TOP TEN BATMAN STORIES FROM THE LATE JACK SCHIFF ERA, 1959 to 1964

I decided not to try to rank them from one to ten, so they are presented in chronological order. My source for the credits is the Grand Comic Book Database. Bill Finger wrote eight of these stories!



"The Web of the Spinner!"
Batman #129 (February 1960)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

This may be a bit of a sentimental favorite. It's reprinted in Batman #198 (an 80-Page Giant) that I bought in the 1990s, and though I had been reading Batman comics for close to 20 years (including lots of reprints), this was the first story I read with Batwoman in it. I knew of her because of Michael Fleisher's Batman encyclopedia, but I had never come across an actual story with her in it. Batman #198 has a lot of interesting stories in it, and I definitely remember being pleased that I bought it despite being in deplorable condition, including a missing back cover.

"The Web of the Spinner" was a late candidate for consideration for this list. It didn't come to mind when I made my first list of stories to be evaluated. But I was flipping through some of my reprint comics to see if I had missed anything, and I came across "Web of the Spinner" and checked the date ... and then I read it again and remembered what a great story it is for so many reasons!

I had wanted a story with a lame one-shot villain because many of those stories are hilarious! But as much fun as most of these stories are, they're really lame. That's to be expected when you have a lame villain and there's a reason they never came back. Make no mistake; the Spinner is pretty lame. His crimes revolve around things that spin. But "The Web of the Spinner" has a pretty good gimmick.

The Spinner is leaving subtle clues about the villain's identity, but they are false clues. He's trying to frame another generic Gotham gangster for his crimes. He hires the guy he wants to frame to pretend to be the Spinner ... and then he's going to blow up the windmill hide-out (love that windmill hide-out!) so that everybody will think the Spinner is dead!

And Batwoman is in it! She's trying to expose a fake swami, like an actress in a 1940s genre film. She even has the clothes! How does it all tie up? The way it all comes together is pretty awesome! I hadn't read it for years! But I was pleasantly surprised when I read it last week and it all worked as well as I remember. Maybe even better than I remember!



"Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl!"
Batman #144 (December 1961)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

One thing you'll quickly notice is that there's a lot of Batwoman and Bat-Girl on this list. Especially Bat-Girl! She only appeared six times in 1959 to 1964. (I believe she was brought back for a few issues of Teen Titans in the 1970s.) And of those six appearances, four of them are on this list! There's something about these two. Just throwing them into the mix opened up a lot of story possibilities, and the writers seemed to be able to make the most of them.

(But note there's only one Bat-Mite story on the list. As much as I love Bat-Mite, his stories are awfully chaotic, there's no character arc for Bat-Mite and they're very formulaic. "Bat-Mite Meets Bat-Girl!" is the best Bat-Mite story I've read, and I think that's because Bat-Mite has been tossed into the Batman-Robin-Batwoman-Bat-Girl dynamic in a way that's logical for the characters, but it's also pretty crazy (hence fun) because it's a Bat-Mite story. I would guess that "Batwoman's Publicity Agent" is also a pretty good Bat-Mite story, but I've never read it.)

Bat-Mite shows up in Gotham and decides to help Bat-Girl with her big crush on Robin. It's a disaster! The highlight is the circus scene where Bat-Mite is riding around (invisible) on an absolutely adorable Sheldon Moldoff tiger!



"The Wizard of 1,000 Menaces!"
Detective Comics #306 (August 1962)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

This one is really awesome! I love it because has so many crazy elements. I read it last week and I was very surprised that it's got a lot going for it aside from just being wonderfully insane. Professor Arnold Hugo is a longtime Gothamite from a family that's been in the area a long time and he's angry that he doesn't get the same kind of adulation heaped upon other people ... like that worthless socialite Bruce Wayne!

So he terrorizes a historical re-enactment with a tiger that's grown to an enormous size because of one of Professor Hugo's potions. (Another sweet Sheldon Moldoff tiger! I want a stuffed toy based on a Sheldon Moldoff tiger.) And then it's Bruce Wayne's turn to take part in a re-enactment of a scene from the life of his ancestor. In the Middle Ages, Lancelot Wayne tested a "human bat" suit, so Bruce bravely jumps off the Gotham Bridge into the river, just like Lancelot Wayne, but he's attacked by Hugo's generic gangsters!

And on and on. Hugo also has invisible robots that are pretty cool! You always get lots of extra points for invisible robots!

Hugo was just not cut out to be a Batman foe, so he moved over to the Martian Manhunter's rogues gallery for a while before disappearing from the DCU entirely.



"The Secret of Clayface's Power!"
Detective Comics #312 (February 1960)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

We already talked about this one! Batman tracks Matt Hagen to the magic grotto just as Hagen is about to get another dose and, during the struggle, they both fall in the grotto! So we then get several pages of Batman and Clayface turning into polar bears and elephants and things and fighting each other! (The way Batman defeats Clayface is wonderfully dumb.)

I forgot to mention earlier that Batman getting Clayface's powers is poetic justice because earlier in the story, Clayface had robbed a bank while using his shapeshifting powers to masquerade as Batman!



"Prisoners of Three Worlds!"
Batman #152 (February 1963)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

If you really hate this era but you like to think of yourself as a Batman fan who wants to read at least one story from every era (to be well-rounded), then bite the bullet and read "Prisoners of Three Worlds!"

You might still hate it, but at least you'll have the read the best of the "random alien" stories that the period is known for.

I understand why fans who take Batman REALLY SERIOUSLY hate stories like this. But when you take Batman too seriously, you're dismissive of a lot of great stories, and you're not really getting anything in return because SERIOUS BATMAN is still pretty silly. You've just traded one kind of obvious silliness for a much more pretentious kind of silliness. And if you just relax a little bit and open your mind, you can have both!

Batman, Robin, Batwoman and Bat-Girl are pursuing a destructive, criminal alien named Zebo who hits them with a strange ray. Robin and Bat-Girl are transported to Zebo's dimension where they match wits with a bunch of wrinkly green aliens. Batman and Batwoman find their physical bodies have been separated from their spiritual bodies (or something like that). As they rally their rapidly diminishing energy in their physical bodies to fight Zebo in Gotham City, their spiritual bodies have been sent to a separate dimension where they encounter purple flying lizard-monsters and weird little bird-pixie people.

Things get pretty desperate! As everybody thinks this may be their last adventure, the reader gets to see some heart-to-heart discussions between Batwoman and Batman on Earth, and between Robin and Bat-Girl in Zebo's world.

A book-length novel! So it goes on and on for twenty-something pages! It's Jack Schiff's Gone With the Wind!
    



"Robin Dies at Dawn!"
Batman #156 (June 1963)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

I think a lot of people might choose this one as Jack Schiff's Gone with the Wind. It's pretty good!

Batman had been gone for a few days (as noted in the first story in Batman #156, the one with Ant-Man, where Robin has to solve the mystery because Batman is gone!) because he was helping the government with a series of experiments related to how well human space travelers would react to isolation in space or on alien planets. So Batman was in some kind of deprivation chamber, hallucinating encounters with giant, weird-looking monsters. And one of these hallucinations involved the death of Robin.

Now he's back patrolling the streets of Gotham City. Batman and Robin are hot on the heels of the Gorilla Gang, a crafty bunch who dress up in gorilla suits and commit crimes. (Gotham City is so awesome! Another criminal gang from a story from this period that barely missed making the "honorable mention" list was the Condor Gang from Detective Comics #317. They wore condor masks. And they weren't a Gotham City organization. They were in Center City. There was a law enforcement convention in Center City and Batman and Robin rounded up the Condor Gang between seminars, using the Flying Bat-Cave.)

But Batman keeps having flashbacks to the time he spent in the deprivation tank. And it's endangering both his life and Robin's life! But ... the Gorilla Gang is still on the loose? What can he do?

He thinks of retiring but the Gorilla Gang captures Robin, and Batman has to tough it out and deal with the hallucinations to save Robin.

Great story. And any DCU that doesn't have room for the Gorilla Gang doesn't have room for me! (Not really.)



"The Cat-Man Strikes Back!"
Detective Comics #318 (August 1963)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Jim Mooney, Sheldon Moldoff and Mike Esposito

Batman, Robin and Batwoman tangle (once again) with Cat-Man. Batman is kind of a jerk to Batwoman, so she takes up Cat-man's offer to become his queen of crime and she puts on a green and orange costume and becomes the new Catwoman ... for like a page. It's just a ruse and Cat-Man falls for it.

There's one sequence in this story that looks to me like Ross Andru art. But he's not listed in the Grand Comics Database. They have Mike Esposito instead, and Esposito inked Andru on bunches of Wonder Woman, Metal Men and Spider-Man stories.



"The Great Clayface-Joker Feud!"
Batman #159 (November 1963)
Writer: Bill Finger
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

Batwoman and Bat-Girl guest star once again. This time they are joined by Clayface and the Joker! The two villains get into a feud about who's the greatest foe of Batman and bananashenanigans ensue!

I didn't actually read this one in preparation for this list, but I've read it a bunch of times since I first saw it in The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told in the 1990s. Unfortunately, my copy is in storage so I couldn't get to it. But I remember it well enough to know it has a place in the Top Ten on this list.



"The Bizarre Batman-Genie!"
Detective Comics #322 (December 1963)
Writer: Dave Wood
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

This is the best of the "weird transformation" stories, as far as I know. It's also the only Silver Age appearance of Bat-Girl in which she wasn't with Batwoman. (Kathy Kane is out of town and Betty Kane is staying at her house for some reason.)

The bad guys come back from Europe with a magic lamp and some magic powder that turns Batman into a genie who has to grant their wishes. So Robin has to figure out how to outwit an omnipotent being while he figures out how to change Batman back into a being who won't be omnipotent for another thirty or forty years. Fortunately, Bat-Girl shows up to help him!

And it's pretty awesome, even when it veers into Very Very Silly Territory. The way that Robin and Bat-Girl tackle this daunting challenge, cheerfully and determinedly, you just have to root for them! 



"Captives of the Alien Zoo!"
Detective Comics #326 (April 1964)
Writer: Dave Wood
Art: Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris

Quite a few of the "random alien" stories from the Jack Schiff era are pretty dumb. But you can't just dismiss all of them. "Prisoners on Three Worlds" is pretty great.

And then there's "Captives of the Alien Zoo."
 
Batman and Robin are abducted by some baby-chicken people and transported to another planet and put in a zoo. At night, they are forced to perform in the circus if they expect to be fed. Batman watches some very suspicious behavior on the part of the baby-chicken people who run the zoo and he deduces that they are training the zoo animals to commit crimes! But how can he stop them when everybody on the planet thinks he and Robin are merely gaudily-dressed animals? And how will they ever get back to Earth?

I love this story! it's just so off-the-rails! I think Jack Schiff was getting some flack about the "random alien" stories (even though they had been pushed on him by the people who ran DC) because there are fewer of these kinds of stories in the last year or so of Jack Schiff's editorship. And when Schiff realized he was being taken off the Batman books, he snuck "Captives of the Alien Zoo!" into his last issue of Detective Comics as a way to give the finger to the people who were criticizing him for doing what they wanted him to do.

Good for you, Mr. Schiff! 

I was reading one or two Jack Schiff era stories just about every night for a while. My dreams were full of gorilla gangsters and baby-chicken people and giant Batman. And because I usually read the Martian Manhunter story when I read a Batman story from Detective Comics, there was an orange space monkey, a big fat cop eating a sandwich at his desk and a pretty blonde policewoman just waiting to be kidnaped by orange people from Saturn.

BATMAN #299 and down (reviews by Hoosier X)


BATMAN #262
"The Scarecrow's Trail of Fear!"
April 1975
Story: Denny O'Neil
Art: Ernie Chua and Dick Giordano
Editor: Julius Schwartz

I'm not a huge fan of Scarecrow stories. I like the character well enough, his Golden Age appearances are actually pretty eerie and weird, and he has had his moments now and then over the last thirty or forty or fifty years.

So the story in Batman #262 is Denny O'Neil writing a Scarecrow story because … maybe he hadn't done one yet? I don’t know.

Batman catches up to a crook who knows where $100,000 is hidden but all the Caped Crusader can beat out of him is that it's at an amusement park and it has something to do with "Wir" or "Wirl." And then the guy dies of fright. The Scarecrow must have got to him! And then the Scarecrow tries to kill Batman in a hit-and-run and it's off to the Grand Globe Fun Park to get the money before Scarecrow does.

Batman tries to figure out if Wir or Wirl is a ride called the Whirligig, or maybe the Whirlwind. But no. It's the gigantic globe that's the centerpiece of the park. The crook was trying to say "world"!

Batman beats up the Scarecrow (who's been trying to kill him the whole time he's been at the amusement park) and hands him over to the police.

The end.

The real draw for this issue is the "New Look" reprints! You get the two-part story from Detective Comics #366 and #367, "The Round-Robin Death Threats" and "Where There's a Will –There's a Slay!"



I bought Batman #262 at a comic book store in Los Angeles in the 1990s. It wasn't the usual place where I got comics, but whenever I was in that part of Hollywood, I would stop at this place and see if they had any interesting 1970s (and sometimes 1960s) comics. They didn't have much inventory from that far back, but I would sometimes find cheap comics from before 1980 that were worth a look. That's where I got Kamandi #2 (my first ever issue of Kamandi) and Freedom Fighters #8 and a bunch of 1970s issues of the Sub-Mariner with Bill Everett art.

This was back when I didn't think very highly of the "New Look" (with a few exceptions) and I didn't like this two-parter much at all when I first read it!

But I've come around! It's actually a pretty lively, inventive story. And very silly.

Bruce Wayne opens his mail, reads a letter telling him to tell Commissioner Gordon to listen to a certain radio channel and also not to tell anybody about the letter, and then the heat from his fingers causes the letter to burst into flames and release a chemical that blows into his face and puts him in a hypnotic trance.

And so begins the round-robin death threats! As Batman, he tells Gordon to listen to the radio, but Robin – who finished his homework early and figured out something fishy was going on – busts in and stops Gordon from touching the radio, which releases a dart tipped with poison that would have killed Gordon in an hour. But this sets off Gordon's hypnotic trance! They follow him to an apartment building where he knocks on a door and then walks away. (And not to die from the poison as the mysterious schemer had planned.) Batman and Robin bust in the door and stop a man from touching the electric doorknob that would have shocked him, but left him time to dial a certain phone number before he died.

And so on and so on. If Batman and Robin hadn't interfered with the murdery part, it would have gone on and on until everybody in Gotham City was dead.

Well, it's not quite that elaborate.



At the end of the first issue, Batman has figured out who's behind the letters, but he can't say because of the hypnotic suggestion he's under. So he leaves a fake will for Robin with a clue hidden in the strange document …

Will Robin figure out the clue in time to save Batman?

Will the elaborate plot make any sense when it's finally revealed?

Will the writers remember to have somebody mention that Aunt Harriet is out of town so she won't notice the bizarre actions of Bruce and Dick?

It's all neatly tied up in the second part when it's revealed that the culprit is a renegade Mario brother.

It's a fun story but I doubt it would ever win a Pulitzer.

BATMAN #299 and down (reviews by Hoosier X)



BATMAN #257
"Hail Emperor Pengin!"
July/August 1974
Story: Denny O'Neil
Art: Irv Novick and Dick Giordano
Editor: Julius Schwartz

I love this whole package! I think it's the first issue of Batman I ever bought. I got it at a used-book store that had a small room in the back with bunches and bunches of comics, two for a quarter. But not this one. Because it was a Super-Spectacular issue with 100 pages, it was a quarter. There was a "25¢" sticker over the regular price.

It might be my favorite 100-Page Super-Spectacular! Every single story is above average to great, tending toward the latter. I love Superman #252. A couple of issues of Detective Comics might almost make it. There's an issue of Brace and the Bold (#116) that I haven't had for 20 years that I remember as being sublime. There's an issue of Superman Family that's pretty cool. But Batman #257 – this one I've been carrying around since 1975 or 1976 and every once in a while, I pick it up and read it again, and it's as great as ever.

First up, a "new" story with the Penguin! He hadn't appeared for four or five years at this point. It was probably nice for most of the fans to see old Pengy again!

The story opens at Hudson University (where Dick Grayson was going to college for about a billion years). A visiting 12-year-old king is kidnapped and taken away in a helicopter! He is the king of a country called Swawak, which I believe is somewhere between Badhnisia and Madripoor. (He is wearing a turban and a fancy Nehru jacket, so I’m guessing Swawak is sort of like Brunei.)

Dick Grayson turns into Robin and manages to capture one of the kidnappers. He takes the case to Batman, who quickly figures out that the Penguin is behind it and that he's probably keeping the king a hostage in the king's own castle in Swawak!

The Penguin's plan is this: He's going to threaten to kill the young king if the government doesn't sign over sovereignty to the Penguin! He always wanted to have his own country, you see. (I can't help but wish this had happened, and for several years, the Bronze Age DC Universe had a small sultanate at the tip of Sumatra or Aceh that was ruled by the Penguin. I can almost imagine him being a good ruler because it would hurt his pride if the country failed! But it could also be a haven for people like Sonar and Queen Bee and Felix Faust and Dr. Light. It would probably be an awful concept (from being taken too seriously) if it had been written after 1990.)

Batman and Robin sneak into the castle and complications ensue! One of the veiled servants is Talia in disguise! (This story was the first time I ever heard of Talia and Ras al Ghul (who is mentioned in passing).) Batman and Robin are taken out by a penguin with a drugged beak! (Stupid Bronze Age Batman!) Batman, Robin and Talia are tied up and dangled down a cliff where the Penguin expects them to be pecked to death by an eagle!

It's a sentimental favorite. I recognize that it's very silly, wonderfully wonderfully silly, but I loved it when I was a kid! I'm not sure it would make my Top Five Penguin Stories list, but I'm sure I would make room for it in the Top Ten!



"Hunt for a Robin-Killer!" (from Detective Comics #374 (April 1968))

This is pretty intense! Robin comes within an inch of being beaten to death by a guy wearing a purple corduroy jacket and sneakers. Batman comes across the almost lifeless body of Robin and vows to see that justice is done! He takes Robin to the hospital and then tracks the guy down and beats the snot out of him!

And then … it turns out the guy that he beat up has an unshakeable alibi! He is a prizefighter! And thousands of people saw him in the ring, winning the fight at about the time Robin was beaten up! And one of the witnesses was … Commissioner Gordon, who – for one issue only - turns out to be a big fan of prizefighting. He was getting the guy's autograph at the exact moment that Robin was beaten up!

How it all comes out at the end is not really what's important about this story. (If you must know … It was TWINS!) What's amazing is the brutal beatings! They're not brutal by today's standards, just a few trickles of blood, but they must have been a little shocking in 1968. And then Batman losing it when he puts the hammer down on the suspect … it's a little surprising. The art is by Gil Kane and Sid Greene, and the violence in these scenes is depicted through Kane close-ups, distorted facial expressions, flailing limbs and curled fingers.



"Ally Babble and the Fourteen Peeves!" (from Batman #30 (August-September 1945))

This story is hilarious! Back in the day, it was OK to write funny Batman stories. This one is written by Bill Finger, the best Batman writer of them all, with art by Dick Sprang, very possibly the best Batman artist ever.

Ally Babble is just another Gotham City citizen, just trying to get through the day in one of the most exhausting cities in the world. Ally does have one stand-out trait that makes him special – he never shuts up! He just talks and talks, and talks and talks, until the letterer gives up and fills the rest of the word balloon (and often most of the air around Ally's head and shoulders) with "Blah blah blah blah!"

As he walks down the street, he gets hit by a book just thrown out the window. It was thrown by a wealthy invalid, frustrated by all the annoying people in Gotham City. No, not the Riddler or Bane or the Polka-Dot Man. Just regular people, never returning books, pushing you back in the subway car, driving too fast and splashing water on pedestrians, wearing a big stupid hat in front of you at the movie theater, and so on and so on. The rich invalid hires Ally Babble to go and stop these people from being SO ANNOYING!

Which leads to an awful lot of assault and battery incidents, vandalism and trespassing as Ally Babble bashes a noisy dancer's head on the floor several times, pulls a rude driver out of his car and tosses him in a mud puddle and attacks a lady's hat with scissors during a movie. Things like that.

If it doesn't really sound like a case for Batman and Robin to you, well, you just haven't read enough Golden Age Batman! Ally Babble leads the Dynamic Duo on a merry chase through the city, but they are unable to stop his reign of terror as he continues to assault incompetent barbers and nails talkative people inside phone booths. Complications ensue when a couple of lowlifes named Hoiman and Shoiman start following Ally around and taking advantage of the chaos to rob the victims.

They just don't write them like this anymore! If I was ever writing Batman, the first thing I'd do is bring back Ally Babble … which is probably one of the main reasons I will never be writing Batman.



"The Conversational Clue" (from Batman #22 (April-May 1944))

Did you know Alfred had his own series in the Batman comic book in the mid-1940s? These stories were only four pages of Alfred walking around town and bumbling into crimes and almost getting killed before setting things aright in a humorous way. "The Conversational Clue" was the very first one! I've only read a few of them but they are always very amusing. This one has a rather suspenseful moment where Alfred calmly catches some TNT that has gone flying through the air during a scuffle with some safecrackers.



"Die Small –Die Big!" (from Detective Comics #385 (March 1969))

This is one of my favorite Batman stories ever! Written by Robert Kanigher with art by Bob Brown and Joe Giella.

Batman is practically a supporting character in this story. The focus is on Herbert Small, a nondescript mailman with no family and no friends who has a rare disease that gives him less than a month to live. He comes across a plot to kill Batman and comes up with a plan to divert attention to himself, thus saving Batman from this murderous cabal.

It’s very touching in so many ways! I don’t want to say too much more about it. It's just about the only story in comic bookdom that makes me cry. I teared up a little just now while I was reading it for about the millionth time.

I've been known to rag on Robert Kanigher a bit for some of his Wonder Woman stories, but he more than makes up for Mer-Boy and Bird-Boy with some of Batman stories, of which "Die Small – Die Big!" is the best!



"Rackety-Rax Racket!" (from Batman #30 (December 1945-January 1946))

One of the greatest Joker stories of all time!

The Joker notices all the crazy stunts that college kinds have to pull when they are a pledging a fraternity or going through an initiation prank. It strikes him as a great idea for a rash of theme crimes! The Joker captures Batman during the first crime and he forces Robin to commit a series of degrading or humiliating actions. The best one is where he forces Robin to go the toy department at a department store and buy a dolly! And he pays for it with pennies!

It's not just to embarrass Robin. The pennies have been treated so they will start a fire in a few hours and the Joker and his gang show up dressed as firemen and promptly empty out the jewelry counter immediately above the toy department.

Batman eventually frees himself and together Batman and Robin stop the latest crime spree.

Despite having Batman in his power for several days, the Joker seems to have no interest in his secret identity. The idea that Batman might have a secret identity isn’t even mentioned. The Joker just ties him to a chair and then annoys Batman by describing how he humiliated Robin.

And this story is the last time that Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend Linda Page was mentioned.



Do you like great Golden Age and Silver Age Batman stories that haven't been reprinted a bunch of times? Then Batman #257 is MUST-HAVE!

I love this story too. Batgirl had a solo back-up feature in Detective back then, and this is such an arresting Adams cover--but when I bought this issue I remember being disappointed that she was not part of the lead story "Die Small--Die Big!" as the cover implies. In the DSDB story, apparently Barbara Gordon is the redhead at Bruce's birthday party and only appears in a couple of panels, no dialogue.

This story is even included in the Batgirl Showcase volume!  

I was just looking up the Cavalier's last Golden Age appearance. It's Batman #26. It's also the first appearance of Brane, the 31st-century Batman. (Who is apparently not the same character as Brane Taylor, the other 31st-century Batman.) I had no idea there was a 31st-century Batman as early as 1944.