Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

... the Batman!
(... admit it... this one was the scariest pic yet...)

All right...all right. No point in screaming yourselves hoarse. I solemnly promise never, ever to do that again.

Okay admittedly, this one is pretty gosh-darned ridiculous...

but, what can I tell you? Sometimes "silly" can work -- even with a character as straightlaced and unrelenting (when handled properly, anyway) as Gotham's resident gargoyle.

This next one is a minor masterwork from the able pen of Neal Adams, esq. -- i.e., One of the Three Greatest "Bat"-Artists EverEverEver. Note how effectively it works, even with the Batman functioning as a "lesser" character within the larger cover dynamic.
... which is scarcely the same thing (he added, hurriedly) as stating that he couldn't draw the Batman at all... as this staring-in-bug-eyed- amazement rendition directly below makes manifestly plain.

This single image of the Batman proved so overwhelmingly popular with the readership of the 70's, DC went ahead and reprinted it on endless reams of corporate letterhead; promotional materials (both for the Batman himself, and the DC line of comics entire); and various and sundry licensed materials (school notebooks, etc.).

Shows what size dominos you can topple, when you're playing at the very top of your chosen "game."

Incidentally the story between the covers of this particular issue -- the Dennis O'Neil-scripted "At Dawn Dies Mary McGuffin" -- is one of the prototypical "Bat" Stories Done Right. All of the classic elements of the canon are here the Batman as remorseless man-stalker; a "fair play" mystery, in which you're given the same clues as the Batman (and which he'll still decipher before you do... because he's the Batman, you see); and a suitably film noir-ish atmosphere of congealed gloom around the city of Gotham itself.

If you're any sort of "serious" Batman fan, and you don't own this gem...

... you need to remedy that.

The next two covers, on the other hand, are infinitely more interesting than the paint-by-number tales they're so stridently promoting... but are nifty enough, in their own respective rights, to merit inclusion herein:

(Check out the title to the back-up "filler" feature on the cover above, by the way. "I Wake Up Dying!" Obviously, that year's winner of the "Most Unintentionally Hilarious Mickey Spillane Rip-Off" competition.) ;))

Interesting little-known Gotham "trivia" tidbit pulling a gun of any sort on the Batman -- even if it's a howitzer like the one shown on the cover above -- is regarded as being the legal equivalent of a signed suicide note, anywhere within the limits of Gotham City.

Finally the all-time champion "Great Cover Hiding a Really Lousy Story" winner for the 1970's:

The premise starts out winningly enough the Batman hasn't been seen anywhere -- inside Gotham or out -- for nearly aa month. Naturally, the underworld rumor mill cranks into hyperdrive... and the king-daddy rumor of them all is "he's dead, Jim."

Practically every spandexed bad guy on the globe immediately steps forward to claim credit for the "kill." Most of these sillyass claims are, in fact, shown to be demonstrably false in reasonably short storytelling order. ("This guy was rotting in prison at the time he was supposedly making the Bat eat a bullet" ... stuff like that, there.)

However four claimants present accounts of "How I Murdered the Batman During My Summer Vacation" which seem (or so we are told, at any rate) to hang together, in all the most important particulars -- the Joker; the Riddler; the Catwoman; and Lex Luthor (???).

I'm reluctant to spoil the ending of even so shoddily-constructed a "mystery" story as this one -- all four of the ensuing tales contain such glaring implausibilities, you really have to wonder just how gawdawful the accounts of the villains who didn't make the final cut must have been. ("Hmmmmm... the Penguin claims to have 'atomized the Batman with my heat-vision'...")

Still artist Jim Aparo knocked himself out on the cover above; it deserved to serve as shill for a far better tale than it (ultimately) did; and I'm more than happy to offer recognition towards the one party involved in this particular storytelling fiasco who didn't simply take the money and run.

Classy gent, that Mr. Aparo.

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