BATMAN #299 and down (reviews by Hoosier X)BATMAN #284"If There Were No Batman … I Would Have to Invent Him"
February 1977
Story: David V. Reed
Art: Romeo Tanghal and Frank Springer
Editor: Julius Schwartz
BATMAN #285"The Mystery of Christmas Lost"
March 1977
Story: David V. Reed
Art: Romeo Tanghal and Frank Springer
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Batman #284 and #285 are not comics that I bought when I was a kid, unlike all the other Batman comics I've reviewed so far in the "Batman #299 and down" countdown. As a matter of fact, I bought these just a few weeks ago, I found them on eBay.
I knew a little about these issues because they were mentioned in the letter pages of the Batman issues I did buy. I could tell from those letter pages that there was this villain named Dr. Tzin-Tzin and he tried to steal Gotham Stadium and some fans thought that the plot made no sense because why would Dr. Tzin-Tzin want a stadium? So the editors turned it into a joke and asked the readers to write in with their suggestions about why Dr. Tzin-Tzin would want to steal a stadium.
I was mildly intrigued by this as a kid but never enough to actually seek out those issues.
And then a few issues later, during "Where Were You On The Night Batman Was Killed?", the letter page was full of the suggestions sent in by fans about what Dr. Tzin-Tzin would do with a stadium. So I was probably thinking, "Again with this Dr. Tzin-Tzin fellow! Who is he? How the heck did he plan to steal a stadium? And what was he going to do with it? Why so much attention to one dumb master plan when comic books are full of them and they aren't usually talking about them in the letter pages a year later?"
I still wasn't intrigued enough to seek out the Dr. Tzin-Tzin issues. Heck, by the next time I went to a used-book store, it was a month or more later and I had totally forgotten Dr. Tzin-Tzin and I was looking for early 1970s Avengers or some more issues of The Brave and the Bold.
As a matter of fact, about 35 years passed before I found out who Dr. Tzin-Tzin is. A few years ago, I started getting serious about a Detective Comics collection and I started getting random "New Look" issues of Detective when I saw something on eBay that was affordable and in decent condition. And one of those issues was #354, the first appearance of Dr. Tzin-Tzin! And a few months later, again at random, I got Detective Comics #408, and there was Dr. Tzin-Tzin again, drawn by Neal Adams instead of Sheldon Moldoff.
So who is Dr. Tzin-Tzin? Well, in his first appearance, he's Batman's personal Fu Manchu. But after the introduction of Ras al Ghul, Dr. Tzin-Tzin becomes less a Fu Manchu figure and more of a sinister Eastern mystic. So he's more like Batman's personal Baron Mordo.
And since I have his first two appearances, maybe it's time for a short history of Dr. Tzin-Tzin.
ANCIENT CHINESE SECRET – The short and mostly uneventful history of Dr. Tzin-Tzin In Batman #354, "No Exit for Batman," the Caped Crusader faces Dr. Tzin-Tzin for the first time. It starts in the morgue, where Commissioner Gordon, Batman and Robin are examining the body of a small-time crook. The medical examiner says the poor fellow was SCARED TO DEATH! Back in Gordon's office, Batman and Robin learn the last time somebody was found scared to death, it was years ago in Istanbul and the death was linked to … Dr. Tzin-Tzin!
WHAT A SWINGING NAME!
says Robin.
According to Gordon,
FROM INTERPOL WE LEARNED THAT HE’S REALLY AN AMERICAN – AN ORPHAN
FOUND YEARS AGO BY CHINESE BANDITS AND RAISED BY THEM!
HE ADOPTED THEIR WAYS – THEN ENTERED THE WESTERN WORLD
TO ROB AND PILLAGE IN A GRAND STYLE!
Gordon gives them a red globe that was found at a recent robbery. The police scientists don't know what it is but they think it was made in China. (How do they know? It has a Donald Trump label on it.) So they give it to Batman, which is what you do if you're in Gotham law enforcement every time you hit a snag.
Batman doesn't have any luck with it either. But then Dr. Tzin-Tzin's face appears on the device and tells Batman to back off. If Batman wants to live, he will not interfere in Dr. Tzin-Tzin's plans, says the little Dr. Tzin-Tzin face on the globe. Then it blows up and Batman barely knocks Robin away in time.
Batman thinks he can rebuild the device so he sends Robin out to get the parts. Batman patrols the city and responds to a burglar alarm. It's a trap! Dr. Tzin-Tzin's hired killers – at least 12 of them – are waiting for him and they all wade in to get their shots. In another part of the city, Dr. Tzin-Tzin is watching the fight on a TV screen and a couple of his henchmen are talking about how creepy it is that Dr. Tzin-Tzin shows such glee at watching people get beat up.
Eventually. Dr. Tzin-Tzin's goons run off because they've had enough and Batman sort of staggers back to the Bat-Cave where Robin has the parts for the magic Tzin-Tzin red-globe communicator. Batman rebuilds it and they somehow use it to find the villain's lair where they beat up the henchmen.
Tzin-Tzin tries to use his Eastern mystic powers to scare Batman to death but Batman breaks a magic light bulb with a batarang. Tzin-Tzin, his store of mysterious Eastern magic depleted without his amazing light bulb, pulls out a gun and yells DIE DIE DIE. But it doesn't work and Batman disarms him and throws him into a door.
Later, Gordon tells Batman and Robin that he's got telegrams from Interpol and 17 different countries thanking Batman for putting Dr. Tzin-Tzin behind bars. (Meanwhile, law enforcement in Algiers isn't so impressed. "All you have to do is break his magic light bulb! Sheesh!")
Yup. That's the first Dr. Tzin-Tzin story. No wonder Batman submitted a requisition form for a new Fu Manchu character. The first one broke rather easily.
Written rather indifferently by John Broome. And drawn by Sheldon Moldoff with his usual awkward, limb-flailing enthusiasm! (And I love it! Moldoff's fight scenes look like he threw wooden artist's models on the floor and drew their poses.)
Dr. Tzin-Tzin next showed up in Detective Comics #408 as the surprise villain at the end of a haunted house story where Batman had seen Robin grow old and turn to dust; attended his own funeral, where Commissioner Gordon and Superman both said he was a terrible crimefighter; and barely evaded Robin's attempt to murder him. (It's much better than it sounds; Neal Adams drew it.)
Tzin-Tzin tells Batman that after his last failure, the tong wouldn't take him back, so he joined the League of Assassins and they have helped him plot the death of Batman. (There's no mention that Tzin-Tzin is actually an American raised by Chinese bandits.)
Batman evades the death-trap by jumping really fast in a tube and setting off the bomb with his utility belt. So Tzin-Tzin sends twelve trained assassins to get him and Batman beats them up pretty handily. The house blows up and Tzin-Tzin escapes in the confusion.
He's drawn a lot better in this story, that's for sure.
Dr. Tzin-Tzin also appeared in the Supergirl story in Adventure #418 not too long after Detective Comics #408, but I haven't read that one. Nasthalthia Luthor (Lex’s evil niece) is in the same story, so it must be good!
DR. TZIN-TZIN'S GLORIOUS RETURNFive years later, Dr. Tzin-Tzin returned with greatly enhanced powers (for all the good it did him in the long run). At the beginning of Batman #284, Dr. Tzin-Tzin recites his latest exploit to a stenographer who seems to be a very dedicated slave. It seems that years of study in Tibet have given him great powers of meditation, so that he can concentrate and create a reservoir of magical energy and then pretty much do whatever he wants with it.
(It's much better than a magic light bulb.)
He describes to the slave stenographer how he tested his power. He made the Sphinx rise up from its foundations among the pyramids at Gizeh and then he deposited it in the Mediterranean. And then he created a perfect replica of the Sphinx and put it in place of the original Sphinx.
So, yeah, that's right. In the pre-Crisis DC Universe, the original Sphinx is on the bottom of the Mediterranean and the one in its place is a perfect replica constructed by Dr. Tzin-Tzin while meditating. And nobody knows this even happened.
Dr. Tzin-Tzin tells the stenographer that they are the only two who know what he has done with the Sphinx, and she knows what that means and she willingly submits to her fate as Tzin-Tzin blasts her with his eye beams.
(She calls him a “naljorpa,” which is a wizard of Tibet, according to an editor's note. I found an online glossary that said a naljorpa is a male Tantric practitioner. Batman #284 and #285 are littered with words and definitions that are supposedly all related to Tibetan mysticism, but I think it's probably best to have a grain of salt ready when considering their authenticity.)
The text then reveals that they were in airplane above the ocean and the stenographer's body is tossed out. Then Tzin-Tzin walks to the cabin where the pilot and co-pilot are skeleton ghosts wearing flight jackets and goggles. That panel is pretty cool and not another word is said about it.
Then there's a couple of pages of Batman beating up some generic bad guys and then getting yelled at by the guy replacing Commissioner Gordon while Gordon is on vacation. His name is Inspector Maddox and I've never seen him before. He tolerates Batman because it seems to be GCPD policy, but he doesn't like it one little bit! He yells and points a lot and has his anti-Batman talking points memorized. So Batman and Maddox bump heads a lot in this issue.
Dr. Tzin-Tzin uses his Tibetan meditation mind-powers for a ritual called the Angkur and he summons Thas Yang, the demon fire-tiger; Towos, an eagle demon, eater of men’s brains; and Changchub, mystic master of magicians. This panel is pretty cool, and I would love to see it drawn by someone other than Romeo Tanghal and Frank Springer. How about John Buscema. Neal Adams. Jim Aparo.
Or maybe Sheldon Moldoff! It would be hilarious!
Tzin-Tzin's master plan involves doing a whole bunch of crazy crap in Gotham City to challenge Batman with so many totally bonkers bananashenanigans that Batman will go crazy. (I think Tzin-Tzin is out of luck with this plan. In the Schiff era, Batman was turned into a genie, a zebra-man and a giant, and he fought stupid aliens on a regular basis. Tzin-Tzin cannot even begin to throw crazy crap at Batman the way Jack Schiff did.)
Tzin-Tzin attacks the Explorer's Day Parade, but Batman prevails. (It’s kind of dumb, frankly.) Standing in the rubble, Maddox shows up and wants to know what's going on. Batman explains who Dr. Tzin-Tzin is:
HIS ORIGINS ARE UNKNOWN. SUPPOSEDLY, HE'S REALLY AN AMERICAN
FOUND AND RAISED BY CHINESE BANDITS WHO LATER SPENT YEARS
IN TIBET STEEPING HIMSELF IN THEIR MYSTICAL TEACHINGS.
And then Batman fills up the word balloons in several panels going into the details about Tibetan mysticism, causing Maddox's eyes to glaze over as he fantasizes about the commissioner's daughter. Finally he snaps out of it and wants to know if Batman believes that stuff.
Batman and Alfred build a Tsam Khang in the backyard. It's a wooden structure that looks kind of like Burning Man. Batman sits in the Tsam Khang for a while and finally emerges in a trance and walks past a puzzled Alfred to take off in the whirlybat. The Tsam Khang has enabled him to focus on Dr. Tzin-Tzin's energies and Batman flies right to the spot where …
Dr. Tzin-Tzin is levitating Gotham Stadium!
Batman beats him up and knocks him unconscious and wraps him up in the net behind home plate.
When he hands Tzin-Tzin over to the cops, Maddox is a bit perplexed because the stadium is still ten feet above the ground! Batman tells him that the mystic energies are dissipating and the stadium will soon settle in its rightful place. Maddox says he's going to read some books on Tibet.
So Dr. Tzin-Tzin fails again! But he'll get another chance in the very next issue.
THE GOTHAM STADIUM CONTROVERSYShould Gotham City get a new football team? Or will Gotham fans ever be able to root for one of the old teams if they move to Gotham? (Rumors abound that the Fawcett City Marvels may be looking for a new home and would much prefer Gotham to Coast City.)
Oops! Sorry! Wrong Gotham Stadium controversy!
I mentioned earlier that several letter pages in the months following Batman #284 contained missive from fans critical of Tzin-Tzin's stadium-snatching scheme. What would he do with a stadium? What possible reason could Dr. Tzin-Tzin have for taking Gotham Stadium?
Now that I've read the story in question (nearly forty years after first hearing about it), I'm wondering if these fans read the rest of the story. It's true that the theft of the stadium doesn't really make any sense. But it doesn't make any less sense than anything else that Tzin-Tzin does in this issue.
His levitation and disposal of the Sphinx and subsequent recreation of that ancient structure show that he has great power because of his training in Tibet. And he uses this power to go to Gotham City to engage in a scheme to make the westerners of Gotham City (especially Batman) doubt the force of logic and rationality. For what purpose? He's showing off his powers. He's getting revenge against Batman. (He mentions that he has twice failed against Batman.) He wants to convince the westerners that their faith in reason and logic is misplaced and that they will crumble at the first display of his powers as Tibetan mysticism makes a mockery of western philosophy. (Or something.)
Dr. Tzin-Tzin needs to get out more. Does he not know anything about Batman's past adventures? Batman was regularly hypnotized to go back in time. Frequently with Supeman! Just read a few issues of the Jack Schiff era, where he is turned into a mummy or fighting a caveman or being split in two and existing in two dimensions.
And the people of Gotham have seen it all! They may be momentarily stunned by this, but they deal with crazy crap all the time! Are they really going to be fazed by a floating stadium after everything they've been through as host city to Batman and his adventures? Giant pennies! Robot dinosaurs! Penguin invasions! And everybody knows somebody who's been sprayed with the Joker's laughing gas.
And then there's Bat-Mite! A pixie from a magical dimension who dresses up as Batman and tries to help fight crime. Bat-Mite is more powerful than Tzin-Tzin! Geez Louise! I would love to see a meeting between Tzin-Tzin and Bat-Mite. By the time Bat-Mite was done, Tzin-Tzin would be begging Batman to put him in a nice, safe prison cell.
As for what Dr. Tzin-Tzin was planning to do with Gotham Stadium, I could come up with several ideas, based on my imperfect understanding of the different planes of thought and existence upon which Tzin-Tzin operates. I think it most likely that Tzin-Tzin was planning to put it in the Mediterranean next to the Sphinx, alongside his recreations of the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat and Mount Batman.
And after that, Tzin-Tzin was going to … I don't know. Take back his magic light bulbs for a refund?
THE TZIN-TZIN THAT STOLE CHRISTMASTzin-Tzin got another chance to shed his reputation as a loser the very next month in Batman #285. It's pretty lame in a lot of ways, but it's a very interesting failure, partly because Tzin-Tzin fails so spectacularly but also because it's a Christmas story! And because it is so very entertaining despite (or perhaps because of) being quite stupid, it's become one of my favorite comic-book Christmas stories.
Tzin-Tzin is being kept in isolation at the Gotham City Jail, with a series of annoying lights and sounds that keep him from concentrating enough to perform one of those Sphinx-moving rituals. But an ant creeps in, and Tzin-Tzin may be in a weakened state, but he has enough power left to hypnotize an ant. The little creature comes back with his whole dang ant posse and they eat the mortar around one of the stones so that Tzin-Tzin can get out of the cell. And he has little trouble controlling the minds of the guards, who honor him with a twenty-one gun salute as he walks out and disappears into the city.
So Batman shows up and the ants are swarming and spelling words on the wall and Batman figures out from the clue that Tzin-Tzin is going to steal Christmas (only 8 days away) in order to get back at Batman! (So Dr. Tzin-Tzin is one of those Christmas-hating liberals you hear about on FOX News that don't actually exist in real life! I knew it!)
The whole thing with the ants is hilarious! But it's not as hilarious as the bear in the giant Christmas tree!
Batman responds to a report that the giant Christmas tree at City Hall Plaza is on fire. But it's not! He's looking at it, assuming that the fire was an illusion caused by Tzin-Tzin … but why would Tzin-Tzin do that? Batman climbs the tree to fight the bear that's wandering around in the branches. It's totally nuts. It's some kind of Buddhist bear-demon, I think, that infests Christmas trees and turns them into mere holiday trees! The horror!
Then Tzin-Tzin climbs out of the bear's mouth and taunts Batman for fighting such an obvious illusion. Then Tzin-Tzin's face appears on a Christmas ornament (I want one of these so bad!) and tells Batman that he could have killed him, but he wants to defeat his mind! Then Tzin-Tzin is dancing around on a branch and he stabs Batman a glancing blow with a magic golden dagger and the illusion disappears and Batman is standing on a branch as onlookers all go "Look at crazy Bronze-Age Batman fighting a Christmas tree branch!"
Back at the Wayne Foundation, Bruce finds Alfred and Dick Grayson (visiting Bruce during his college's holiday break) acting very strangely, very confused and absent-minded, forgetting they just said "hello" and staring into space. Bruce asks Alfred for the mail that he's holding and Alfred barely seems to know what mail is.
It’s a citywide epidemic! This is how Tzin-Tzin is going to steal Christmas, by making everyone forget that it's even happening and making them say "Happy Holidays!" But Batman seems to be immune, probably because Tzin-Tzin gave him an antidote of some kind during the battle with the non-existent Buddhist demon-bear.
Batman tracks Tzin-Tzin to an abandoned steam factory (I swear that's what it says! "… within the deserted manufactory of the Gotham City Steam Company, now the deserted dominion of Dr. Tzin-Tzin …"). Tzin-Tzin sends green monsters to attack Batman and he can't tell which monsters are real and which are illusory! But he knocks the end off of a steam pipe and Tzin-Tzin is sprayed by the hot water and the pain breaks his concentration and the monsters disappear.
The last page is Bruce, Dick and Alfred celebrating the Gotham Christmas that almost wasn't.
Dr. Tzin-Tzin got another chance to take on Batman just a few months later in Batman #290. If I had known about that, I would have ordered it when I got Batman #284 and #285. Since I've never read it, I'm going to assume that Tzin-Tzin lost again.
After a ten-year absence, Tzin-Tzin showed up again as the villain in the four-issue mini-series The Peacemaker (1988) but I've never read those. I have a feeling Tzin-Tzin didn't do so well in that story either, but he can take some consolation knowing that the other Fu Manchu imitators – The Yellow Claw and the Mandarin – haven't done any better in numerous conflicts with the Marvel heroes.
Fu Manchu, on the other hand …
Great riddles of literature would be an excellent theme for the Riddler.
