Matthew Sunrich Presents... Detective Comics #408
Detective Comics #408
By Matthew Sunrich
Batman has a relationship with the Gothic that goes all the way back to
Detective Comics #29 (1939).
Around that time, seminal horror films such as Frankenstein (and its sequels), Dracula,
and the various adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories (The Black Cat) and poetry (The Raven), all of which have strong
Gothic elements, were immensely popular at the box office. Horror as a distinct
genre did not yet exist (the work of its practitioners at the time, which
included such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and August Derleth,
was lumped into the category of "weird fiction"), but audiences
clearly responded enthusiastically to its tropes. Terror is a powerful emotion,
and filmmakers lined their pockets again and again by enticing moviegoers with
the dark romances of nineteenth-century literature.
Horace Walpole's novella The
Castle of Otranto (1764) singlehandedly laid the groundwork for Gothic
fiction (mystery, the supernatural, dark secrets, curses, svelte females in
nightgowns), and authors have used its motifs in various ways ever since. The
one thing that almost all Gothic stories share, however, is the building, be it manse, castle, or office
block. The evil needs somewhere to set up shop, after all. In many stories, the
building itself is a character (Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House being an
excellent example), although the source of its sentience may be obscure. These
things don't always have to be explained, and it's actually often more
effective if they're not.
It makes perfect sense that comic-book writers would recognize the
value of the Gothic, as well.
As I've mentioned before, Batman was originally designed to be the
antithesis of Superman. His early adventures pitted him against vampires,
madmen, zombies, and other characters we associate with horror. Many of his
cases took him away from Gotham City (even though "Gotham" is an
alternate name for New York City, I'm sure the creators' decision to use this
name was no accident) to shadowy locations and cobwebby castles filled with
hidden passageways, spooky statuary, and chandeliers dripping with the paraffin
of blood-red candles. Like the winged mammal from which he took his name, Batman
mostly stayed out of sight during the daylight hours. Unfortunately, this didn't
last long, and by the early 1940s his "dark avenger of the night"
persona was scrapped. Thankfully, he regained it in 1970.
Several of Batman's Bronze-Age stories take place in creepy residences,
but Detective Comics #408, "The
House That Haunted Batman," puts an interesting spin on the concept. Writers
Len Wein and Marv Wolfman immediately draw the reader into the story by "talking"
directly to him, via the captions, as if he were the main character. This
technique had been used in comics before, notably in Stan Lee and Bill Everett's
"Zombie" in Menace #5
(1953), and there are probably instances of it in earlier superhero comics, but,
regardless of its originality or lack thereof, it elicits a visceral response
from the reader because rather than just reading about Batman, he has become
Batman.
As in Batman #246 (see
previous article), Robin has been kidnapped by an unknown party from Hudson
University and is being used as bait for the Dark Knight. The story opens with
Batman's arrival at a "dusty old mansion" on the outskirts of Gotham
City. What makes it particularly strange is that it wasn't there last week. How the hell does a huge house just
appear out of nowhere? You can be certain that the situation is only going to
get weirder.
Soon after entering, Batman finds his ward standing alone in a darkened
corridor. The Boy Wonder collapses, and when the Caped Crusader catches him,
Robin immediately decomposes into sand, which runs through Batman's fingers. Before
he can deal with this, Batman is compelled to rush up the stairs to locate the
source of a piercing scream. It turns out to be a phonograph recording, but as
he lifts the needle someone fires on him. Pursuing the assailant, Batman finds
Robin holding the gun.
Falling backwards to avoid the bullets, the Dark Knight slips into a
hidden chamber and complete darkness. When he lights a match, he beholds a
bizarre scene: his own body in a coffin, surrounded by his friends and allies
(Superman, Commissioner Gordon, Robin, et al.), who take turns proclaiming how
Batman was a worthless, fraudulent crime fighter, which greatly upsets him. His
match goes out, and when he manages to light another, he finds the deathly
tableau gone and the walls closing in on him.
At this juncture, the visions he has been experiencing fade away, and
he finds himself trapped in a glass tube. Robin is likewise encapsulated
nearby. On a monitor in front of them, Batman recognizes the face of Dr.
Tzin-Tzin, the master illusionist, a villain he originally faced in Detective Comics #354 (1966). This is
noteworthy because prior to this point in the Bronze Age, Batman had never
encountered an established supervillain (though it's arguable whether one
previous appearance constitutes establishment). All of his foes were one-off
criminals that met their ends at a given issue's conclusion. The Joker,
Two-Face, Catwoman, and the other members of his rogues' gallery would not show
up until later. (Tzin-Tzin appears again in Batman
#s 284 and 285, but we'll examine those issues in a future article, I'm sure.)
In any event, Batman manages to escape and takes out the illusionist's
goons. Disgusted with whole situation and accepting the fact that none of his
schemes have succeeded, Tzin-Tzin descends into the chamber, intending to take
the Dark Knight out the old-fashioned way: with a bullet. Before he can fire
his gun, however, Robin subdues him from behind. The reunited partners restrain
their foe and take him to the Batmobile, but he distracts them with one final
illusion and gets away. Then, without warning, the mysterious house bursts into
flame.
In Batman's earliest Bronze-Age adventures, ghosts were, by all
appearances, real, but as time went on the writers changed their minds about
this and decided that the supernatural elements in the stories should be
explained away in some fashion, perhaps to make things more believable (as if a
man battling criminals in a bat suit is plausible). In the case of this story,
Batman's bizarre visions are illusions created by Tzin-Tzin, which is
reasonable enough, although I personally have no problem with the idea of
actual ghosts. I'm reminded of the fiction of American author Henry James
(which was itself Gothic); some of his stories, such as The Turn of the Screw, feature spectres, but literary critics have
suggested that they are either metaphorical or illusory. (Whatever, says I.)
In any event, the "source" of the visions isn't really
important. What matters is that they are, by nature, Gothic. The house is
labyrinthine, and the pervasive darkness operates as a disorienting, almost
tangible, presence. The unsettling image of Batman's corpse lying in a coffin and
his subsequent "entombment" (Poe's "The Premature Burial"
comes to mind) are, arguably, about as Gothic as it gets. At one point, a suit
of armor is even used as a shield (bear in mind that Walpole's inspiration for Otranto was Medieval Romance).
Neal Adams' art in this issue is, of course, dynamic. That almost goes
without saying.
Want this story? (The correct answer is "yes," incidentally.) You can find it reprinted in Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams volume 2 (now in paperback) and Detective Comics #477. The first one is your best bet, really.
Want this story? (The correct answer is "yes," incidentally.) You can find it reprinted in Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams volume 2 (now in paperback) and Detective Comics #477. The first one is your best bet, really.
Labels: Batman, Detective Comics, Matt Sunrich, review
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