Not just Neal Adams: Batman in December of 1969

“Secret of the Waiting Graves” in Detective Comics #395 marked the beginning of the Neal Adams/Denny O’Neil era of Batman, successor to the Silver Age’s New Look. While O’Neil and Adams would redefine the Caped Crusader over the next few years, they weren’t the only ones working on the character. Behind the Adams cover to Detective #396, for instance, we had Frank Robbins and Bob Brown telling the story of “The Brain-Pickers.”

While Robbins and his collaborators also moved Batman away from the New Look (here’s an example), this odd little story feels much more Silver Age Batman than Bronze Age Batman. The youth-oriented plot is an odd one for Robbins, like something Bob Haney would come up with for Teen Titans.

The idea of a hip stockbroker-biker who makes his investment decisions while riding cross-country is so unusual I half-wonder if it was based on someone real. The plot concerns the mobsters in the second panel capturing Rory and demanding he tip them off to the next hot stock to buy. In an amusingly nerdy moment, Rory explains their plan to buy low and sell high almost immediately is completely impractical.

Rory finds a way to tip Batman to his whereabouts and the mobsters learn avoiding the IRS is the least of their problems. Happy ending!

“Death Casts the Deciding Vote” by Robbins and Irv Novick, with another Neal Adams cover, is a lot more interesting, as the first page promises.

The plot concerns an elderly senator pushing a new anti-crime bill. The underworld, of course, has decided The Bill Must Not Pass.

Coming right after another Must Not Pass crime-bill story made me reflect that I’ve seen other versions of this idea over the years and it doesn’t make sense. The United States has gotten increasingly tough on crime in the decades since this story appeared and it hasn’t put crime out of business. Possibly in the 1960s, when crime rates were high and respecting suspects’ constitutional rights was a new thing it seemed like getting really tough on crime would fix things.

That said, the story is a good one. Having Batman and Bruce operate in a confined space — as in “A Victim’s Victim” Robbins’ Bruce is as much a fighter as Batman — is an excellent set-up and Robbins and Novick deliver on it. Though the charm of the Mike Friedrich/Neal Adams backup story, “Silent Night of the Batman,” shows again why Adams got most of the glory for this era.

While I’m not writing about it as it’s so well-known, Brian Cronin has the details if you’re curious.

Last, we have Brave and the Bold #88’s “Count Ten … and Die” (Bob Haney, Novick, Adams cover) another head-scratching visit to the world of Earth-B. Earth-B, as you may recall, is the unofficial setting for many of Bob Haney’s Murray Boltinoff-edited stories in Brave and the Bold, like having Earth-One’s Batman fighting alongside Sgt. Rock in WW II. In this latest story we see Bruce Wayne inviting a washed-up Ted Grant to coach some kids in an international sporting event.

The plot that follows has Ted regain his confidence by defeating a commie boxer and helping Batman smash a spy ring. He does it almost entirely as Ted Grant rather than Wildcat, though that fits with the character arc of Ted struggling with his fears of aging. Wildcat would put in several more team-ups with the Masked Manhunter over the years.

As this is clearly the Earth-One Batman, the logical conclusion is that all these appearances are the Earth-One Wildcat, a character who never appeared anywhere else except a crossover with the Creeper in Super-Team Family #2 (by Dennis O’Neil and Ric Estrada, not Haney — and once again, Adams did the cover). I don’t think Haney thought of that way. Ted’s talk of losing his mojo and opening a gym for kids references his appearance in Spectre #3 the previous year, and that was clearly on Earth-Two. Haney apparently liked the characterization (he showed Plastic Man as similarly down-and-out in his B&B appearances) and didn’t worry about the multiverse so why not use it? Of course it’s easy to rationalize — Earth-One Ted could easily have followed the same path — though the story isn’t as memorable as Batman meeting Sgt. Rock.