BATMAN #299 and down (reviews by Hoosier X)

BATMAN #286
"The Joker's Playground of Peril"
April 1977
Story: Denny O’Neil (Assisted by Julius Schwarz and E. Nelson Bridwell)
Art: Irv Novick and Bob Wiacek
Editor: Julius Schwartz




When I look at my copy of Batman #286, I can hardly believe that it's in such nice condition. It's never been in a comic book bag. On top of that, I didn't buy it new off a drugstore spinner rack. I remember exactly where I got it and I also remember that particular store was my favorite place to get comics.

So who remembers how many different ways there were to get comics back then, in the 1970s? My usual outlet was Moore's Drugstore in Middletown, Indiana, my hometown, and it was the only place to get comics in Middletown. They had a spinner rack next to the magazine rack real close to the door. And on Tuesday morning during the summer, you could always count on a bunch of kids showing up by 10 a.m. and waiting around for the clerk to get around to undoing the bundles, checking off the merchandise and arranging the comics on the spinner rack.



One of the clerks was Karen, still a high school student who had been my baby-sitter just a few years earlier, who would do the comics first because she was nice and knew us because her brother was in the same grade as most of us. There were also an older woman who sometimes worked when Karen wasn't there, and she would do the magazines first and the she would refuse to stock the comics if we didn't leave. She would stand at the door and watch us and she wouldn't stock the comics until we left the parking lot. Sometimes she wouldn't get them done until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. (I have a feeling Mr. Moore (who was a very nice man) wouldn't have been happy if he knew one of the employees was driving away customers because … you know, I have no idea why that clerk was so awful about it. But it never occurred to any of us to complain about her.)

The spinner rack at Moore's Drugstore was generally very neat, but you couldn't always count on them to have all the comics you wanted because they didn't stock some of the more obscure comics and they would sometimes run out of some of the more popular comics if you didn't get there until Wednesday. (I remember Hulk being particularly contentious for a while. As soon as I walked in the store on Tuesday, I grabbed Hulk if I could because so many of the kids who showed up on Tuesday were Hulk fans.)



There were other places to get new comics in neighboring towns. I remember a chain drugstore in Anderson that had one of the craziest spinner racks I ever saw. In contrast to the neatly-arranged comics at Moore's Drugstore, the chain drugstore had comics shoved in willy-nilly, packed to overflowing with maybe one copy of ten different comics stuffed into a single rack on the spinner. That spinner rack kind of fascinated me. It was placed back in the store where it wasn't well-supervised. Moore's was not a place where you sat on the floor and read two or three comics before buying one. It wasn't a particularly strict "no-reading" zone, but its location right by the door and its proximity to the cashier kept you from getting too comfortable.

But not the spinner rack at the chain drugstore! It was like a reading room! I loved that spinner rack because they had bunches of comics that I didn't see that often when I was a kid. Lots of Charlton comics. And stuff I thought was weird like Kobra. Remember Kobra? And Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter. And the DC horror comics. And Plop! They never had Plop! at Moore's! I didn't usually buy comics there because I didn't want to start collecting something if I didn't think I could get the next issue at Moore's. But when we ended up at the place with the messy spinner rack, it was so much fun to lean against a toy shelf and read Man-Thing and then not buy it.

I also remember a spinner rack at a bookstore called Readmore in the city of New Castle. Readmore was a combination book store and stationery store. The front third of the establishment (on the main business street in New Castle) was stationery and greeting cards. The cashier's counter was located between the stationery and the bookstore part of the place. There was a big magazine rack along one wall next to the counter and the comics were at one corner of the cashier's counter. (It was one of those glass counters where you could see displays of candy and gum and cigars.)

My great-grandmother lived in New Castle and we would visit her at least once or twice a month, so we would end up at Readmore every so often. (In addition to comics, I bought a lot of Doc Savage and Edgar Rice Burroughs novels at Readmore.) That spinner rack at Readmore was probably the most immaculate spinner rack I ever saw. The comics were never out of place. I don't think it was much frequented by kids. I think it was there for customers to get comics for their kids. I don't ever remember seeing anybody but me buy a comic at Readmore. The thing I liked best about Readmore was that the spinner rack would have the previous issue behind all the copies of the latest issue. Almost invariably there would be one or two copies of last month's issue behind seven or eight copies of the current month's issue. So it was great to go to Readmore if I missed an issue. It was also great if I started collecting a new comic because I knew I could check Readmore and they would probably have the previous issue. (That's why I got Hulk #194 before Hulk #193. I like #194 so much that I looked for #193 at Readmore the next time I went and there it was!)

I’ve mentioned before that I only bought Batman and Detective if I recognized villains from the TV show. I probably bought #287 and #288 at Moore's drugstore. But I had missed #286 despite an appearance by the Joker, one of my favorite characters.

Fortunately, despite the absence of comic book shops, there were other places to get old comic books – used-book stores!

There were several in Anderson that my dad frequented where he would trade his old detective novels for other old detective novels he hadn’t read yet – you traded two for one. And sometimes, they had comic books. Sometimes it was a few dozen beat-up 1970s comics in a paper bag behind the counter. But there was one place in Anderson that had the coolest set-up for old comics I ever saw.

It was across the street from the shopping center that had the K-Mart. (The drugstore with the messy spinner rack was in the same complex as the K-Mart. One of the reasons I bought so few comics at the store with the messy spinner rack was that I had usually just bought eight old comics for two dollars at the used-book store.) In the back of the used-book store across from the K-Mart, there was a room we called "the comic-book room." It was about eight feet by fifteen feet, with double-tiered magazine racks against all four walls. (In addition to the entrance, there was a door that led to an office/stockroom.)

And those magazine racks were filled with comic books! Hundreds, thousands of comic books! They were two for twenty-five cents. Over-sized comics would have a "25 cents" sticker pasted in a corner over the original price. Very few of the comics were in comic-book bags. From time to time, you might find a late 1960s comic in a yellowing comic-book bag, with a 50-cent sticker or a $1 sticker, but it wouldn't be a Superman comic or a Spider-Man comic; it would be Strange Adventures or Tales to Astonish.



And they didn't care if you sat in there and read comics before you bought some. They were usually a little beat up to begin with so the proprietors didn't care too much if they got beat up a little more. There were hundreds and hundreds of 1970s comics. I got stuff like Batman #251 and #257 and Detective Comics #439 at that place. I got a bunch of issues of Avengers from the 130s there (and they weren't beat up too bad). Brave and the Bold #116 and #119 and maybe a few others. The Joker #3 and #4. Most of the issues of Fantastic Four from #153 to #164. And a bunch of issues of Plop!

I would sometimes be amazed that almost-new copies of very recent books would be in those stacks. I got a copy of Secret Society of Super-Villains #1 only three or four months after it had been on the newsstands. And that's also how I got Batman #286. I hadn’t had #288 for very long when I was in the comic-book room rummaging through these archaeological wonders of the early 1970s when I came across a very new-looking copy of Batman #286. It wasn’t much more than two months old. There were probably places where you could still get it off a spinner rack for cover price. Well, in any case, somebody had traded it away almost immediately and it was mine now for only twelve and a half cents!

Those kinds of rooms were just about done in 1977. Comic-book shops were moving from the metropolises and into the smaller cities and used-book dealers either quit carrying comics or they started treating them like collectibles. When I got Batman #292, I realized it was the second part of a four-part storyline and I immediately started looking for Batman #291. I found it in a different used-book store in Anderson, but it was a used-book store that had put its old comics into bags and arranged them by title and number in long boxes. They weren't two for a quarter anymore; I think I paid 45 cents for my Batman #291. And that place was soon selling new comics as well, right beside the old comics and the racks of used romance and mystery novels.

There would be no more lying on the floor in the comic-book room and rummaging through old issues of House of Mystery while you decided what to spend your twelve and a half cents on.

THE JOKER RENAISSANCE

Batman #286 came out during a time when the Joker was appearing a lot in DC comics and the company was having a bit of a Joker Renaissance. After a four-year absence, the Joker had returned in Batman #251 in 1973 and he had shown up about twenty times in the four-year period between Batman #251 and #286. Aside from another adventure in the Batman series (in #260), he had appeared in four issues of The Brave and the Bold and an issue of the Justice League, not to mention nine issues of his own comic book and the infamous DC Superstars #10 where the super-heroes played their villainous counterparts in a baseball game for some reason.



The Joker Renaissance would continue with the Joker appearing in classic tales in both Batman (#294) and Detective Comics (#475 and #476) almost simultaneously and it wouldn't stop there with more adventures in The Brave and the Bold and Green Lantern before he slowed down a bit as the 1980s began.

THE PLAYGROUND OF PERIL

Well, with so many Joker adventures, it makes sense that some of them wouldn't be as good as "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge!" or "Luthor – You're Driving Me Sane!" or "The Great Super-Star Game!" And "The Joker's Playground of Peril" gets the short end of the stick.

Since I don't like this one so much, it’s actually been a really long time since I read it, so it actually was kind of fun to re-read it last week. The Irv Novick/Bob Wiacek art is great! And it's written by Dennis O’Neil!

So it's not really bad. Not by any means. It just seems a little average and has a tough time competing with all the great Joker stories popping up in those years. Batman #251 had Neal Adams art. The Brave and the Bold stories featured guest-stars like Wildcat, Two-Face, the Atom and Green Arrow. The Joker's own series was just plain NUTS most of the time, with the Creeper, the Scarecrow, the Royal Flush Gang, Catwoman, Lex Luthor and … Sherlock Holmes?

So it's no wonder that Batman #286 comes off a little bit like "just another story where Batman fights the Joker."

It starts off with the Joker escaping Arkham in an ice cream truck after taking his psychiatrist hostage. He sprays the psychiatrist with one of his evil gases and the poor guy dies laughing, but the gas also makes him grow smaller until he's only about a foot high. The Joker made him shrink because he’s a "shrink." Get it? Do ya get it?

Most of the action takes place at the Parkside Playground, an amusement park that, somehow, is not named Gotham Fairgrounds. And there is a charity event going on, natch. And also it's a costumed charity event. And there's several people there that the Joker might want to kill. And there's at least one guy dressed as the Joker even though he's not the Joker.



So, yeah, the recipe for mayhem is there and there's always something on fire or children threatened by an out-of-control fair ride or a suspicious pirate at the shooting gallery, and the Batman and the Joker finally face off in the house of mirrors!

Not bad at all, really, especially if you like Irv Novick.

The Joker only kills one person. So it might be a bit tame for the modern comic-book fan who has gotten accustomed to mass-murderer Joker of recent decades.