And only years later did the truth come out that Schiff had stumbled on plans for a prototype secret weapon which he had Sheldon Moldoff adapt for the story.

True fact.

And Obama's from Kenya, too.

I'm not too sure foxley. Look at the faces of Bats and Robin when they get kissed. Doesn't look like the joy of a straight guy getting kissed by a woman he likes. Same face when Aunt Harriet lays one on them. I've seen more expressions of joy with the Caped Crusaders when Alfred slips them some tongue 

grotto

Jack Schiff probably was doing a satisfactory job on the Batman line. The problem was he was doing this at a time when Mort Weisinger was taking the Superman line to new heights and Julie Schwartz was producing new hit after new hit with retooled Golden Age properties. "Fine" just wasn't going to cut it any more.

There's also the fact that, while in the GA, there were a lot of "costumed"--not super--heroes, like Wildcat, Black Canary, Dr. Mid-Nite, as well as at other companies. But by the late 50s, the heroes were more science-based, and fighting off invasions from other worlds. Detective work and beatin' the crap out of guys in fedoras probably seemed pretty tame.

BATMAN #299 and down (reviews by Hoosier X)



BATMAN #266
"The Curious Case of the Catwoman’s Coincidences"
August 1975
Story: Denny O’Neil
Art: Irv Novick and Dick Giordano
Editor: Julius Schwartz

I took a little break after reviewing #279 because the next issue I have is #266, so it seemed like a good place to take a breather.

When I got back to #266 a few months ago, I found I wasn't all that enthusiastic to write about it.

It’s not one of the Batman comics I’ve had for years, either through buying it off a spinner rack or from getting it from a used-book store a year or so after it came out. No, I got Batman #266 just a few years ago from eBay.

And I loved it when I first got it! Such beautiful art by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano! Selina Kyle is so beautiful throughout! Plus, Batman #266 features the return of the classic Catwoman look from the 1940s and 1950s, the purple mask, the skirt, the cloak. It gets a lot of points for that! The green Catwoman costume from the late 1960s has grown on me quite a bit. The blue and block costume with the red highlights has a certain campy charm. But the purple cloaked look is the best look for Catwoman.

It’s a pretty crazy issue. In the five years or so since I got it, I’ve pulled it out a few times and re-read it or skimmed it. Mostly I looked at the art! That is some great art! Novick and Giordano are a great team.

But when I pulled it out to re-read it to review it for my "Batman #299 and down" series, I looked at it really closely and read every word, which I haven’t done since I first got it. And “The Curious Case of the Catwoman’s Coincidences” just doesn’t really come together all that well. It’s a bit of a mess. I was kind of disappointed that a story I liked so well was such a mishmash. So when I was supposed to be writing a review of Batman #266, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, depressed, staring at the wall, and not much excited about writing the review. So I put it off and didn’t get back to it for a while. But I want to get past this and get to the rest of my pre-Batman #299 collection.

With the passage of time and another re-reading of Batman #266, I realize that I just have to accept that "The Curious Case of the Catwoman's Coincidences" is what it is, and it’s still a fun story with such great art and the return of the classic Catwoman costume!

It’s a gimmick story, very reminiscent (I think) of the kinds of Batman stories that Frank Robbins was writing in 1970 or thereabouts. There’s a bunch of coincidences, you see, most of them revolving around cat puns or phrases that include “cat” in them. For example, the prison train that is carrying Selina Kyle to the penitentiary crashes into a runaway caterpillar tractor (called a “cat” in construction slang) and a bunch of convicts, including Selina, escape.

And later in the story, Selina and her gang have a big headstart and Batman can’t possibly catch up to them … until they turn a corner where a catfood truck is blocking the way. Things like that. Sometimes it helps Catwoman, sometimes it hinders her.

The prison train sequence is pretty cool. And some of the later scenes are pretty good. (Especially Bruce Wayne in drag as a wealthy widow who wears expensive, gaudy jewelry everywhere as he sets a trap to attract the attention of a jewel thief who’s been plaguing Gotham.)

But it just doesn't really come together as well as I thought it did the first few times I read the story. Catwoman and Batman don’t even tangle until the very end, and the fight is over way too quickly for this longtime Catwoman fan.

I've come to terms with it. Such nice art!

You can beat that dead horse all you want on this thread!

What about those Miller defenders who say that Miller was coming from a crime fiction background where apparently all the female characters are prostitutes, or something? That's some pretty lame sophistry. I hope they got a good price for it at the Sophistry Warehouse. You wonder which branch of crime fiction Miller was reading where all the female characters are prostitutes. And even if that part of the justification is true, that there is a such a genre in crime fiction, uh, well, I think Miller had enough experience writing comic books that he could figure out on his own that all your major female characters don't have to be prostitutes without accidentally stumbling across a different crime fiction series where there are some major female characters who aren't prostitutes.

Like maybe he could have read a Raymond Chandler novel just before writing Year One. "Hey! Not all the major female characters have to be prostitutes! I should try that!"