The Super-Sons in "Crown for a New Batman"

Remember the time that Batman died, and a battle broke out as to who would be his successor--a battle that included both Batman's son and his ward, Dick Grayson?

No, not that one. This one:

Fulfilling my theory that everything in comics today is just a variation on something Bob Haney thought up in the 70s, we have World's Finest 228 (a 100-Page Super Spectacular!), featuring the Super-Sons in


A story written by Bob Haney (of course) and drawn by Dick Dillin and Tex Blaisdell (and reprinted in the Saga of the Super Sons trade).

As the story opens, Superman, Bruce Wayne Jr., and Clark Kent Jr. discover that Bruce Wayne has been murdered, apparently while enjoying a pipe and some journaling.

Bruce is clearly killed by a very ornate knife, which should provide some clue as to the identity of his murderer. In addition, Superman gets all CSI up in this place and finds a well-hidden clue:

Clearly, Batman has lost a few steps in his later years. Otherwise, how else do we explain that some fourth-rate killer that left such obvious clues could get the drop on the world's greatest detective?

Word gets out about Bruce Wayne's death, and Alfred even permanently hangs up the Batman costume. As the family gathers to mourn, the subject of Batman's successor comes up:


Dick Grayson arrives back from college to lay claim to the Batman mantle that Bruce Jr. thinks belongs to him.

Wait a minute--Dick's back from college? Exactly how long has he been in school? Didn't he leave for college before Bruce was married and Bruce Jr. born?

Oh, right. Bob Haney.

Bruce Jr. and Dick bury the hatchet long enough to put Bruce in the ground. Then, during the reading of the will, Bruce Jr. and Dick anticipate some closure on their conflict. However, while the will does distribute Bruce Wayne's estate. Alfred is given $20,000 a year for life, which I can't imagine would go very far in Gotham City, even in 1975 dollars. Dick gets a million, while Bruce Jr. and Mrs. Wayne get the bulk of the estate.

However, there is an addendum to the will: Bruce has left $5 million to a "former partner" named Simon Link. No one knows who this beneficiary is, though that mystery is overshadowed by the failure of the will to settle the Batman debate.

Simon Link, however, does appear to claim his inheritance, and surprisingly, no one mistakes him for Oliver Queen.



Link claims that Bruce Wayne invested in his seal-hunting operation years ago, and if $5 million represents the profits of that operation, it must have been one profitable seal-hunting operation.

Also, if this is the kind of thing Bruce Wayne invested in, then I would guess that opening the books on Wayne Enterprise investments would reveal a nightmare of unethical, quasi-legal activities: polar bear boots, elephant ivory, whale oil, rhinoceros horn, panda coats.

Before Link can claim his money, however, the lawyer finds yet another stipulation in the will: Link must take Bruce Jr. to the Arctic to "show him the tough, character-building life of the Arctic seal hunter." Man, Batman was one crappy dad.

So, the whole gang goes along to the Arctic to learn the life of the seal hunter and investigate Bruce Wayne's murder.

Once they arrive, Batman Jr. and Robin decide to take to the water: Junior in a kayak, and Robin water-skiing on an ice chunk behind some seals.

I can't imagine Robin's choice of transportation is particularly effective, but then again, you have to question the judgement of a guy who wears that costume in the Arctic.

They soon find an eskimo named Malook, who is the prime suspect for Bruce Wayne's murder. It turns out, Malook did try to kill Wayne because of his investment in the seal hunting operation, which is destroying his native village. The heroes then turn their investigation on Link, who ends up being the real villain. Once he realizes the jig is up, Link tries to escape by disguising himself as a seal. This turns out to be a really bad idea, unless Link was planning on showing everyone his impression of Bo Derek in Orca.

I love how we see Superman flying around in the background, doing nothing to save Link. You'd figure a guy with super-hearing, x-ray vision, and super-speed could have prevented this.

Once Link is dead, Batman reveals himself to be alive all along, and his death was an elaborate ruse to trap Link--a ruse that Superman was also in on.

Batman claims that faking his own death was necessary to trap Link, but I can't imagine that this was Batman and Superman's only option. After all, we're dealing with a half-assed seal hunter here, not some professional super-villain. I think Batman just liked screwing with everyone--making his family go through the trauma and sorrow of a funeral, changing his will in order to draw out Link. Bruce has a huge legal mess to clean up when he gets back, along with a long list of fraud charges. I have to wonder if this plan was really thought through very well.

One note on World's Finest 228: this may be the Bob-Haneyest comic ever made. In addition to the Haney-penned main story, the issue also reprints Aquaman, Metamorpho, and Eclipso stories by the writer as well. That also makes this one of the most awesome comics ever produced.

Lois Lane in "The Murdering Arm of Metropolis!"

Despite the fact that school is out and I've been on a "staycation" for the past two weeks, blogging has been pretty light here at the Spec. I even missed my 1-year blogiversary last week, which is a real blogging travesty. I really have no excuse for it, though I did spend much of the time taking over the world as the Russian Empire in a massive Civilization IV campaign. It's nice, at the end of the campaign, that Civilization IV lets me know how long I've been playing, as I wipe off the Doritos dust and check out my three-day beard growth that wasn't there when the game started.

But after that successful accomplishment, it's back to business. As has been a tradition on this blog, I like to celebrate special events by going to my collection of comics from which this site takes it's name: DC's 100-Page Super-Spectaculars. As a form of penance, then, I'm going to cover not one, but two 100-pagers in the next few posts.




Specifically, the Lois Lane features in Superman Family 166 and 169 form two parts of a single story, written by Cary Bates and drawn by John Rosenberger. In this story, my personal hero, Cary Bates, seems to be establishing a new status quo for Lois Lane as a secret agent for the SIA, or Secret Intelligence Agency, which is the single most boring acronym in the DC Universe. And yet Lois still maintains her position as a journalist, oblivious to the ethical problems these two roles create.

As the story opens, Lois is covering the Metropolis Botanists' Convention, hoping for an interview with renowned scientist, Dr. Foxley, who is surprisingly not a female character in a James Bond film. Before Lois can get any closer to the famous botanist, however, she is molested by the worst upskirt photographer in the business:

There are three things wrong with his form on that tackle. And that camera position is totally wrong.

The bad tackler turns out to be Simon Cross, agent of the SIA assigned to protect Dr. Foxley. But while Lois and Simon are arguing, a cyborgian assassin uses a silent air gun to fire a tamerid seed into Dr. Foxley's ear in a plot point that could only have been written by Cary Bates. The seed immediately sprouted inside the botanists head, destroying his brain and preventing him from revealing the secret of the mysterious wonder plant he had discovered.

Lois then talks Simon into allowing her to partner with him in the investigation. But first, Simon has to take care of some business:

Man, if I had a dime for every time I was asked those two questions.

And then:

Did anyone ever doubt that Lois Lane would ultimately end up dead, stuffed in a bag, and thrown in the back of a garbage truck?

The garbage truck, however, is secretly the mobile headquarters of the SIA--I guess all the good barber shops and phone booths were taken. Lois then lays out her CV to show why she should be allowed to join the SIA, and the director buys her pitch. Seriously, which missions are those? The ones where she tries to trick Superman into marrying her, or the ones where she ends up in life-threatening peril while Superman has to rescue her, and thus neglect some other emergency?

In order to complete the mission, Lois has to undergo some training, which apparently involves laying Agent Cross flat on his back repeatedly:Here, Lois demonstrates to Agent Cross why she loves The Dukes of Hazzard.

The mission involves capturing "Spangle," the leader of a "poppy-growing gang." But as Lois and Simon track Spangle, they're attacked by the mechanically armed assassin. He throws Lois off the roof of a parking garage, and while Superman swoops in to rescue her, he does not have time to stop the assassin from breaking Simon Cross's neck. I think we all know how Batman would have handled that choice.


Lois and another agent of the SIA trail Spangle into his secret lair: an underground garden filled with poppy plants.

However, these aren't ordinary poppies--they're "anti-poppies" created by Spangle and Dr. Foxley that will make people immune to drug addiction. This is yet again one of those scientific discoveries in Superman stories that should have a profound effect on society yet never get mentioned again.

Spangle, apparently, is not the leader of the poppy-growing gang; instead, the SIA agent has that secret role, and he kills Spangle to keep the discovery a secret. He tries to do the same to Lois, but she has other plans:
And now I know where Georgia O'Keefe got all her ideas.

The agent also reveals himself to be the mechanically armed assassin, and he's about to use his metal arm on Lois, when Superman, as expected, saves the day. This time, however, Superman had some help:
Who left the mysterious message? And why doesn't he understand basic sentence structure and subject-verb agreement?

That answer comes in the second part of the story, featured in Superman Family 169. More on that tomorrow!

Dr. K's 100-Page Super Spectacular Presents: The Greatest Comic Book of All Time!

In honor of this blog's 100th post, I present to you the single greatest comic book of all time. It may not be any comic you could guess, but, pound for pound, this tops them all.


Detective Comics 440 (Apr.-May 1974)

Exhibit A: Awesome Jim Aparo cover (one which, I would add, collectors of a certain persuasion might refer to as a "bondage cover." It also features a demonic bear.).

As the title of my blog indicates, I love the DC era when the company put out these 100-Page Super Spectaculars. Not only was it the best value in comics, but it was also a crash course in comics history. In this issue, for example, you not only get two original tales, but also three Golden Age and two Silver Age stories. Here are the contents:

1. Batman in "Ghost Mountain Midnight!" by Archie Goodwin, Sal Amendola, and Dick Giordano
2. The Golden Age Manhunter in "Cobras of the Deep" by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (from Adventure Comics 79, 1942: Manhunter fights Nazis on a sub--Awesome!)
3. The Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl in "The Fear that Haunted Hawkman" by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson (from Hawkman 3, 1964)
4. Doll Man in "A Million Dollar Corpse" with art by the criminally underrated Al Bryant,whose style reminds me of a cross between Golden Age greats Paul Gustafson and Jack Cole (from Feature Comics 123, 1948)
5. The Golden Age Green Lantern in "Too Many Suspects" with art by Alex Toth and Frank Giacoia (from Green Lantern 37, 1949)
6. Batman and Robin in "Inside Story of the Outsider" by Gardner Fox, Bob Kane, and Joe Giella (from Detective Comics 356, 1966)
7. Chapter 4 of the Manhunter serial by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson, one of the greatest stories in comics history

By virtue of the art, this comic is a gold mine: Simon and Kirby, Murphy Anderson, Alex Toth, some artist whose work Bob Kane signed (actually, from the looks of the story, it may really be Kane's art), and Walt Simonson. I challenge anyone to find a comic with a line-up better than that.

The main story alone is all kinds of awesome, too. Just to give you a sense of its awesomeness: It begins with two hillbillies breaking in to the Gotham City version of the Playboy Club in order to kidnap a waitress, and it ends with Batman fighting a bear.

Every single work of literature in the history of mankind pales in comparison to that description.


The story opens with the aforementioned kidnapping at the "Playhour Club," and, as one would have guessed, Bruce Wayne is in attendance.

I love this depiction of Bruce Wayne as the effete playboy who is so spoiled and disconnected from normal human behavior that he would complain to a manager that a crime commited in the restaurant ruined his tornadoes flambe.

Bruce then slinks off to change into Batman and pursue the kidnappers. Fighting on the snowy Gotham streets, Batman gets coldcocked by one of the hillbillies, and just before he goes down, he learns that these men are the waitress's brothers, and they come from some place called "Ghost Mountain."

In the days before Google and the internets, Batman has Alfred find this Ghost Mountain on something called "microfilm." The loyal butler informs the Caped Crusader that Ghost Mountain is in Appalachia, and Batman decides it's time for a road trip to hillbilly country.

There, he pays a call on the local sheriff, who conforms to the stereotype of the crooked Southern lawman so popular in the 70s (see also, Sheriff Buford T. Justice, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, Sheriff Lobo, et al.). And, like several of those sheriffs, this one also seems obsessed with moonshine and revenuers.


I find this binary distinction between city and country to be interesting, and I didn't realize until now that "inferring" was limited only to urban environments.

I also find it interesting that the sheriff apparently has shit all over his shoes.



Meanwhile, the waitress who was kidnapped is now with her family, who are planning to sacrifice her to the curse of Ghost Mountain. This should stand as a lesson to anyone who leaves the country to seek out an education in the big city: if you refuse to fulfill your purpose as the sacrifice to a family curse, then someone else is going to die.

It turns out that the curse of Ghost Mountain is just a very angry bear, and Batman, with his extensive experience in bear fighting, takes care of business in one of the greatest single pages ever produced.


We've all seen Batman punch bears and other animals so often that it's become a cliche. But here, he kicks it up a notch by 1) beating the bear with chains, and 2) lighting the bear on fire and then riding him off a cliff. When you think of all the options Batman had for bringing this bear down, I think we can all agree that he chose the most aesthetically satisfying route.

After dispatching "Smokey," Batman comes across the source of the bear's anger: his cave houses the still that the sheriff alluded to earlier. Also, Batman finds a clue here that leads him back to the sheriff, and punching ensues.


Man, that is one satisfying denouement.

Bonus Content:

Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson's Manhunter story is easily in my top 5 favorite comic stories, and chapter 4, serialized in this issue, contains some of my favorite Walt Simonson art. Here are my two favorite pages.


True fact: when I read this page for the first time, at the age of 5, I uttered the response "Fuck, yes." Interestingly, I had never heard the f-word before that.

Seriously, though, that sequence of images where Manhunter slides under the car, cuts the gas tank, and lights the gas on fire is simply awesome storytelling.


And here is a great fight sequence, leading to a beautiful long panel that perfectly captures the sense of motion on the page. Few artists have that skill to animate the page in this way.

So, on the occasion of my 100th post, I would just like to thank everyone who has come by, read, and commented so far. It's been a blast, and I'm looking forward to digging further into my comics and movie collections.