For me, it was Detective #556:



The review for that issue.

Thanks for the compliment! I wish I could review Batman #299 and down. But I've only got a little over 20 issues from the "before #300" category. (More if you consider reprints. I have #1 to #8 in Archives format.)

The issues I have are all pretty good! When I was a kid, I bought Batman when it had one of the villains I recognized from the TV show, so I have a couple of really good Riddler stories (#263 and #279), a Joker story (#286), the Penguin (a great two-parter in #287 and #288), the famous "Where Were You the Night Batman Was Killed?" storyline in #291 to #294 and the Mad Hatter story in #297.

And I also have a number of carefully selected back issues, also mostly focused on the great villains. I have #153, the famous "Prisoners of Three Worlds" story and also three 80-Page Giants. And #197 (Catwoman is jealous of Batgirl!), #251 (Neal Adams Joker), #257 (A new Penguin story and loads of reprints), #262 (the Scarecrow), #266 (a great Catwoman story) and a few others. (I have a few digital issues from Comixology as well.)

I collect Detective Comics, and I only pick up old issues of Batman occasionally. I have about 120 issues of Detective from the #301 to #500 time period (and every issue from #500 to #881.)

But I was thinking about resurrecting the Batman Appreciation Thread to talk about some of the villains, the great, the near-great and the not-so-great. Keep your eyes open! I've been contemplating the Penguin for the last few days. (But you'll have to wait a bit for my write-up on Johnny Witts. I'm still waiting for his first appearance to show up in the mail. Be patient!)

You may be in luck! I just ordered Detective Comics #468, the final issue of the Calculator's brief and glorious 1970s reign! Since I also ordered #463 and #464, I'm only missing #467!

So I will probably write about the Calculator. But it will have to keep until after I'm done with Johnny Witts!

My first three issues of Detective were #465, 466 and 467. I had to wait over two decades to read the finish in #468 gloriously drawn by Marshall Rogers.

His six appearances in the Batman tv series, plus another in the movie, made up for it.

Batman #463



"Spirit of the Beast, Part Two"
writer: Alan Grant
pencils: Norm Breyfogle
inks: Steve Mitchell
colors: Adrienne Roy
letters: Todd Klein
asst. editor: Kelley Puckett
editor: Denis O'Neil
Batman creator: Bob Kane

grade: D


Last issue, I noted that Batman was regularly portrayed out of character and was even doing things that were completely illogical for him. That trend continues with this issue.

Exhibit One: Driving cross country in the Batmobile



This is an ultra-high performance custom vehicle that must be painstakingly serviced on a regular basis, the parts custom ordered (which, in itself, must be tricky to do). You don't just drive it anywhere on long roadtrips. Batman shows up in Vegas as Bruce Wayne anyway, so why the heck couldn't he just get a company jet to take him there? He's gone through a whole lot of effort to keep the Batmobile with him on this Pan American journey for two issues now, but why? Because Breyfogle likes drawing it?


Exhibit Two: Sharing your secret identity with a random dude mixed up in a criminal organization of murderous Native Americans that you literally just met.



Granted, the guy is blind, but his dog is not, and he's chilling there in the back seat. They even make a point of how the dog does not recognize him at first when he appears as Bruce Wayne.



Exhibit Three: Taking the long route to your destination on "Just a whim...But I can't help feeling there's something more."

Morrison pulled this crap in "Gothic". Batman does not do superstition, people! He's the ultimate logician who uses superstition to intimidate others and then laughs at it because, as a detective and scientist, he doesn't subscribe to any of it at all.

And it's nice to see Batman has so much time, spending days out of state and now taking the long way for the heck of it, because Gotham certainly doesn't need him. The two murders that started this whole thing are certainly a whole lot bigger than the rest of Gotham's crime that Batman could be stopping right now if he was there.



Exhibit Four: When a dog is blocking the road, of course the logical solution is to get out and growl at it.



Seriously, what the heck?



Beyond all that, this story is just absolutely not working for me. I've no doubt this was partly O'Neil's idea, as the Native American dude has already recognized the significance of his protector being "The Bat!", but yeah, that was a totally different tribe residing in a totally different part of the North American continent. It's a little embarrassing and inadvertently racist to make this attempt at being multicultural and then assume that all Native American tribes subscribe to the same belief system.

And as for where this is going, where's the suspense? As they head off in search of the evil tribe leader at the end, the old Native American dude warns "You would not be so eager, my friend, if you knew what waits for you there!" but we've seen absolutely no indication that this guy is anything more than a thug in a headdress ordering around two completely unimpressive lackies. For that matter, what's driving Batman to do this? What's SO big about the two murders that happened in Gotham that Batman is so totally invested in this? I miss the more realistic approach Jim Starlin took way back with the Dumpster Killer storyline, where Batman had to put that mystery on hiatus in order to give attention to more urgent needs, before returning to a case that was intriguing and upsetting but less pressing.

And hey, that caption on the cover promising that Batman will confront the unthinkable? What? An old blind dude and his dog? Growling at a random dog in the middle of a road?


Important Details:

- The verdict is in on Tim Drake as Robin:



No longer The Robin Nobody Wanted.


- O'Neil also mentions that Tim Burton had final approval on the new Neal Adams designed Robin costume. Further proof that Tim Drake was created by mandate of Warner Communications in order to tie in with the films and merchandising (Robin was originally slated to appear in both the first and second Batman films before being cut from both).






Minor Details:

- We've already been shown that Batman's eyes are covered in opaque glass or plastic, and that his chest plate is bullet proof, but here we see that the chest plate is truly three dimensional, allowing for a blind man to touch and feel it.




- Perhaps this story's one saving grace is how much fun Breyfogle has drawing that dog. It's got far more personality than anyone else in this story (including a seriously mischaracterized Batman):






plot synopsis in one sentence:

Batman is driving to Vegas in pursuit of his next lead and is stopped by the blind man's dog, which leads him to the old man just as he's about to be murdered, so Batman and the dog intervene, the old man taking Batman as a protector sent by the gods; he gives Batman an incomplete backstory on the tribe's vendetta against white men and the two then venture off to Vegas together in pursuit of the tribal organization behind these killings.

Really, very little happens in these 22 pages