Not much time to read last night; my wife finally got a netbook and I spent some time cleaning out all the “free trial” and “buy me”
garbage, and getting updates, virus protection and the like worked out. Nonetheless got a little more read in Batman Chronicles; that first Joker story really is one of the best of the Golden Age stories, and I really forget how striking it is when the character doesn’t smile. A 20 page deep search on Google Image shows that nobody seems to have scanned or posted that remarkable first image. Perhaps I will see what I can do.
The Joker, just as I had recalled, had an impressive body count, but I hadn’t expected Batman to try to top it in the next story. Hugo Strange breaks out of prison, liberates five very insane dudes from an asylum, then uses his weird science and growth hormones to turn them into fifteen foot-tall monsters. Batman punches Strange out a window and over a cliff (though, to be frank, even at this early point in the series, Batman might as well have stuffed him into a blast furnace and cheerfully waved, “See you later!”), strafes a truck carrying a monster with the Batplane’s machine guns, then plays King Kong with the last monster as he climbs the highest building in Gotham.
In any case, I’m a few minutes away from a meeting in which we will plan out how exactly my job will attempt to kill me this Saturday at our coverage of the city’s 4th of July parade. As we’re looking at a 50% chance of rain currently, it may not even happen. Talk about mixed emotions – the overtime would be very nice. We can but wait and see what the universe holds for us.
Meantime, here’s the 1943 Batman dealing with ne’er-do-wells:
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