To celebrate eighty years of stories featuring the Caped Crusader, each day of this week I’ll be highlighting something I find especially neat about Batman comics.
Today, let’s look at over-the-top action scenes set among giant props.
Batman #185
Batman #47
These kinds of set pieces were a hallmark of Golden and Silver Age Batman adventures. The Dynamic Duo fought their rogues in all sorts of outlandish exhibitions, often incorporating extravagant props into their battles.
Artists like Lew Schwarz, Dick Sprang, Jim Mooney, and Sheldon Moldoff had a field day weaving in huge violins or giant cash registers into their action scenes…
Detective Comics #311
This goofy running gag gave those comics a visually surreal atmosphere that fitted in nicely with the overall playful tone.
More often than not, Batman and Robin would exchange puns related to the props they were using… For example, in ‘The Man with the Automatic Brain!’ (Batman #52, cover-dated April-May 1949), they fight a criminal gang by jumping on the keys of a giant typewriter and battering their foes with each letter. The Caped Crusader tells the gang leader that he’s finished, quipping: ‘Want us to spell it out for you?’ The Boy Wonder gets nastier: ‘Hit the shift lock, Batman, and let’s make this a capital punishment!’
Basically, the Dynamic Duo always seemed like they were having loads of fun…
Batman #75
When later artists, from the grim-and-gritty years, wanted to recapture the charming spirit of the classic era, they often did it by revisiting this specific trope, which became a recurring nostalgic symbol of a more lighthearted approach to the world of Batman.
In 1987, while many superhero series (including the post-Dark Knight Returns Batman comics) were moving towards somber realism, Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis went in the opposite direction by paying homage to their predecessors with this cool set piece:
Detective Comics #573
That same year, Max Allan Collins and Dave Cockrum pulled a similar stunt, with a throwback of their own:
Batman #411
As with a lot of things in the Batman franchise, this element has gained an intertextual, metafictional dimension over time. More than a feature of older comics, the oversized props motif is now treated as a feature of the Dark Knight’s shifting past.
Thus, for example, in 2001, when Ed Brubaker and Joe Giella wanted to do a flashback about the early days of the Dynamic Duo, they went with another giant cash register:
Turning Points #2
And in case you’re wondering where everybody got all these humongous props, Sholly Fisch and Rick Burchett have given us a possible answer…
Batman: The Brave and the Bold (v2) #16
As you can see in these last couple of examples, many of the best creators know that part of the fun of Batman’s long, rich, and inconsistent history is giving it a kind of dreamlike continuity, embracing the contradictions while incorporating them in a fluid, multilayered narrative.
In this spirit, writer Will Pfeifer and artist Brent Anderson did a wonderful short story back in 2003, where they treated the giant cash register not just as a geeky wink to the fans, but also as an integral aspect of Gotham City’s diegetic identity:
Gotham Knights #46