Unlike my previous tabloid-sized purchase, Batman's Strangest Cases wasn't part of my childhood collection. I had never heard of the book until DC reprinted it in March.
The moody cover—"moody" if you consider comic book pages blowing across a darkened urban landscape to be sinister, I guess—promises "The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Published," a bit of hyperbole considering all five of the stories contained within were relatively new when this collection was released in 1978. Unusual for the time, the creators are listed out front, and it is a murderer's row of talent: Denny O'Neil (who writes three of the stories), Neal Adams, Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, Frank Robbins, Dick Giordano, and Irv Novick. How recognizable these names were to newsstand patrons of the time is unknown.
The stories are all Bronze-Age fun, situated in the period where Batman was receiving the serious treatment by DC, but before he became the grim-and-gritty poster-child of the late 1980s to today.
My favorite story in the volume is the first, "Red Water Crimson Death," a team-up of sorts between the Dark Knight and Cain, host of DC's long-running House of Mystery anthology series. The latter stays in character throughout, breaking the fourth wall to narrate and offer sly asides to the audience, thus eschewing the caption boxes so prevalent in most mainstream titles of the time. It's an exciting tale that takes Batman from the mean streets of Gotham to the shores of Scotland for a real gothic-inspired mystery.
The second story is the oft-reprinted first meeting between Batman and Swamp Thing, from the seventh issue of Swampy's own book. The moody artwork by Wrightson is the main draw here (no pun intended), as I found the story didn't age as well as I thought it would. The visual of Swamp Thing in a yellow trenchcoat and fedora evokes memories of the golden age of detectives, which even in the 1970s was fading fast. A house ad at the end of the story promotes the second issue of The Original Swamp Thing Saga, a series of reprints that were my initial introduction to Len Wein and Wrightson's classic series. The wraparound cover depicts Swampy's battle with the Frankenstein Monster and Werewolf surrogates from issues three and four.
The third story in Batman's Strangest Cases is "The Batman Nobody Knows." According to the opening caption box, "three ghetto-hardened kids" have joined Bruce Wayne on a camping expedition in the woods, a scenario that in our jaded twenty-first century feels suspect on its very face. The kids each share their impressions of Batman as crimefighter, supernatural force, etc., culminating in an appearance by the real deal, whom the kids write off as Bruce Wayne in a not-so-impressive costume. A funny little short, this one serves as a segue into the final two tales, both of which are fairly oozing with gothic trappings.
In "The Demon of Gothos Mansion," our hero sets out to help Alfred Pennyworth's niece, who has taken a teaching job at a desolate estate "one hundred miles from the nearest town." Little does she—or Batman—know that she has been recruited to help bring to life a demon, Ballk, at the cost of her own life. Batman ingeniously escapes a death trap. More escapades ensue.
The final entry, "A Vow from the Grave," involves a group of displaced circus performers (what we'd once uncharitably characterize as "freaks") and an escaped murderer. As with all the stories in this volume illustrated by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano, this one is saturated—almost literally, given the incessant rainfall—with atmosphere, making them great candidates for the giant-sized treatment in this volume.
One refreshing aspect of all the stories is the way Batman is portrayed as fallible, albeit within the boundaries of pulpish fiction. In other words, he's a trained fighter who will come out on top by the end of every adventure (this is never in doubt), but he is by no means invincible. In "Red Water Crimson Death," a loose step leads a common thug to get the jump on him, causing Commissioner Gordon to insist that our hero go on a vacation. "You're no good to me dead!" Gordon exclaims.
Similarly, Batman looks like he's putting in some effort to dispatch bad guys on a dock in the Swamp Thing story, while O'Neil sees fit to add a caption in "The Demon of Gothos Mansion" to explain how Batman's defeat of two country thugs, armed with a sycthe and axe, is possible only because of "long years" of training. In Batman stories of the last few decades, such victories are treated as foregone conclusions, and our hero would never be tripped up by something as mundane as a loose step. The character is poorer for being divorced from his roots as a regular person in a costume and elevated to near-deity status in today's comics and films.
A final observation is how much narrative ground can be covered so quickly in these stories. It takes exactly one page of story to get Bruce Wayne from Gotham City to a secluded country estate in "The Demon of Gothos Mansion," an entire story that, in 15 pages, is a marvel of economy. Similar efficiency is evidenced in "A Vow from the Grave," which has the same truncated page count. I know it's Old Man Shouts at Cloud territory to bitch about decompression in modern comics—and, listen, I love a lot of modern books—but it's so refreshing to read a complete story in just one sitting.
Overall, I really enjoyed Batman's Strangest Cases, three of which were brand-new to me. For $14.99, it was a fun stroll through the Bronze Age.
