BATMAN #337

"WHERE WALKS A SNOWMAN"
Script Gerry Conway | Plot Assist: Roy Thomas
Pencils: Jose Garcia-Lopez | Inks: Steve Mitchell
Letters: John Costanza | Colors: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano

The Plot: Batman arrives at a sporting good store to help the police apprehend a hoodlum holed up inside. When Batman enters the store, he finds the crook babbling about his friend Jackie. Batman captures the criminal, but also finds Jackie -- frozen solid. Soon, in Commissioner Gordon's office, Batman and Gordon go over the crook's statement: he and Jackie had broken into the store, but Jackie was attacked by a man of snow. Batman leaves police headquarters and returns to Bruce Wayne's penthouse, where a party is in full swing. Among the guests is renowned skiier Klaus Kristin, who arrived while Batman was out, and who Bruce now observes has wet shoes.

The next day, the Snowman breaks into a jewelry store while Batman investigates Kristin's hotel room nearby. He finds and pockets a diary, then leaves when he hears an alarm from the store. But the Snowman has escaped before Batman arrives. Later, Batman and Alfred go through the diary, written by Kristin'a mother, Katrina, in the fifties. It details how she was hiking with friends in the Himalayas and got separated from them. A man found her and took care of her in a cave, and in the darkness they succumbed to their passion together. But the next morning, Katrina saw the man's face by the light of the fire -- he was a yeti. When she was found later on, Katrina was completely insane.

Having deduced Kristin's next destination, Bruce Wayne travels to Austria. He plants the diary in Kristin's room with a note requesting a meeting that night on Summit Peak. When midnight comes, the Snowman attacks Batman on the peak, explaining during their fight that he robs in order to finance his globe-trotting ski trips, since he must remain in the cold whenever he can. Then the brief fight ends, when Batman blinds the Snowman with a flare, and the creature slips and falls off the mountain to his apparent death.