. Furious, Strange activates his ersatz Wayne Manor's self-destruct system, and the house explodes. Later, back at the real Wayne Manor, Batman and Robin save Alfred from being killed by a Bruce Wayne robot, then settle in for some tea.

Continuity Notes: Vicki is concerned that Selina Kyle still loves Bruce, then later when she shows up at Wayne Manor looking for him, believes he is out with "someone else" -- presumably Selina.

Bruce notes that it was only a few days ago that he went after the Snowman in DETECTIVE COMICS #522 -- though strangely, he says that he ran out on Vicki, when what actually happened was her cancelling their date due to a meeting, allowing him to leave.

Professor Strange explains how he survived being beaten to death and thrown in the Gotham River by Rupert Thorne's men:

My Thoughts: I can't say exactly what I was expecting from this issue, but I can say that I was hoping for more. The "death" of Hugo Strange was a really good story from the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run, running almost through all of it in one way or another -- and so, in my opinion, deserved a suitably dramatic follow-up. Conway already explained Strange's "ghost" during the fall of Boss Thorne storyline, and we saw Strange at the end of that epic, laughing after Thorne was arrested -- yet I feel like something is missing here; an actual confrontation between Strange and Thorne, or at least Strange giving Batman a fully annotated rundown of his involvement in Thorne's implosion.

But we get none of that here; instead this simply feels like a retread of the Marv Wolfman/Len Wein/Neal Adams classic "The House that Haunted Batman", or perhaps a spin on a prototypical Scarecrow story. It just doesn't feel particularly original; Batman goes through stuff like this all the time (to the point you might expect him to have figured out the truth a bit sooner)!

But! I do need to heap some praise on the artwork here. It's been a while since we last saw Dick Giordano's name in the creative credits of a Batman story, and it's great to have him back. Though the staging and posing are unmistakeably the work of Don Newton, Giordano inks all of it in his signature style, to the point that -- while there has been plenty of great artwork and totally valid interpretations of the Caped Crusader throughout this run -- this is perhaps the most perfect-looking Batman we've seen since Conway came aboard!

Next week -- I guess it's a happy coincidence these posts are all born on Monday, because Batman's next villain is none other than Solomon Grundy!