[Comics]: Batman #6, "Murder on Parole"

Publication date: August/September, 1941. (As of this issue, Batman goes from being published quarterly to being published bi-monthly. I will generally go by the first of the two months in terms of order, unless there is a narrative conflict; hence, the December/January issue will happen in 1941.)
Author: Bob Kane

What a lovely, atmospheric title page. The odd perspective of objects; the moon, wreathed in clouds which blend with the smoke from the ship out in the water... And for once, the colorist has actually colored the sky sort-of night-ish. What's best about it is that the narration box informs us that Batman and Robin are not springing into action; they're just watching, coldly, as one set of criminals prepares to execute another.

It's only after there's been plenty of time for killing--the man with the gun, "Shoulders", even says, "Here it comes!"--that Batman and Robin dive into the fray. Our heroes totally humiliate the criminals by beating the pants off them, a beating accompanied by taunts. My favorite being their opening: as they leap down onto the heads of two of the men, Batman shouts, "Greetings and salutations and such!" and Robin yells "Hello!" Politeness is a virtue, I suppose.

Most of the crooks manage to get away, spraying machine-gun rounds from the car as they do so. A cry of triumph; they've hit Miller, the man they were trying to kill. Miller topples off the pier, and Batman dives in after him to fish him out.

Batman kneels over the wounded man, who tells him he's got a story that needs to come out. "After a little medical treatment," says Batman. ("I've got Band-Aids in the car," he adds. "No thanks," says Miller. "They've got little baaaaats on them," tempts the superhero.)

"I'm dying, Batman. Even my once noble mustache is shrinking before my very nose."

I'd like to point out that this man's story goes on for two whole pages. Pass out, already!

Simplified, here is his story:

"So I was in prison, right? Goin' crazy. I said I'd do anything to get out! Then my cell mate takes me up on it. Er... not in a gay way. He says he can arrange a parole hearing in my favor. Says he gets paid for it by the bosses on the outside. Anyway, the parole board gets me off--not in a gay way--and soon enough I'm breathing fresh air again! I swore I'd go straight, but no sooner have I begun amblin' toward law-abidingness do two friends of the man who got me out of jail walk up and offer me a job. It's a bank job, says the boss they take me to, who I recognize from the parole board. Apparently he's gotten all his henchmen off. Not in a gay way, you understand. They all work off their debt by pulling jobs for him, see? Anyway, I tell him nothin' doin'. I'm playing it straight, taking the narrow path, all that stuff, right, and he hands me a metal case. I take it, look it over, give it back. He says his boys used that very item in the job they just pulled half an hour ago, and now it's got my fingerprints all over it. The boss says one look at that and the police will have me back in jail so fast it'll make my head swim. But I tell 'im, go ahead! Send me back! I'll tell them who you really are! And at that, the boss ordered his men to show me the waterfront..."

"You... you're the boss..." the man choked out. "But not... in a... gay... way..."

He held on for his entire story, and only falls unconscious when he's about to reveal the identity of the bad guy? Ridiculous.

Dammit Batman. One day you'll run out of lampshades. And what then?!

Our heroes drop Miller off at the hospital, but the next day realize that once the criminals know Miller's alive, they'll try and finish what they started. I'm sure that information won't get out, though.

"Patient may have secret knowledge about criminal undertakings. Also, the night watch comes 'round every hour at fifteen past, and if you turn to our style section, we'll show you how to fake a doctor's uniform and security badge on a budget!"

Oh, for heaven's sake. One of these days Batman ought to take on the Fourth Estate.

Anyways, the criminals do, apparently, read the Gotham News, and so just one night after they tried to kill Miller, they sneak into his hospital room to give it another shot (so to speak). They're in for a surprise, however.

"And attached to one end of it, Batman himself!"

There's a brief, frenetic battle (which the narration calls, pleasingly, "an avalanche of fist"), which brings the cops running, and in turn sends both the criminals and the vigilantes packing.

Please let this be Batman's new catch phrase.

Both sets of lawbreakers get away. But Batman declares it's time to go on the offensive. To the end, he decides to break into prison. Although he calls it "going to town" for some strange reason.

The next night, the Batplane hovers over the prison as Batman lowers himself on a rope. He sleeping-gasses the guard and slips inside.

The last step before going to sleep is saying the letter "z" over and over again. It's science fact!

Batman breaks into Slink's cell--Slink being the guy who got Miller out of jail in the first place--abducts his cell-mate, and takes him back to his Batplane, stepping gently over softly snoring guards as he walks.

Johnny Snake-Eyes never thought he'd get out of prison. And he never thought he'd find himself face to face with himself, either. It seemed that his dream of dancing the leads in the classic Broadway show, "Clone Tango", was coming true all at once. But did this new Johnny have the same grace and poise? There was only way to find out.

Disguised as Slink's cellmate, Bruce expresses a desire to get out of jail. Slink obliges with another parole hearing.

Oh man. I hope it's the one who starts every sentence with the word "arrumph". Oh please oh please.

It all goes according to plan, and "Marty" soon finds himself on the outside, and just as quickly, in a meeting with the boss.

YES

That night, "Marty" is out on the heist, and Robin is outside Boss Arrumph's office, to make sure he doesn't try to escape. Meanwhile, the criminals at the heist are suddenly plunged into what must be one of those recurring criminal nightmares, like giving the bank teller your "give me all the money or I start shooting" note and then realizing you forgot your gun, and also your pants:

"oh god it's just as horrible as my subconscious thought it would be"

Also I would like to point out that Batman is apparently even more of a genius with makeup than we thought, considering he totally had his mask on under the make-up.

Yet another fight ensues (man, fights just tend to do that, don't they? ensue. I don't even know what that word means) and Batman is doing well for a while, swinging about from the ceiling, tossing silk onto the bad guys. But it turns out silk is softer than fists, and when more reinforcements come, Batman does the brave thing and dives out a window.

Meanwhile, Robin proves himself to be the worst lookout in the history of people who look out at stuff.

"Yeah! The boss is a huge fan of Robin's!"

"He'll probably want his autograph!"

"The boss is a little weird sometimes, don't you think?"

"Shhh."

The deliberations on the precise time and nature of Robin's execution are delayed indefinitely by Slink, who walks in the door still dressed in convict stripes. Apparently, he finally got tired of helping his cell-mates get paroled, and so he broke out of prison. Bringing, of course, the entire GCPD down on their heads.

That's the duel? What about ten paces at dawn? Man, killing used to be so much more civilized.

Meanwhile meanwhile, a plot-line resurfaces:

Somewhat dazed from what he's been through, Zombie Batman refuses to face the truth: he had been drowned. As he shambles toward town and its criminals, one thought hammers through his mind: braaaaaaaaaaaaains.

By the time he gets there, Batman is interrupting a tense hostage situation. The gangsters threaten to shoot Robin if any cops enter; the cops toss tear gas in, but are afraid to go inside. Since he has numerous skills, including the ability to climb the exteriors of buildings and a talent for going unnoticed, Batman naturally does the only thing he can: walk right in the front door, while loudly announcing his presence.

"Well, why not?" thinks Batman. "I've already died once today. And besides, at the top of those stairs is delicious gangster braaaaaaaaaains."

Batman climbs the stairs all the way to the top. Man, I'll bet he wishes this place had an elevator. Then he gets to the top, and the boss opens the door, preparing to blow the Batman away (not in a gay way).

Really? That was your plan, Batman? Duck and hope that Robin does something? I'm amazed that that worked.

Batman and Boss Arrumph engage in a fist-fight that lasts approximately not as long as this sentence. Then the Boss charges at our hero--

Hey, they do have an elevator!

The boss, however, overestimates, and ends up charging into the elevator shaft with Batman. Batman grabs a cable on the way down; the boss does not. He's arrumphed his last arrumph. And I'm pretty sure the fall ruined the delicious criminal mastermind braaaaaaaains, too. So sad faces all around.

Once again, our story concludes with Bruce illogically summing things up:

You do remember that Miller got shot for trying to reform, right? Hello?

[Comics]: Detective Comics #52, "The Secret of the Jade Box"

Publication date: June 1941
Author: Bob Kane

The title of today's issue suggests two ideas about what form the story will take. First, it will be another uncomfortably-racist Chinatown tale (after this one). Second, it will be a MacGuffin plot. MacGuffins were defined by Alfred Hitchcock as being anything at all, as long as everybody in the story wants it, needs it, or fears it. The details of a MacGuffin are completely unimportant, so long as we buy the notion of its value, and therefore are often very fuzzy. Hitchcock would often use something as vague as "spy plans" and trust that his plot would be properly pushed and pulled along.

Our story begins, then, befittingly, with the transfer of the MacGuffin, here a jade box. It starts off being sold from a man named Achmed to a jade collector named Potter, who plans to sell it to a Mr. Bruce Wayne. Before he can meet with Wayne, however, he meets with death, instead.

Look out, Potter! It's...! It's...what the hell is that, anyway? The Elephant Man? A tentacle monster? A bipedal frog brandishing a vacuum cleaner?

Exit Potter, stage left. Oddly, though, the intruder (whatever it is) doesn't take the jade box; perhaps it took what was inside the secret compartment Potter found in the box shortly before his death. Anyway, the butler finds the body when he shows Bruce into the office; he also inadvertently picks up the jade box. Without any clues at all, the police are, as usual, baffled:

"Yeah, no easy answers here. It'd take some real detective work to crack this case."

"Yep."

"Yep."

"..."

"Want to go get some donuts?"

"Absolutely."

Batman goes back to Thomas, the butler, and asks him questions about the discovery of the body, in order to get him to mention the jade box--naturally, if he were to simply ask for it, Thomas would be able to deduce that Wayne and Batman were one and the same, since Bruce was the only other person who saw the box. And of course we can't have a butler knowing Batman's secret identity. That would just be silly.

Once he obtains the box, Batman finds the same secret compartment that Potter did (jeez, how secret can it be?), and surmises that whatever used to be inside was the killer's true object.

And the race for the jade box.... BEGINS!

What begins now is a period where protagonist (Batman) and antagonist (shadowy Chinese dude) are working each others' back-trails. A group of sneering Chinese caricatures threaten Potter's butler (or ex-butler, depending on your point of view) with a knife until he tells them that Batman took the box and went to talk to Achmed, the curio shop owner who sold Potter the jade box in the first place. Meanwhile, Batman is at Achmed's, learning that "an Oriental" sold Achmed the jade box, and then came around looking for it soon after; when the man learned that the box had been sold, he asked and was given Potter's name and address.

When Batman leaves, however, the two plot lines collide, quite literally.

I maintain that that is an elephant, albeit an elephant with a knife. Hey, it's not his fault. No sane elephant would go unarmed in a district that probably sells his tusks and genitals ground up as brain powders and aphrodisiacs. Don't jump to conclusions, Batman!

Batman's response is that of the consummate bad ass: to walk out from under the awning, literally stepping into the shadow of death, whistling. Then he swings himself up from the bottom of the awning to say hello, Batman style:

Okay, so it's not an elephant. But that's good, because otherwise this would be animal cruelty.

As he lands, Chinese men with guns and knives start coming out of the woodwork, like angry, armed, Asian termites. You know the kind.

Batman basically kicks their asses while holding one hand behind his back, just to be sporting. At one point he's actually singing. Eventually he gets bored, but luckily the law shows up and everybody scatters.

The GCPD, everybody. Let's give the poor bastards a round of applause, shall we?

Over the next few days, a new protection racket springs up in Chinatown, covering "tea shops, chop suey places, laundries," opium dens, sweatshops, 19th century railroads, and any other place you'd expect to find Asians hard at work. Bizarrely, the racket seems to work like this:

Step 1: Show up at the target business with a couple of goons, a bad suit, and a perennial sneer.

Step 2: Offer to sell protection from "danger."

Step 3: If asked, define "danger" with examples of things which, it is heavily implied, your goons will be happy to do to the target business, the business owner, and the owner's close relations.

...now, normally, the next step would be:

Step 4: When the owner refuses to pay, follow through on your threats until they pay, die, or leave.

Here, however, they do something different.

Step 4: When the owner refuses to pay, whisper something in his ear.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he is spitting a bee into the poor man's ear canal. That can be very persuasive.

What is he saying? I am intensely curious. Is it further threats, too explicit for the eyes of little Batman readers? Is he using the wisdom of Confucius or Buddha to ply his case? Is he promising sexual favors, too explicit for the eyes of little Batman readers? Regardless, it appears to work; at least, the payments begin.

It does not, however, keep the threatened business owners from going to their authority figure, unofficial mayor Loo Chung. Arguing that the police cannot help them (see earlier panel), they suggest turning to a man who has helped them before--the Batman! Who, coincidentally, appears, like the devil at the sound of his name.

"For these purposes, we have pooled our resources and purchased an automobile called a 'Delorean'. The way we see it, if you are going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"

Okay, so he's just triggering a historical flashback, but you have to admit, A) Batman in ancient China would be awesome, and B) you know they went there at some point anyway.

According to this dude, Ghengis Khan didn't just rule because he was a ruthless bad-ass with a giant, well-trained army; he also possessed the One Ring, forged by Sauron in the fires of Mount Doom. (I'm paraphrasing.) Not only did the ring turn him invisible, but, when passed down along his lineage, from eldest son to eldest son, the ring also convinced people to give that Khan descendant monetary tribute for no good reason. But then, bravely, one little hobbit managed to destroy the ring--or so it seemed. Now, a new Khan is in town, and he possesses the ring; and so his minions gather tribute in the form of protection money.

Batman promises the committee that he will do whatever it is in his power to stop Khan and his gang, and contented, they make their leave.

"I know I don't have the same relationship with you that I did with Mayor Wong, but perhaps we can bury the hatchet? Ooo, sorry. Word choice."

Batman holds up the jade box. He has literally come here to say, "This thing comes from Asia. So do you know. Surely you know something about it."

But I can't fault him too bad, because not only does the 'Mayor' know of the box, he knows what was in it:

*gasp*

Batman: "I should have known! No good can come of facial hair that pointy!"

I'd like to point out that this is an excellent twist, in terms of narrative expediency. Sure, Batman could have eventually gotten to the bottom of this using detective work, but it's so much faster to have the villain reveal himself mid-plot.

Batman stands up in surprise only to find that he's falling in surprise--falling down through a trap door and a tunnel beneath. (Was Chinatown built on some kind of medieval labyrinth or something? I mean jeez, everybody's got a secret stone fortress underground. You'd think that'd violate the zoning codes or something.)

Look out, Batman! It's a.... shadow.

A scary shadow!

A desperate fight ensues. The beast actually takes two of Batman's punches to the head before giving up, which makes it exactly twice as many as every criminal in Gotham.

Things Batman has hit so far today: Chinese people, Chinese people with knives, Dog

Batman's victory, however, does not go unobserved, and at the ringing of a gong, a bunch of goons are summoned, including a Mongol with a whip. And I know what you're thinking--Batman fighting a retarded guy? Okay, so maybe I was the only thinking that. The point is, we're both wrong. This is a dude from Mongolia, who may or may not have been summoned here from the past via time-traveling Delorean and/or magic ring.

...wow. Um. It might actually have been less offensive for him to fight a retarded person.

This took a sudden turn, somewhere. 'Mayor' (and current Lord of the Ring) Loo Chung enters, gun drawn--

Yes. That has certainly never been tried before.

--and Robin follows, to save Batman by distracting the 'Mayor' in a manner only slightly less offensive than simply shouting out the word "chink" over and over again. Namely, dressing up like and pretending to be a Chinese deity using a costume he probably stole from a child outside on the street.

This is so wrong on so many levels.

Racism, of course, passes from one generation to the next by teaching and by example (and probably via comics, too). It appears that crime-fighting skills are not the only thing Batman has taught his ward.

Batman takes out Chung easily with the whip, and then talks to an old man he finds chained up in the dungeon. The man turns out to be former 'Mayor' Wong's father; Wong owned the ring, and was a Khan, but never used it. Upon his death and Chung's ascension to the seat of unofficial power, he came into possession of the ring, and planned to totally be a dick about it, too. So Wong Sr. hid it in the jade box, which Chung himself sold to Achmed before realizing its contents. And now you know... the rest of the story.

Batman, being pure of heart, will of course be able to destroy the ring without being corrupted. And the nice is that the whole thing will take about twenty minutes. It's easy to get to Mount Doom when you have a Batplane!

So I guess it's a happy ending all around. Except of course for all the dead Chinese people.

--

By the way, if you were wondering whether or not both Wong and Chung being Khans meant that they were related, or that the 'Mayor'ship was hereditary, check this out. Apparently Khan was such a player that today there are roughly 16 million people living with his Y chromosome. Based on this, I assume that the next time we see Batman, he'll be breaking up a counterfeit ring ring.

"Man," he'll say, "why does all the crime happen in this district?"

To which I'll respond, "Forget it, Batman. It's Chinatown."

[Comics]: Detective Comics #51, "The Case of the Mystery Carnival"

Publication date: May 1941
Author: Bob Kane

Why does Batman contain so many stories dealing with circuses, carnivals, and the like? And Joker, after all, is a clown...

I think maybe it has something to do with the idea of play. Specifically, Batman comics seem to associate frivolity with immorality, connected through the idea of lawlessness. It argues that places associated with games, fun, and unfettered freedom (id-spaces, if you'll allow me a little Freud) will often lead to evil acts and wrong decisions, which in Batman's inherently moral universe will inevitably be punished, often by Batman himself. Batman is an agent of order; by virtue of wealth, cleverness, and physical prowess, he is able to keep order in a very chaotic and crime-ridden Gotham City. Interestingly, his alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, pretends to precisely the same kind of frivolity and leisure. As far as I know, Batman is the only major superhero who disguises himself as carrying some of the same underlying motivations as his enemies.

That's the reading I think was intended on the part of the authors: Batman, a supremely ordered (and thus powerful) being, clashes with disorder (lawless criminals often within or inspired by games, play, and id-spaces). You can simplify that to super-ego versus id.

I think there's another reading to be made here, however, one which the authors may or may not have intended. The way I see it, Batman contains within him a lot of disorder as well, both in terms of lawlessness and in terms of play. Batman breaks society's rules on a constant basis (breaking and entering, running from or fighting the police, beating up criminals), and arguably makes immoral choices on a semi-regular basis, from his occasional use of guns to his severe interrogation methods and violent means of capture (or, in the case of the villains, destruction) of those he encounters. At the same time, Batman exults in his lawlessness, making jokes during fights, taunting his opponents, and even treating the whole thing like a game (remember those couple of times when football, metaphorical and actual, played a role recently?).

And then there's the fact that his identity is split. Again, that comes from disorder, not order, and it is actually harmful to him--we've seen it damage two relationships so far. And arguably it is the lack of human connections that leads (or allows) Batman to function, going out night after night to catch criminals motivated by "justice" (underneath, revenge for his murdered parents). If Bruce Wayne had a few more friends and family, he might not need to be Batman. But being Batman keeps him from having those connections.

My reading, then, is that Batman is in his own way just as much a symbol of disorder as the criminals he fights, because of his law-breaking, his violent nature, his divided identity, and his enjoyment of play. It comes down to motivation. Because Batman fights for an ideal (justice) in addition to other, more selfish reasons (buried revenge, fun), he comes off better than the criminals, who act out of greed, arrogance, and fun. Neither side is normal, or lives in normal places; both are elements that society would wish to expunge if it could; and it is not much more than a coincidence that Batman's goals happen to be positive ones. Batman, to this point in time, is the story of a flawed individual fighting other flawed individuals for reasons none of them really understand (or acknowledge). And usually a happy ending results, somehow. To go back to the Freud, we're watching one id (barely held in some sort of check by super-ego) battle totally unrestrained ids.

Complicating all this is the uneasy connection it has to childhood (particularly boyhood), and how it juggles wish-fulfillment (a child wants to be Batman/Robin, who is strong and free) with overt morality (a child should not wish to be the criminals, even though they are strong and free). Freedom exists, I guess, in some places; and the comic would have children, when allowed that freedom, to make good choices, although stories vary as to what their motivation should be (self-serving interest wins out most of the time, given the perennial motto, "crime does not pay"). I just find it odd that a comic which is basically for children would give them, time and again, villains related to places normally associated with childhood joy.

Alright, that's enough long-winded philosophizing out of me. There's a story in here, somewhere, isn't there?

Sure it will.

Actually, funny story--it turns out the mystery of the carnival is how much cotton candy Dick can eat in one afternoon! Ah, good times.

See you next week!

...oh, alright.

Bruce, haven't you been listening to me? Carnivals are Satan's playground!

The two actually have fun for a while, riding roller-coasters and playing the carnival games. What's sad, though, is how they're unable to truly relax and forget their costumed personae:

"You're a funny kid. I'm glad you're my ward. Guess it's a good thing your parents got murdered after all, huh?"

Roller-coasters, ice cream, side-shows... It's a wonderful day at the fair. Dick even tries his hand at that bottle game:

I love Bruce in this panel. The nonchalant whistling indicates, "What, us? Superheroes? Pish," while the chest forward shows how proud he is of Dick's exceptional nature.

Dick ends up throwing one perfect pitch after another, until the carny pleads with him to take a prize and go. As they leave, the man tells Bruce, "He's a regular boy wonder!" Our heroes roll their eyes.

This is actually really nice stuff. It's rare that Bruce and Dick actually get to bond outside of crime-fighting, and this is honestly the most personality either of them have shown in ages. Far away from the madding crowds of gangsters, they can relax and be themselves and have fun. Or, they could, if not for the comic's overwhelming need to play up the dramatic irony of it all. Either way, all good things must come to an end. There is a time for all things: a time for fun, and a time for punching, and in Batman's world, it is usually Fist o'Clock.

After Dick has played enough, they decide to step in on Bruce's friend, Colonel Dawes. Oddly, though, Dawes doesn't seem to recognize Bruce, and quickly gives him the brush-off. Bruce and Dick are discussing this outside when they see Dawes across the way, scratching his left leg.

Bruce: !
Robin: ?

"He lost it in the World War"? It's 1941 already--according to some website, World War I and II were first named such in 1939. Get with the times, Bruce!

By the way, Bruce actually has to explain the implications of the two facts coexisting:

1. Dawes has a false leg.
2. Today, Dawes scratched his leg.

You can almost see the gears struggling to turn in Dick's little head. To be fair, he is hopped up on candy and fun. (This is why Bruce's house is dedicated to cold austerity, and contains no cookies.) I know this is a children's comic, but jeez, there's no need to hit us over the head with it.

The other, larger, why-didn't-you-mention-this-earlier clue is, Bruce recognizes the guy Dawes is hanging out with as small-time crook "Mouse" Docker. Looks like the fun is over.

The boys head back to the car, put on their costumes, and I guess just sit in the car and wait for nightfall. (Seriously.) Seems like they could have at least gone on the roller-coaster some more. Oh well. Anyway, once night falls, they follow "Dawes" around, and eventually into a wax museum, where Scooby Doo-like hijinks ensue:

Look out behind you! It's one of the Three Devils, back from the grave!

After evading the dotty old caretaker (who wanders around talking to his wax statues), B&R find their way to a door leading to a back room (the "expositorium"), where a group of men are having a little get together to tell each other the details of their evil schemes:

"An' then Dave here invests the profits in a managed mutual fund, earning us 8% annual interest thanks to a strong diversification strategy!"

It's not just the carnival revenue that they've stolen; they've created illegal income sources as well, from slot machines to sanctioned pick-pocketing. Before the crooks can discuss their Social Security and PINs, however, Robin accidentally jostles a wax figurine, sending it crashing to the ground. The gangsters rush out, bringing a fight with them:

Oh no! If only they had fought like three tigers! The fools!

One thing that's always bothered me about these comics is how Batman and Robin's fighting prowess vacillates depending on the plot, and usually is directly related to how close the current page is to the end of the issue. This is still early on, so our heroes don't have a chance, even though there are only four or five guys and we've seen them take on dozens without breaking a sweat.

Once subdued, our heroes get tied up and tossed into another room. There, they find the real Colonel Dawes in a drugged sleep. Even though Batman has gotten out of this exact kind of scrape many times before in many different ways, today he is apparently completely foiled. Must be some knot.

"And did I mention he's crazy?"

Of course, the deranged, giggling wax museum curator uses his absurdly long stabbin' knife to cut them free, because he believes them to be part of his "little family" of wax figures, despite the whole "moving and talking" thing.

Next, the dynamic duo decides to split up. Batman grabs the sleeping Dawes and sets out to get him to a doctor; he assigns Robin the task of taking down the gang. Hilariously, Robin fails instantly:

Nice burn. "Look! It's Robin! Quick, get him before he calls somebody who is actually a threat to us!"

Robin runs out of the museum and into a fun-house, with the gangsters in hot pursuit. Inside, the Boy Wonder uses the various rooms, layouts and surfaces to kick their asses with ease. It's interesting in conception but the execution isn't really worth throwing up here.

See, this is a Platonic literalization of the struggle between man and image as it relates to 1940s gangster iconic machismo and--aw, screw it. This is just silly.

I like how Robin is just like, "Welp, I guess my work here is done. Even though they're not apprehended or anything." I prefer to think he knocked off early to go on the roller-coaster again.

Meanwhile, Batman is having some fun of his own:

You're a grown man. You don't need to compete with a 12-year-old. Christ.

Batman hitches a ride on... a ride, over to some more thugs, launching himself at them fist first. He starts throwing punches left and right, taking out Fake Dawes without even looking in his direction. The leader of the gang, Mindy, however, is able to keep him back with a few bullets. Then Mindy tries to make his escape:

"Uh, sure. I'll just hold back this huge non-existent crowd from getting in with you."

What is he actually planning to do here? It's not the roller coaster is going to take him anywhere other than right back where he started. Batman should just make his way to the entrance there and wait for the guy to come back around.

But that would be boring and not dangerous, and well, he's Batman, so he has to do it in the most ridiculous way possible--using the Ferris Wheel to get up to one section of the track, from which he'll jump to another one below.

I think somebody forgot to tell the colorist that this is supposed to be night-time.

Batman's leap is successful, and there ensues a fist-fight aboard the speeding roller coaster cars. Including the worst banter to date, hands down:

Mindy: "Here's where you get yours, Batman!"

Batman: "You mean, you get yours!"

I do like how Bruce punches him so hard that Mindy's about to fly out of the cars, and Batman grabs him and saves him (telling him, "Can't even let death take you away from me," which makes me wonder what this guy did to Batman that was so bad, because usually Batman is content to let his villains fall off of cliffs and things); and then they wait until the cars get back to their starting platform, and then, safely, he punches Mindy out of the cars. With the obligatory pun, of course:

"Mindy, I admit our relationship lately has had its ups and downs. But don't you feel like we've been coasting for a while now? I think it's time to roller on out, don't you? Something something loop the loop."

The ringleader vanquished, it's time for Bruce and Dick to go home.

"Only violence can bring us joy now."

"Only violence, yes."

"Yes."

A bit of a quick wrap-up, don't you think? We never even met Colonel Dawes. I was hoping he'd have some gritty stories from the first World War. Maybe the time he pawned his false leg and spent the money on a German hooker, or something. Something fun for the kids.

Speaking of fun, I'm not sure if this issue stands up to the overall Batman reading I came up with at the beginning there (you remember, it was the group of large paragraphs that you skipped, eyes glazing themselves over like self-frying donuts). Batman and Robin kinda seem to have fun beating up the thugs; but they're taking all the frivolous carnival stuff (rides, fun house, games of skill) and turning them to a serious purpose. And the carnival itself isn't evil; it's more like a place where, due to the lack of rules, a criminal element is able to take over. And the idea that both fun and seriousness can be had in a place like this sits uneasy with me, given how strongly present the notion of their superhero selves were when they were just trying to relax and enjoy themselves.

Maybe it's saying that we get the fun we deserve. Our heroes get a little bit. The criminals get a punch in the face. Makes sense.