Category: Batman

Batman #1 (Spring 1940), Part 4

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“The Joker Returns”

The Joker is back! Already! According to the captions, it’s been literally TWO DAYS. I am choosing to believe that in the intervening time Batman has both slain the poor monster men AND gotten horny for Catwoman. He’s a Busy Guy.

It is essentially a reprise of the first story. We start with The Joker PO’d to heck because he feels like his Big Juicy Intellect has been insulted by being enjailed. You will recall how Batman had explosive chemicals in his boots. As I promised, The Joker also has explosive chemicals secreted about his person. But he keeps them deep in his craw, in fake molars.

“He’s a very unusual man,” says Bruce, holding his chin in contemplation, “he will return with a vengeance!” The Joker’s hideout in this one is also pretty neat.

False teeth? Yes. False tombstone leading to a secret cemetery laboratory? Yes! Now that’s funereal!

He immediately starts doing the same exact thing he did last time, broadcasting a “message of doom” prophesying the certain death of somebody – this time the police chief himself. How is he getting radio equipment? How does Batman know what frequency to tune into? Quiet you.

We get more corpses “grinning in death” as they die of Joker venom. To kill the police chief he… plants a dart? in his phone? Then he calls him so the dart pokes him in the noggin? There’s a lot of potential points of failure here, but okay, sure! His plots are like little Rube-Goldberg machines.

Then he gets the ole Lust for Jewels and plans to steal “The Cleopatra Necklace” from a museum. Remember how he hid in a suit of armor in the first one? This time it’s a “mummy case.”

The captions continue to describe him as “melancholy” and “saturnine.” Which is neat, but I struggle to read that affect in his behavior and dialogue. He seems more… angry and petty. More temper tantrums than eerie sadness. Also, this is a phenomenal face. This is Squall-face.

Gonna be a prissy little pedant here, but that is not a mace, Joker. Anyway, he ruthlessly tries to chop Batman into pieces. There is a brutality to The Joker, I guess is what I meant before. Melancholy seems to imply stillness, weariness, even resignation. But The Joker just straight up has a lust for death. Only a couple pages in and he’s already killed four people. I get why he made such an impact from his first appearances. It’s not that he’s not cartoonish, but compared to so many of the other rogues we’ve seen so far, he is by far the most directly vicious and sadistic.

Anyway, the encounter leaves Batman dazed on the floor with the just-arrived police about to un-cowl him! The book pauses for a moment to drop a cliffhanger: “Is this the end of the mighty Batman?”

No, once again, of course not. He leaps miraculously to his feet and punches out the cops. Batman is “not quite ready for jail.”

Also, I am now imagining all of Batman’s “Sorry gentlemen”s in a suave transatlantic accent. Reader, I must apologize for not pointing out earlier how often Batman says things like, “Au revoir, gentlemen!” This was important and I was negligent in my duties. This is my canon now, but it is also delightful to imagine him saying all of these things in Bale-voice.

And I did! Love when Batman talks to himself. More of that “If you want to get me… you gotta get me first!” energy.

The Batman! Wattaman! Amazing, incredible. Also look at Batman’s 😮 face.

The book then introduces a “reformer” named Edgar Martin who is fed up with the police sucking at their jobs. But the Joker is like:

He then does his whole you’re going to die at the strike of 10 or whatever thing. This time he somehow has smuggled a pack of cards that is oops, all jokers covered in poison into Martin’s house. The cops in these issues are dumb as hell.

I will not believe that Finger is not straight dunking on them. Nothing suspicious about those cards that nobody knows where they came from. Shouldn’t they expect this by now? Last time they let a guy take a phone call and HE WAS KILLED BY THE PHONE. This is absolute negligence. This whole plot is unhinged. The Joker is leaving A LOT to chance. He is skating by on pure luck.

Those cards had venom on ’em. Batman needs faces like this again. Where else will you see this kind of artistic glory? I ask you. Speaking of museum-worthy faces, Bruce is back smoking pipes with Gordon, talking about crimes like it’s any of his business.

Look how smug he is thinking about being better at police than Gordon.

In case it was not crystal clear by now, villains in the 30s/40s were absolutely out of their mind horny for gems. Most importantly:

Truly we do not deserve these glories we have been gifted to behold.

See, what did I JUST say. I MUST!!!

Also it is important to note that among the great pleasures of early Batman are things like: Batman driving his little car or Batman flying his little plane. But also The Joker reading the newspaper. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Everyone is learning about jewels to steal from the paper. As far as these comics would indicate, the paper is printing nothing but articles about which cool gems rich people have.

Yadda yadda he does the radio thing again. He runs into the police and starts “blazing away.”

He has killed at least eight people so far in this story alone. Anyway, he runs out onto the roof where he encounters the waiting Robin. The Joker punches him off the roof. (By my measure, the most dangerous hazards in the Batman universe are being punched off of buildings or getting blackjacked.) He catches himself on a flagpole and as Joker takes aim at Robin, about to kill him again, Batman steps out of an alley drawing his fire. This thankfully lets Robin plummet onto an extremely convenient awning allowing him to bounce and land on The Joker’s back.

I’m gonna put this next whole page because it’s quip city.

What does it mean to “look like a duece?” You’re the crappiest card in the deck? I guess when a guy makes playing cards his like whole thing this is a pretty bad burn.

“Mind if I try to stop you?” What can I say, dear reader. I merely bask in my delight. Could Cary Grant have played Batman? Can you imagine it? Well, stop, things are getting serious.

Then The Joker stabs himself and we get this wild panel:

THE LAUGH IS ON THE JOKER! LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH!!! The tone veers off a cliff here into something pretty damn disturbing. Also, if this looks familiar, you are right!

I didn’t know at the time that this was a callback to this issue!

These faces are nuts. Also, Batman, what the HELL.

The duo leave his corpse for the police, but, of course, he is not, in fact, dead. He’s mysteriously still alive.

After re-reading this story, I’m actually pretty haunted by it. The Joker’s “death” is pretty terrifying. And his final lying there dead but alive ends the issue on an extremely bizarre supernatural note. It gives The Joker an inhuman cast, almost as if he can’t die. This seems to presage the many times Batman is unable to kill The Joker, from Killing Joke to The Dark Knight Returns to Legends of the Dark Knight. It’s, here, disconnected from his moral code, but the mysterious symbiosis of The Batman and The Joker is already present, as if they are reflections of one another, each unable to kill the other because they could not exist without their reflection.

That’s the overriding sense of this story to me: Batman’s dark mirror and the implication that inversions of him are almost leaping fully formed, from nowhere, into Gotham. It’s The Joker’s sheer brutality that I’m left with. The character fascinates because he is so strange and conflicting – the comic’s most superficially comedic and cartoonish entity is at once its most nihilistic and bloodthirsty. It seems fitting that we don’t know where The Joker came from. He is an emissary of the void.

Weirdly, I can’t say I love these initial stories. Despite what I just said, The Joker’s seething narcissistic pettiness feels repellant. The issue starts with him fuming about having his intellect slighted, for example. But maybe that’s part of the point. It is interesting that The Joker’s death is enabled by Batman willingly throwing himself into potential death (by gunfire) to save Robin. It’s almost as if Batman’s sudden flash of selflessness is what “kills” The Joker.

We’ve entered a whole ‘nother level in this story, I think. The latent psycho-mythology of Gotham is starting to congeal into something tangible. Of course, as a whole, Batman #1 is an absolutely wild tonal mishmash. But the pieces are clicking into place: purple pulp mixes with cartoonish comedy mixing, in turn, with startling violence and the first hints of that semi-oneiric psycho-myth. Monster Men was a dark issue, but, in a way, meta-textually – its darkness lying more in my response to Batman’s violation of the moral code I expected him to follow (based on my familiarity primarily with his future incarnations). This is probably Batman at its most overtly, textually dark, so far. It’s an issue saturated with grinning corpses and meaningless deaths in an almost existential darkness. I’m eager to see what lies ahead.

Oh and right, I almost forgot the very last panel: The, uh, “Golden Rules for ‘Robin’s Regulars’. Which seems to be like… be nice and helpful! But there’s no uniform or actual organization to join. Just be a good little doobie. Above all, follow the guidelines of this cute little acrostic:

Readiness
Obedience
Brotherhood
Industriousness

…

NATIONALISM?

WHAT!

Also, what does it MEAN to “be REGULAR!”

Good digestion? Just… be normal?

Also, why is Robin SCOWLING in the background? Isn’t this his thing?

I almost spit out my drink at NATIONALISM.

I’m at a loss for words, once again. You heard it here first, kids – nationalism is good!

Batman #1 (Spring 1940), Part 3

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“The Cat”

Holy historical importance, Batman #1 is a whizzbang. It is, in retrospect, pretty wild that after only a single year it introduces two characters that will, unbeknownst to its authors at the time I’m sure, remain absolutely central to the Batman universe right to present day. Not to mention its continuing use of Hugo Strange, who though decidedly less famous appears in some form in every continuity all the way to Rebirth.

The Joker’s first appearances in this issue are actually much darker than I imagined they would be. I erroneously assumed, largely out of ignorance of the pre-Crisis era, that the original Joker would lighter in tone than something like The Killing Joke. Maybe I had Cesar Romero in my head? But OG Joker is pretty damn malevolent (“I’ll kill you!”). Jewel theft is a major motivation of a lot of the early rogues. (I’ve heard this attributed to these being written at the very tail end of the Depression.) But The Joker’s MO in these first issues is straight up murder, maybe with a theft involved, but he’s plotting to kill multiple people in the first issue alone. The captions repeatedly describe him as consumed by hatred. His laughter is “funereal.” It renders his name immediately (and darkly) ironic. Maybe he deviates from this portrayal in the Silver Age or maybe his tone changes rapidly in more immediately future issues like Batman himself did with the introduction of Robin – I don’t know! I’ll find out! But, my point is I usually associate that kind of dark tone with Post-Crisis stuff, but here is The Joker trying to kill Robin in his very first appearance, so there’s a continuity in characterization I didn’t expect.

I say all this because Catwoman’s – or rather The Cat’s – introduction is a complete tonal 180 from the preceding two stories. It’s frothy, goofy, comedic. It’s completely nuts to me some of the things that happen in this story. And it features one of Batman’s most iconic single panels (sic). I’m concurrently reading post-Crisis Batman, starting, of course, with Miller’s Year One. (After The Monster Men, I was intrigued to learn that a lot of Golden Age stuff gets a revive in the Year One/Year Two era). But unlike The Joker, compared to her introduction here, Catwoman maybe got the darkest alteration to her character in the P-C books (though she is, importantly, ten thousand times cooler).

Okay, so. We’re on a yacht and an old woman has some mad expensive jewels. I have so many favorite parts of this story, but first, I enjoy that Bruce is at home reading the paper aloud, possibly just to himself. Second, why is Mrs. Travers bringing her 500,000 dollar necklace on board? Third, why is this printed in the paper? Why is this news! Oh, and there’s gonna be a masquerade party. How fun for us!

Anyway, Bruce thinks everyone’s gonna be there. But he has “another job” to do, so he decides to send Robin in by himself. Somehow he is hired as a steward on board the boat. Or he’s posing as one? But in any case, the other stewards seem to have accepted him as one of their own. There’s a bunch of people in Mrs. Travers orbit: her skeevy nephew, who has brought an old woman named MISS PEGGS he met while helping her walk with a bad ankle on board with him (NOT SUSPICIOUS), and her doctor? Who she apparently lends money to all the time because he keeps blowing it on the stock market? Anyway, they’re all lookin’ to get their grubby mitts on her necklace and/or cash.

We stan a janky king.

Robin searches his snoot for clues as to what might go down. Thankfully the skeevy nephew gets things started by suspiciously chucking a crumbled up note overboard, but “by a queer quirk of fate” the wind throws it back on board. Duder didn’t even make sure it hit the water. More confusingly, he was JUST talking to the old woman (who is, spoilers, The Cat in disguise) in the prior scenes. Why couldn’t they have briefly talked about this in person? Why did they need a mysterious note? BECAUSE.

The skeevy nephew is in cahoots with The Cat. Robin rushes to Mrs. Travers’ cabin but he’s too late! The necklace has been stolen!

You can tell Mrs. Travers is distressed because she too looks janky. Don’t worry, the coast guard shows up. They’ll help find the thief.

JUST KIDDING IT’S CRIMINALS! Then Mrs. Travers completely loses her gourd. I imagine her saying this with her mouth closed like a ventriloquist.

Every single face in this issue is unhinged. A slow madness is taking over everyone on board.

A gangster pulls out his gun and is about to start blastin’ when Dick leaps into action.

I think I’ll change its appearance, he says, LIKE AN ALIEN.

“Get that kid!” “If you want to get me you’ll have to get me first!”

BAD QUIPS BAD QUIPS. My treasures.

Batman then shows up because his other crime didn’t pan out. They lasso all the thugs. And then Batman? does? THIS?

BATMAN WHAT. Absolutely adore how much this issue loses its mind. He immediately risks Robin’s life for the sake of this fourth wall break. But, Robin takes on the four thugs and beats the bejesus out of them, so no harm, no foul (I GUESS). Then he TSK TSKs AT THE CAMERA (?) like he’s on The Office before turning directly to YOU! the reader:

Batman you are being quite bold asking us to ignore how you machine gunned a bunch of people down IN THIS VERY ISSUE.

Anyway, let’s forget all that. TIME FOR A MASQUERADE PARTY! WOO HOO! Goody goody! Goo!

Batman goes as himself and wins the prize! (Show off.) He returns all the stolen jewels. Hooray for rich people getting their gems back! Something we are all very concerned about.

But then the fire alarm goes off! And he notices… something peculiar.

Old Miss Peggs’ got some GAMS on her. They capture her and scooby doob her disguise, because the gams hepped Bruce to the fact that she is actually! THE CAT!

And then, as he removes the last vestiges of her disguise – her makeup – we are treated to one of the most unforgettable panels in all of Batman history.

What can I say? What words are appropriate in response to what we have just witnessed. Only these:

WHAT NEVER SEEN A PRETTY GIRL BEFORE??? The Cat’s face is only marginally less unhinged than prior faces. The Cat invites The Bat to join her in a life of crime. But alas, he cannot, despite how tempting it would be to do jewel heists with a hot babe.

Batman then takes The Cat on their little boat back to the mainland. The Cat understandably asks why Batman had to personally take her to the police. HE’S GOT HIS REASONS! SHUT UP!

The reasons? HORNY.

I cannot tell you how much I adore Batman going like, “Hmm.. nice night isn’t it, Robin? Doot dee doot dee doot.”

I am once again at a loss for words. This issue ends with Batman hornily daydreaming about Catwoman after letting her escape on purpose. Only ONE THING will come between Batman and his pursuit of justice: leggy dames.

ALSO, as Batman helpfully reminds us, HE IS ALREADY ENGAGED TO JULIE.

Tsk, tsk, Batman. “Hmm…” is right.

That’s it. That’s the story! Bat-boner to speed. I guess Frederic Wertham didn’t read this issue, which surely would have reassured him of Batman’s heterosexuality.

I thought it was really weird and out of character when Batman and Catwoman boned on a rooftop early on post-Flashpoint. And then I was surprised to see them doing kissing all the way back in Year One’s Catwoman: Her Sister’s Keeper. (Miller’s Year One, to which the aforementioned is a direct companion piece, seems notedly un-horny by comparison.) But little did I know this goes all the way to the top.

We actually don’t get a lot of Catwoman in this issue. Most of her panel-time consists of the aforementioned scooby-doobing and being threatened with Papa’s spanks. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, there is a strange and unfortunate kind of continuity between this Catwoman’s introduction and Miller’s re-imagining. Both are subject to terrible misogyny. Only this time, it’s Batman doing it. Who Catwoman is as, like, a human person remains to be seen as our quest continues.

Batman #1 (Spring 1940), Part 2

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Spring has sprung and I am called forth once more from the void to write my silly little Batman blog that no one will ever read. And yet, how can I read ancient Batman comics and not share all of the little treasures inside in hopes of some future traveler one day finding them and doing a little chuckle. A little “hehe,” if I’m bold, maybe even a “haha.” Let alone, a “wow, neat.” But I’m getting too big for my Bat-Britches.

There’s three more whole stories in here to write about. But I’m just gonna give you the best, most unhinged bits.

Story 2: Professor Hugo Strange and the Monsters

Hugo Strange is breaking out of the prison he was just put into a few issues ago. He then breaks into an “insane asylum” and frees all the “nuts.” You can tell they are both excited and cRaZy because they say things like, “Goody! Goody!” and “Oh, goo!” But don’t be fooled, the events which follow are neither goody goody nor goo.

Not long after the break-out at the insane asylum, fifteen-foot tall monsters begin terrorizing the city.

Wha! Huh? Where did these monsters come from, you cry, astonished. Certainly Hugo Strange couldn’t be responsible! Well, Batman has a Bat-Hunch that he is, so he does the thing we all love: flies around in his little plane and finds Strange’s hideout.

Wait-a-second, you say, interrupting me AGAIN. I don’t remember there being a MACHINE GUN mounted to the Bat-Gyro. Yeah, neither do I, but it’s probably nothing and I wouldn’t worry about it at all.

So, Batman lands, approaches the house and goes, “This is probably a trap, but I gotta risk it.” He is, predictably, immediately entrapped.

First of all I love Batman saying, “Er… Good Evening, Gentleman,” like a stand-up comic in front of a tough crowd. What a sassy little queen.

And would you believe it? His Bat-Hunch was right! It turns out that Hugo Strange “discovered an extract that speeds up the growth glands” and he used it on all of the escaped “lunatics” he broke out of the asylum. The serum apparently “distorts the body but also the brain.” I don’t know what that means, but neither does Hugo – “Soon he is a MONSTER!” he cries.

I also just need to point out that at some point in the chaos, Strange made his “monsters” not only gigantic fifteen-foot tall clothes and coats but also giant hats, as we saw earlier. That’s how you know you’re dealing with a supervillain. Were these massive hats necessary? If you’re even asking that question, you’re just not seeing the aesthetic vision here and I don’t know what to tell you.

Anyway, Strange injects Bruce with the serum, giving him eighteen hours before it takes fatal effect! That’s a decent amount of ti-

Batman actually gets hit in the face this time, so it’s not technically a blackjacking. But the tradition of Bat-Head Trauma continues apace.

Don’t worry, Batman had explosives in the heels of his boots and after almost eighteen hours he woke up from his semi-coma and exploded his way out of his cell. The Joker will do this two stories later, except he puts his portable explosive chemicals in his teeth.

So far, there’s a lot going on in this issue. Most importantly, we’re not dealing with… an especially sensitive treatment of mental illness in this story. Certainly, the most horrific aspect of this issue is Strange using a vulnerable and marginalized population as experimental test subjects and disposable zombie-like crime slaves. But don’t worry, surely Batman will find a cure to save himself and reverse the terrible afflictions Strange has visited upon his unwitting victims/accomplices, right? Certainly, the script in its final resolution will reveal Strange’s dehumanization of the mentally ill as a prime example of the evil Batman is fighting against, right? RIGHT?

Well, hold your understandably concerned horses for a minute. First, Batman’s gloves disappear and he punches Strange off a cliff, to what we can only assume is his certain death. Making me nervous again, Batman.

The “monsters” show up. Batman uses a giant stick to confuse them and they start fighting each other. With valuable time bought by this distraction, he has time to do some last-minute, high-stress science.

Soon, everyone will be safe! Right???

NO! Of course not! They killed each other! Exactly as Batman “hoped!”

They are now dead.

Batman gets into his little plane to chase down the remaining monsters, being transported by thugs in trucks to the sites of their future intended crimes. How will Batman stop them? Uhhh, just watch for yourself.

Yeah.

Batman is off the fuckin goop in this issue. We had just gotten a few issues where Batman seemed to stop killing. And here he is machine-gunning people down, HANGING THEM from his plane, and gassing them to death. It is possible that this could be explained by the fact that this issue was originally intended to be released earlier as DC #38, before Robin’s introduction (he is noticeably absent here). When Robin appears things start to lighten a little bit.

I think one of the most fascinating parts of early Batman is the way it borrows from the movies. Batman himself must be at least partially pulled from Roland West’s The Bat and The Bat Whispers. The Joker’s design famously references Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs. And we’ll see this most overtly in the first Clayface story in DC #40. Here, the last monster’s death scene clearly evokes King Kong from 1933. And Hugo Strange’s “monster men” recall any number of 30s horror film tropes: hypnotism, zombies, killer apes. But Strange’s “speed up the glands” speech most sounds like, to me, Dr. Moreau’s description of his scientific project in The Island of Lost Souls from 1931. In that movie, Moreau has found a way to accelerate evolution, turning animals into human-like creatures. The effect in this issue is kind of the reverse, though – which, in turn, echoes the many movies that deal with the “reversion” of men into beasts, like Werewolf of London or the various Jekyll and Hyde movies.

But, in Island of Lost Souls, one of the most striking scenes is when Moreau calls upon his creatures to speak “The Law,” a series of commandments, such as “do not shed blood.” Each law is answered with the creatures shouting in unison, “Are we not men?” Embedded in the movie is an understanding that these creatures are the mad scientist’s victims. What at first, for Moreau, is a means of control becomes a cry for their humanity to be recognized. And Kong’s death scene is no less tragic. It’s characteristic of 30s horror to depict the tragedy in its monsters. Even the worst “monsters” are often depicted with a kind of tragic empathy.

This issue borrows a lot from the movies but it has no room for the weightier existential tragedy it should invoke. The subjectivity of the “lunatic” who is physically and psychologically “distorted,” which we might expect to find in even a then contemporary film, is completely absent here. So, ultimately, we have an issue where Batman openly acknowledges that actually some people are too far gone and all we can do is kill them – they might even be “better off that way.” For both Batman and Strange, the marginalized end up disposable or instrumental. Which is totally upsetting. It’s also the the most extreme example of Batman before his “no guns, no killing” code so far. As over the top as this story is, it’s also maybe the bleakest one I’ve read yet.

Apparently, Bill Finger agrees, specifically regretting this story and acknowledging that Batman could have resolved things without killing. The “no killing” rule, from what I gather, emerges much sooner than I anticipated, being stated overtly in Batman #4. Batman’s reputation in some circles for being a vigilante who beats up the vulnerable is, unfortunately, entirely deserved in an issue like this. But a refusal to kill anyone for any reason radically alters the moral universe in which Batman operates. That Polygon article pulls these panels from Legends of the Dark Knight Annual #1:

It is this belief in the sacredness of human life that defines Batman for me. It doesn’t seem like any of this mattered to Bob Kane. But it did to Finger. Without this aspect of his character, Batman has no human or moral center. He’s just a vigilante, at best no different from those he fights, at worst, worse because he has a choice to do otherwise. If you believe that every life is sacred, you can at least believe in the possibility of redemption, you can at least have a genuine kind of hope that things can change for the better.

Someday, I’ll read the 2006 “Batman and the Monster Men” to see how this is handled in the Year One era. But for now, I’m interested to see where any flickers of that compassion will appear in future issues, any peek into the interiority of the victimized, any identification with those who do evil. At his best, Batman’s character grapples with his own contradictions. In his ultimate refusal to dehumanize others, I imagine, lies a fundamental recognition that in some essential way he is both Joe Chill and Joe Chill’s victim at once. But there’s 80 years of continuity that explore this a thousand ways back and front, the surface of which I can barely begin to scrape in a few words here.

For now, I will lighten these sombre notes with my favorite part of every post, the weirdest little Batmans in this issue:

Batman #1 (Spring 1940)

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We’re finally here! Batman’s popularity has earned him his own dedicated magazine, a quarterly with its first issue released in Spring 1940. Rather than the standard single 12 page story in Detective Comics, the quarterly contains four 12 pagers. Holy page count! And #1 is a real, dare I say it, whizzbang. It contains the debuts of The Joker and “The Cat”, along with the return of Hugo Strange.

The first Batman is nonetheless very much a study in contradictions and reflects the still-forming identity and personality of the character. As much as I goof on them, the pre-Robin issues of Detective Comics really are something special to me. They have a fundamentally lonely quality to them and flashes of a deep nightside atmosphere, even a grimness to them that I find endlessly fascinating. Batman is himself quieter, more serious, more solitary. They are flush with fullmoons and eerie skies, moments of being transfixed in night.

Robin brings a welcome levity, but it would be wrong to say nothing is lost with his addition. And this early version, though extremely rough around the edges, is compelling to me for that deep in the night quality. It will be a long time before that Batman is fully revisited in the comics. Though of course, the solitary Batman is, post Frank Miller, by the far the most familiar to most people today, if we judge by Batman’s portrayals in film, at least, from which Robin has been absent for several decades.

Whatever this dark quality is, it is present almost more in the gestalt impression of the first dozen or so issues than any particular moment. It’s in Bruce’s abstract geometric designs still in black (not fully blue), the repeated images of him emerging from the corner of panels like a ghost, the woodcut like art with its dense hatching, the amateur quality of the art, its willingness to pause wordlessly on certain images.

Even the characteristic “grumpy kitty” version of Batman starts to fade after issue #38. Part of the appeal of grumpy kitty Batman is his communication by expression alone and in the stylization of his early design. This panel sums up this early version for me. When I think of Golden Age Batman, it is this specific image that jumps most readily to my mind. This is my most beloved Batman.

As we have seen, Batman has started quipping consistently and he talks aloud to himself more frequently. This necessarily decreases a bit of the mysterious opacity of early Batman and makes him feel more like a jolly prankster than a tortured vigilante. Charming cat-grumpiness has been replaced by a dad-like sass. By the end of The Cat story, the character is almost completely unrecognizable from what came before up to this point. That story is strangely light with bewildering fourth wall breaks and a sitcom style ending. But you will find it sat up against Batman’s most overtly brutal behavior so far in The Monster Men, and a post-Robin continuation of the darker side of Batman in The Joker stories. The Cat feels much more like 60s camp Batman, while The Joker stories retain aspects of the old school 30s pulp darkness.

On top of that, the art varies wildly throughout the issue. At times I felt like I was reading it in a gas leak with its strange figures and distorted and melting faces. (Admittedly, this could be related to the recolored versions I’m reading on DC Infinite.) I haven’t analyzed this statistically, but the visual density of many panels seems to have decreased as well. This issue feels much more visually sparse than ever before, with more backgroundless panels filled with just a single color. Compare the panels below, for example:

Panels from Detective Comics #30
Panels from Batman #1

This can feel dislocating, as if the action sometimes floats in no space, and also makes the overall visual brighter and less “gothic”. I have to imagine this was a consequence of the increased volume of art demanded, but the impact feels obvious. Coupled with the increased volume of text, Batman #1 feels somehow fuller and emptier, less likely to pause for atmospheric effect and less likely to let an image speak for itself. (You can also note the development of Batman’s costume in a single year: gone are the long pointed ears, tinier gloves, geometric pointed and all black cape.)

All this is to say nothing of some of the truly unhinged choices made in this issue, which must be experienced firsthand, which I’ll comment on in my notes to the individual stories as they’ll deserve their own highlight.

The issue begins with a reprint of Batman’s origin story from issue #33, but with this bright yellow header replacing the opening panels of “The Dirigible of Doom.”

Story 1: “THE JOKER”

The first appearance of The Joker in comics history and he’s a super upsetting looking dude! I think it’s possible he might be bad news!

Part of this story’s joy lies in reading the various descriptions of The Joker, written in prose as purple as The Joker’s iconic suit:

A criminal weaving a web of death about him leaving stricken victims behind wearing a ghastly clown’s grin – the sign of death from THE JOKER!

A toneless voice drones…

In this original incarnation, The Joker is obsessed both with murder and with fancy gems. His M.O. is to announce, over the radio somehow, that he will murder someone rich or famous and steal their coolest gem.

This pipe smoking dork dismisses his wife’s terror by suggesting this broadcast is just a ruse like the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast from two years earlier in 1938.

With adequate warning, the police move to make it impossible for anyone to reach the doomed man. But then, as the hour is struck!

The man chokes to death and dies with this horrible grin on his face, which honestly is maybe the genuinely creepiest thing in any Bat-book up to this point. This is straight up like that early closet scene in the American remake of The Ring.

We then are shown The Joker in his lair which prominently features a tiger skin rug?

A man with a changeless, mask-like face… but for the eyes… burning, hate-filled eyes!

IMO, there’s a lot going on here. First of all and most importantly, in that second to last panel, The Joker looks exactly like a whiskerless Abraham Lincoln. Second, The Joker’s teeth don’t feel human and my intuition is that he has too many. Third, we never learn in this original issue how or why The Joker exists. He simply pops into the universe fully formed. And while there are decades of different takes on his character, OG Joker does feel brimming with a barely contained violence where many modern incarnations give him a kind of poised glee in the midst of chaos.

These panels also exemplify the subtle shift to a less visually dense style (after the establishing ‘shot,’ the backgrounds become single colors with mostly silhouetted decoration) that nonetheless contains a lot of text.

One of my favorite parts of this issue is Batman being like, “shut up, Dick. The time isn’t ripe” with absolutely no further explanation for why he isn’t doing anything. However, this is in the fine sub-tradition of Batman-going-“Hmmm”-ponderously-while-he-smokes. While Bruce enjoys his tobaccky….

Another man is marked for death!

The Joker was absolutely hiding in a suit of armor and dart-gunned this guy to death with (in its first mention) Joker Venom.

And then, arguably, the most iconic image of the original joker. The same one referenced, for example, in the character’s first big scene in Burton’s 1989 Batman:

After letting another murder happen, Bruce arbitrarily decides “the time is ripe” after he hears some news over the “grapevine,” which I’m assuming he patronizingly spoke with the indicated quotation marks.

The Joker has gotten in hot with the mob, angry that he’s horning in on their schtick. So, as he does, The Joker gets proactive and visits the boss gunning for him.

Suddenly a droning deadly voice – a funereal face… with eyes radiating hate

These descriptions are so cool, dang. The captions always mention the droning, monotone quality of his speech, which makes me imagine him less like Mark Hamill and more like Andrew Eldritch.

Batman is such a mess. He shows up, but he’s too loud and he alerts all the guards. The panel even includes Batman going, “Ah fuck.”

He then starts quipping again in a way that really makes me think he’s not taking any of this seriously.

But when The Joker guns down Brute and flees while making the exact same kind of snarky comment that Bruce is making, this juxtaposition becomes suddenly loaded. We’re seeing this Batman’s casual, almost joyful violence suddenly mirrored in a villain with the same attitude but much less compunction about killing.

So, right from his original appearance, The Joker functions as a kind of mirror image of Batman, giving the book its first, unexpected, mythic-psychological dimension and implicit interrogation of its hero. How different is Batman from The Joker (especially keeping in mind that this early Batman has killed someone or let someone die in most issues)? Is it merely a difference of degree? Where did he come from? His originlessness is actually one of his creepiest components. It’s like reflections of Batman congeal and take shape in Gotham’s shadows.

The Joker speeds away in his car and Batman pursues, delivering by far his best-worst quip so far. An absolute all-timer:

The best part is 1940 actually was a leap year!

We then get this panel, which is maybe the most overt example of how aesthetically stark the book can get. This could be a feature or a bug depending on your preferences though!

The Joker spends most of the second half of the issue in an increasingly murderous rage, frequently shouting, “I’LL KILL YOU!” And he bests Bruce in single combat, which may be the first time someone has just straight up beat the shit out of Batman without sneakily blackjacking him from behind.

Bruce crawls out of the river, expounding on the same theme, with some art that has a little of that old Bob Kane can’t really draw that well charm.

Cut to The Joker’s third murder. This time he is somehow posing as the police officer in charge of watching the doomed man. And we get this horrifying image.

I should not get you twisted in suggesting this issue’s aesthetic emptiness. We are still treated to gorgeous panels like this, as Robin follows The Joker to his little house, where is he promptly blackjacked.

Some traditions MUST BE KEPT.

GRUMPY KITTY BATMAN RETURNS!
These fews pages really deliver the 30s Batman goods: creepy house, head trauma, and…

CUTE CORNER GHOST BATMAN!

Debuting his new gizmo: an infrared flashlight that shows footprints from the chemicals he puts on his and Robin’s boots? Okay, sure!

Right from his first appearance, The Joker is seconds away from murdering a child. Or as the book calls it, “having his little joke.” Jesus. Batman drama queens his way into the room. Robin seriously just went in the front door, but okay, Batman. I guess to be fair to Batman, going in the front door did lead directly to a blackjacking.

Batman actually hits with a good quip this time as he punches out Mistah J. This sends The Joker flying into a table full of chemicals which end up gassing the room. The Joker is immune to his own poison because he injects himself with antidote.

Batman makes this amazing face.

The Batman Who Laughs started all the way back here! Pretty freaky to be quite honest with you!

How will Batman get out of it you wonder??? What incredible act of intellect, of will, or derring-do will save him?

I don’t know he just gets better.

Then we get this iconic running at the camera panel, famous from the opening of the 60s TV show.

The duo chase The Joker to some rooftops, as he opens fire on Batman while screaming again about killing him.

Also, no shade to Bill Finger, but a real: tell me you don’t know how a bullet-proof vest works without telling me you don’t know how a bullet-proof vest works. Or maybe Batman is just that FRICKING tough.

The Joker has a completely manic frenzied violence to him that seethes. It makes the laughter seem more like an affectation and leans into depicting what the captions have described: someone overflowing with rage and hatred.

Robin gets his own card-related quip in this one too. And honestly, maybe it’s because Bruce never shuts up, but I’m actually starting to like Robin more than Batman. I love this spunky little nerd. Plus, he gives the book Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys energy, which is close to my heart.

Then in a significant moment, Batman hauls The Joker back to safety. While he had let Hugo Strange live in an earlier issue, this goes the farthest towards his eventual “no killing” rule and reflects the man-encounters-his-shadow metaphysic that will deepen in years to come.

And that’s that. The Joker’s in prison! He will literally be back at the end of this issue, which is a bit of anti-climax TBH. I normally will not reproduce quite so much of a story, but this one felt not only iconic and significant, but indicative of Batman’s character caught in flux.

Next: The Return of Hugo Strange and his Monster Men!

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