Speedy is easily impressed.

Just for the record, Superman also has a giant penny and dinosaur in his Fortress. 



Though it's seemingly there with his consent, I wonder if Batman feels insulted that Superman combined his idea for a giant penny and giant Joker playing card to come up with this.  In all likelihood, Batman's attitude is probably "You call that a giant penny?"



Of course, since he's Superman, that could also be a real living dinosaur walking around the Fortress for all we know.  

And here's the second dinosaur Hoosier mentioned in the Bat Cave.



I suspect that this version last made an appearance in Two Face: Strikes Twice but I'm not sure.  As for where it's gone, I wonder if Batman's Cave is so large that he's simply misplaced it.  

This came in the mail today. It's the second appearance of Blockbuster. Those sandals. I never liked Blockbuster when I was a kid, and I think it was mostly his sandals.

There's a secret villain controlling Blockbuster in this one! On the last page it turns out to be ... the Outsider! I did not know this was one of the appearances of the Outsider. On the fan page, there's a letter saying that the Outsider MUST be Alfred. So I guess it wasn't any big surprise when the Outsider was revealed in #356.

The Elongated Man story is hilarious. It makes very little sense, but you get used to that when you read the Elongated Man. Nice Infantino art. Sue wants to go fishing with Ralph and she has outfitted herself in the latest chic fishing fashions from Paris. It looks like something Julie Christie would wear, but since Sue has that lovely raven-black bob (with a streak of blue), I'll say she looks more like Suzanne Pleshette.

I'm up to Detective Comics #459 and I wanted to say a few words about Bronze Age Batman before moving on to the three-part story in Detective Comics #460 to #462 (which features Captain Stingaree and is a favorite of mine and I'll probably write a few paragraphs about it).

For some time, the Batman stories in Detective Comics have stuck to a one-shot format, a series of short stories about Batman the Detective, with no contuing stories and very little continuing themes beyond "Batman is a detective." And they shied away from the old costumed villains. This has gone on since about Detecive Comics #390. There have been a few continued stories (like the Bat-Murderer storyline in #444 to #448) and early in the period there was a continuing thread of the League of Assassins and Ras al Ghul and Talia. And those aren't insubstantial. But for the most part, it's been one-shot stories, and no Joker, no Catwoman, no Penguin, no Riddler and so on. We have gotten Man-Bat and the SPook, and I like boh these characters, so there's that.

And then there's the back-up stories of widly uneven quality ranging from Kurt Schaffenberger on the Elongated Man (he draws such a great Sue Dibny) to some fairly unmemorable Hawkman stories.

Detective Comics as a comic book has had several different fomrats, from the standard size to the 48-page comics to the 100-Page Super-Spectacular.

I don't want to put these stories down at all because a lot of them are really fine stories and very inventive, especially considering the writers are having to write mystery stories that can be laid out, followed and solved in 12 or 15 pages.

But It's gotten a bit monotonous. I was on the verge of taking a break a few days ago when i remembered what was just around the corner.

The three-parter with Captain Stingaree!

And then a little farther on - Those weird back-ups with the Calculator!

And Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin!

Silver St. Cloud!

And the return of Professor Hugo Strange, the Penguin, Deadshot and the Joker!

And not too long after that - Dollar Comics!

I will be doing this project forever if I take a break every time I get a little bored,



One story I want to comment on is "There Is No Hope In Crime Alley!" in Detective Comics #457.

I've never been a big fan of this one. I've known of it for years. I think it was in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told! And I get why it's important. It inroduces Leslie Thompkins and even more important, it's the first time anyone wrote a story dealing with the immediate aftermath of of the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. Prior to this story, I don't think anyone had ever offered any details about what happened after Joe Chill shot the Waynes and ran off laughing into the night to tell Lew Moxon that the deed was done.

So here's young Bruce, and his parents have just been coldly dispatched and he's standing over their bodies and crying. What happened next? Well, a nice lady named Leslie Thompkins found him and hugged him and helped him in his time of need.

But any details beyond that are not in this story. There's no mention that she's a doctor who runs a clinic or anything beyond Leslie being a nice old lady who carries the funds from the charity bake sale from ... I guess from the church to the bank, in the middle of the night for some reason.

I had never noticed it before, but reading it last night, it struck me how ludicrous her clothes were in the scenes set in the 1970s. My grandmothers were both in their 50s or 60s and my great-grandmother was in her 70s at the time, and none of them ever looked like they were emulating Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Leslie Thompkins looks more like a stereotype of an old lady that you might see on The Simpsons or The Family Guy. When was Leslie Thompkins supposed to be young - 1911? I guess it's not that far-fetched if she's supposed to a Miss Havisham-like nonagenarian who dodders around with the church money in her purse, waiting to be mugged by Gotham City toughs.

She needs to move to a nicer city. Maybe Flash's Central City. Or the Martian Manhunter's Middletown.

I got Detective Comics #340 in the mail yesterday! Except for the 10-pence stamp and a date written very small on the logo, it's in very nice shape. It was advertised as 8.0 and I wouldn't grade it that high, but it's not off my much. Well worth the $19.50 I paid for it! (I guess the stamp and the writing scared off other bidders. Maybe?)

The Batman story is another chapter in the Outsider saga. This is the one where the Outsider gets control of the Dynamic Duo's crime-fighting equipment, so they are continually getting attacked by batarangs and the Bat-mobile and bat-whatnots. So much silliness! So much fun!

The Elongated Man story is pretty good too. Ralph and Sue get tickets to a hit play ... and they are the only ones in the audience. But the show goes on as usual. Ralph's nose starts twitching ... and we're off again on another weirdly contrived Elongated Man mystery.

I roll my eyes a lot at these Elongated Man stories, but I've gotten used to them and I love Ralph and Sue so much! I've been wondering if they ever had a permanent house. They travel around and live in hotels and visit cities with names like Western City and somehow always come across the weirdest mysteries. And they were still doing it in the 1970s when they would occasionally appear in a backup story. The only time (that I can remember) when they seemed to have a permanent home was in the Justice League Detroit days when they lived in the compound with J'onn Jonzz, Vixen, Steel, Zatanna, Dale Gunn and the rest.

Only one more issue (#347) and I'll have every issue of Detective Comics from #301 on!

I forgot to add this weird little bit of trivia I noticed from various house ads in the issues I've been looking at.

Detective Comics went back to monthly status with #446 after being bi-monthly for a while. It was the same month as Action Comics #446!

So from #446 (dated April 1975) to #466 (December 1976), Detective Comics and Action Comics had the same issue number.