I thought it’d be fun to ring in the holidays with a vintage Batman comic book. I mean what normal solid minded, completely stable genius individual wouldn’t?
This particular issue, dated February 1973, actually covers Christmas Eve and New Years! For a Batman comic, the plot is a little bit more convoluted and definitely more complex than your typical Denny O’Neill written (with Irv Novick art) story, and that’s pretty satisfying.
It starts with a slickly cool Noirish opening.
Check out O’Neill’s writing:
"Somewhere, this bleak Christmas Eve, people are celebrating....singing and laughing and filling their nostrils with sweet scents of pine and punch...
But here, on a lonely hillside, there is no merriment...! No, here there is only wind as sharp as a blade and endless swirls of cruel snow and the struggle of three desperate individuals to reach distant lights...
...and, a mile away, on the far side of the rise, a fourth figure breasts the storm, his garments stark against the whiteness, the face beneath his mask grim...
The Batman."
Look out, Cornell Woolrich....
We have a Christmas Eve intervention by the world‘s greatest detective, saving a family from murder by a conspiratorial asshole, and with the aid of a Christmas Eve star no less! Very touching indeed.
Then it swings into a second portion which deals with December 31st, where one of the individuals involved in the horror story opening is the spark plug that starts a narrative to drop nerve gas on the city of Gotham as the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.
It goes without saying that this is done with very little gratuitous violence, but a whole lot of bat action and detective work, not just from our Caped Crusader, but also by Alfred the butler and the boy wonder, Robin. Also, of course, it has Bruce Wayne’s alter ego saving the day. This was a fun read; pretty cool stuff, very snappy vintage fun.
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