Sunday 26 April 2020

Detective Comics #440 - Ghost Mountain Midnight.

This post is brought to you by the kind sponsorship of Charlie Horse 47, via Patreon. Thank you, Charlie. There is, I am sure, a place in Heaven for you.

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Detective Comics #440, Ghost Mountain Midnight
If ever there was a comic I bought for the cover, it was this one.

Admittedly, I also bought it because it starred Batman, was an issue of Detective Comics and contained a massive 100 pages of, no doubt, slam-bam action just asking to be read.

But most of all, I bought it because its cover featured a purple bear threatening our hero - as portrayed by Jolting Jim Aparo.

Well, that's all very well and great but what of the book's actual contents?

Bruce Wayne's on a date in a restaurant when a bunch of rednecks burst in and kidnap one of the waitresses.

Needless to say, it's mere moments before Bruce has made his excuses and, in his guise as Gotham's mysterious protector, gone off to deal with the abductors,

Despite being a man who can, apparently, beat up Superman any time he wants to, our hero's quickly vanquished by a single hillbilly with a rifle butt and then has to go trudging off to the wrongdoers' hometown, in order to make a second attempt at rescuing the girl who we now know is called Sarah Beth.

She is, it seems, the sister of her abductors and, for some reason, they believe it vital that they pop her clogs for her as soon as possible.

Detective Comics #440, Batman meets the Sheriff
Upon arriving in town, our hero finds an uncooperative Sheriff who, like any responsible officer of the law, is more interested in finding an illegal still than in preventing the murder of waitresses and, so, Bats has to enter the local mountains where the kidnappers dwell, in order to fulfill his mission.

There, by eavesdropping, he discovers that, in order to keep a Native American curse at bay, the family believes it must, from time to time, sacrifice one of its own.

And this time is Sarah Beth's turn!

Detective Comics #440, at the graveside
Clearly, Batman can't stand for that kind of nonsense and flings himself into the fray.

He's clearly been having fighting lessons since their last encounter because, despite being heavily outnumbered, he soon despatches the deluded simpletons and goes to rescue Sarah Beth from her chains.

That's when an inconvenient bear shows up.

But it's no ordinary bear.

It's a homicidal bear.

With not a picnic basket in sight and having been injured by fire, it's taken to eating people - and Batman's on the menu!

Not for long, he isn't. No mere twelve-foot tall agglomeration of teeth and claws is a match for the man the Germans know as Die Fledermausenmenschen and he soon sends it flying off a cliff to its doom.

But what a lucky break that is because, at the foot of that cliff, he finds the illegal still the sheriff told him about, concludes it was that which had burnt the bear, and then returns to town to give the lawman a good smack in the mouth, having deduced, on no great evidence, that he put the still there in the first place.

Mission accomplished.

Detective Comics #440, Wham!
I do like this tale. With its Deliverance meets Scooby-Doo plot, it's the sort of thing I love to see from a Batman story.

I do enjoy it when Batman's handled as a detective rather than a super-hero and this yarn, with its minor sense of mystery and its very simple plot, thus, appeals to me greatly.

I suspect it's not viewed as one of the all-time classic Batman adventures but it's solidly written by Archie Goodwin and cleanly drawn by Sal Amendola; with Dick Giordano's inks helping to lend it that look we associate with 1970s Batman.

So, yes, I can announce that, for me, with that cover, this story, that bear, and dozens of pages of back-up strips, this was definitely a book worth spending that 50 pence on.

35 comments:

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Steve! I actually bought and read this comic, though I have no recollection! Back in the day, the ONLY way to access the Golden Age of the non-Timely and non-DC world of Quality Comics and Fawcett were through these giants!

In general, someone like Lou Fine was drawing the Doll Man as I recall, for Quality. Absolutely superior art! Especially when compared to what may be considered the "primitive" art of Timely and DC. Though, Simon/Kirby could put out some find stuff whilst at DC the first time around!

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Charlie Horse 47 is proud to be a sponsor of this most venerable of comic sites!

Also, I feel good, like James Brown, clicking on your Amazon link and hope you grow fabulously wealthy off the commissions! How else are all of us gonna hang out with you in Sheffield until you pay for us to come!

And the picture of the pair of CH 47s, flying along the Italian Riveria towards France in 1985 is simply superb!

Fantastic Four follower said...

Batman and Detective were in a Golden era between 1970 and 1975.Added to this were those 100pagers which I loved and the artwork by Adams, Novick, Aparo, Robbins etc which delivered every time! Happy Times.

Anonymous said...

Great review Steve - you sum up the appeal of that era of the Batman well. Thats a nice observation about the slightly Scooby Doo quality it often had.

But did you not have any thoughts about the all-new Manhunter, by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson?

-sean

Steve W. said...

Sean, I do have thoughts about that Manhunter strip but I felt I should save them for another post.

FFF, the TV show aside, that era was my first introduction to Batman and I loved it and the artists who drew it. The fact that Batman didn't have super-powers always made him so much more relatable, for me, than most super-heroes - even if he was a billionaire who dressed up as a bat and had a nuclear reactor in his basement.

Charlie, you're right. While I knew plenty about the pre-1970s Marvel stories, my knowledge of old DC came entirely from the 100-pagers and the Secret Origins comics.

Anonymous said...

I was such a hardcore Marvel Zombie back in the day that I didn’t buy a single DC 100 pager off the rack. Not ONE. Which sounds absolutely insane to me today. I’ve since managed to get almost all of them, except for maybe a JUSTICE LEAGUE or two, and I’m pretty sure I still don’t have any of the Romance ones (those have always been way more expensive due to their relative rarity, and I’m not sure they’re worth it).The DETECTIVE Giants are by far my favorites. They seem a bit ‘edgier’ than the BATMAN Giants in general, and of course there are those incredible Manhunter back-ups.

- b.t.

Anonymous said...

Look forward to reading your take on Manhunter Steve.
Actually, thinking about it, isn't the "Simon & Kirby sensation from comics golden age" promised on the cover an old Manhunter story? Seems odd to include both iterations of a character that only had a very tenuous connection... but sounds like thats a topic for another time.

DC were less familiar than Marvel to me too, which became part of their appeal - the continuity was a more of a mystery, and then you had the whole multiple earth thing (still something of a rarefied concept back then) adding a pleasing strangeness.
The JLA/JSA crossovers in particular really appealed to me. How was I to know that would lead to a Crisis of Infinite Reboots in the future?

Anonymous said...

PS Forgot to sign off there. Duh

-sean

Charlie Horse 47 said...

The whole multiple-earth thing was a cool concept back then for sure Sean. It was even cool around JLA 100 when I think they introduced and the 7 Soldiers of Victory on an Earth 3?

I really don't recall which earth all the Quality and Fawcett characters resided on? Anyone?

And the 100 page Giants! Wow. I've kept a bunch laying around, But the only reason I look at them is for that Golden Age goodness... I only really skim the Batman, Superman, or JLA stories. I'm not sure what was going on with the printing process at that time, but the then new stories actually seem faded out at this point while the reprints still pop.

Anonymous said...

Bronze Age DC is The Gift That Keeps On Giving for me, to this very day. Once I landed a job that gave me a steady income, I began filling in the holes in my Bronze Age Marvel runs, and eventually got to the point where I pretty much had every single Marvel issue that I desired, from about 1966 to 1989. I’d complete runs that I didn’t even like all that much, like KA-ZAR or TWO IN ONE, Just Because (a lot of those have since been purged). But of course I still have the urge to go digging thru Back Issue bins, and I keep coming across little Silver and Bronze Age DC gems that I never owned and didn’t even know I would be interested in. Just a few months ago, my LCS dumped a bunch of WORLDS FINEST Dollar Comics in their $1 bin, and I was happy to pick up 5 or 6 that had Shazam stories by Don Newton. And I recently found some Lois Lane comics that had some surprisingly nice art by John Rosenberger and Vince Colletta, so now I’m on the lookout for more of those. Don’t think I’m ever going to acquire a real taste for Curt Swan Superman comics — or for Dick Dillin, or Irv Novick, for that matter, though I can enjoy them occasionally.

-b.t.

Anonymous said...

Them Fawcett characters were inhabiting Earth-S, Charlie. I dunno who the Quality characters were. Was that Charlton Comics? I dunno if they had a designated universe or not.
Sometimes I feel like I don't got a designated universe either.
Steve, thanks for the post. I don't say that enough. These one-issue reviews are a nice change of pace, a little variety. And I agree with the fellas that D.C.'s Bronze Age is a vast resource for interesting comics. It's the stuff I grew up with, and quite frankly, was often mystified by.
'70's Batman had a certain charm. It was before they started writing him as being somewhat psychotic.

M.P.

Anonymous said...

The Charlton lot inhabited Earth-4 M.P., although DC only acquired the rights shortly before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, so it wasn't around for long.

The Quality characters - Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, Dollman etc - were from Earth X, which was not unlike the alternative universe from Philip K Dick's Man In The High Castle. Only, you know, with superheroes, and aimed at kids.

-sean

Anonymous said...

b.t, if you're looking for issues of Lois Lane, #106 is a bit of an unmissable classic.
www.sequentialcrush.com/blog/2013/02/unlikely-romance-supermans-girl-friend

-sean

Anonymous said...

Sean, I gotta confess, I didn't know that the Freedom Fighters were from Quality Comics and not D.C., as were other characters such as Plastic Man, the Red Bee, and Kid Eternity. I gather that D.C. must've scooped up the rights to these characters and the same time they bought the rights to the Fawcett heroes.
That would explain why the Freedom Fighters and Plastic Man got their own D.C. titles in the '70's, just like Captain Marvel. Of course they called that "Shazam", because sneaky Stan had Marvel put out their own, um, Captain Marvel while the original was in copyright limbo.
The Red Bee didn't get his own comic, sadly. I think Grant Morrison coulda made that work, somehow, and the Bee did show up in Morrison's Animal Man, as a denizen of Comic Book Limbo.
So did Mr. Freeze, but apparently he got out somehow. Maybe with his cold powers.

M.P.

Redartz said...

B.t.- you're not alone. I never bought any of the DC 100 pagers either. At least, not until the decade's end when I grabbed up the dollar Batman Family and Adventure. But they are always on my back issue radar nowadays.

Nice review Steve; good solid bronze age action...

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that DC has bought back the Red Bee since then M.P., only the new one is a woman. Its political correctness gone mad...

-sean

Anonymous said...

Sean, I assume there was an upgrade. She's got some extra powers, right?
On the other hand, the power to have bees attack your enemy is a potent weapon indeed. That would make even the Joker run away.
I been stung before and it ain't no kinda fun.

M.P.

Charlie Horse 47 said...

MP - Basically, Quality Comics was the best of the best regarding stories and art, during the Golden Age.

Quality's big guns were The Blackhawks drawn by Reed Crandall, Plastic Man written/drawn by Jack Cole, and The Spirit written/drawn by Will Eisner. They also had Lou Fine as an artist as well, who was superb and did The Ray, The Black Condor, etc.

Plas and the Spirit are in a league of their own and Black Hawks did run from like 1940 - 1970. All have been reincarnated numerous times.

I might recommend you buy Steranko's History of Comics Volume 2. It focuses on the Golden Age's non-DC/Timely companies. You will not be disappointed!

Anonymous said...

I would question whether the Spirit was a Quality character Charlie. Sure, they put out reprints, but publishers don't create characters (artists and writers do that) they can only own them. And Eisner owned the rights to the Spirit.

-sean

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Hi Sean! Well I learn something knew every day! I didn't realize Quality was simply reprinting the Sunday newspaper sections! I always assumed Eisner fed product to both channels.

I wonder how DC got in the act of reprinting all that, yet again, in their Archives. I'm sure they did it to earn profits but I wonder what the catalyst was. I mean, the Spirit, as great as he / Eisner was, has to be relatively obscure outside us hard core old timers?

I mean, I don't think the Spirit ever showed up on Earth 1, 2, 3, X, etc.

Redartz said...

Charlie- don't know the other Earths, but the Spirit did have a phenomenal team up with Batman. In the great "Batman/Spirit" one shot by Darwyn Cooke. Highly recommend it to anyone!

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Red! OK I need to find me a copy of that! But how did they portray the two characters: were they in form? Or, did Bats become a bit of a goof or the Spirit become quite serious? (If I may use those generalizations, lol.)

Anonymous said...

I suppose you have to be at least fairly interested in old comics to be into the Spirit, Charlie, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he's obscure; artists and writers from Steranko to Frank Miller and Alan Moore have talked up Eisner's work.
And compared to other comics from the 40s - which I often find hard to enjoy, except as kitsch - its very readable and accessible, and affordable reprints have been relatively easy to find since the days of the Warren magazines.

DC published Spirit archives and comics because they got the licence from Eisner - or his estate - in the mid 00s. Presumably they thought if an independent like Kitchen Sink could do well out of reprinting the series for years a bigger publisher would do even better...

-sean

Charlie Horse 47 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Charlie Horse 47 said...

HI Sean,

I think what happens is b/c we are "old" LOL, I am referring to a younger generation.

So when I say obscure, I'm talking like someone 40 and under maybe? I mean the first Spirit archives are 20 years old this year. I am going to broadly generalize and suggest that only a more mature reader would have even picked up an archive, so we'll say 20 years old, 20 years ago and that's 40.

I think the younger ones have way more material to read than we did, and thus if you are under 40 Spirit, Blackhawks, Captain Marvel Jr, Boy Commandos, etc. are basically obscure. But I don't have data to support that.

So why did I buy the Spirit at 14 years old? First, Steranko's History of Comics. There was nothing else like that History in the book stores. Second, the Warren mags were positioned by the comic spinners. Granted there was porn mags between the spinners and the comic mags (Spirit, Conan, etc.) but this 14 year old was able to stay focused just long enough to say, "Hey - I got to get this!"

How's a kid in a Comic Book Store gonna discover The Spirit by chance, these days? I don't think he will?

Anonymous said...

Hows a kid in a comic book store gonna discover The Spirit these days?
Same way you or I did Charlie - an interest in comics leads to wanting to find out more about them. Your intro was the Steranko book, mine one called Masters of Comic Book Art (an end of the 70s anthology of work by 10 artists, from Eisner to Moebius to Crumb).

If anything, its easier these days - kids don't even have to find a book, they can just look up stuff online. Chance doesn't really come in to it imo - I mean, if you're into comics how many writers or artists really do exceptional work like that in any decade?

-sean

Redartz said...

Charlie- that Batman/Spirit book handled both characters (and their respective supporting casts) perfectly. Iirc, Jeph Loeb wrote it; if you've seen Batman: The Animated Series, you'll have seen this Batman.

Sean- must agree with you; I feel anyone who develops an interest in the medium of comics today will find a wealth of information and material. And the abundance of reprints helps expose younger folks to some of those vintage characters and creators. As for the Spirit, I was introduced to him (and by extension, to Will Eisner) by the Warren magazines, which just looked irresistible on the rack. Also, there was a great book of comics history : "Comix"-A History of the American Comic Book" by Les Daniels. Found that shortly after getting hooked on comics, and that tome expanded my horizons exponentially.

Anonymous said...

Red, when I was a young kid my local library had Les Daniels' book. Man, I read that thing up and down and sideways. If memory serves (and that's questionable, because I don't even remember what I had for lunch today, or even if I had it), there was a pretty substantial portion of the book devoted to what was called "underground comics."
You know, like Mickey the Rat and Wonder Warthog. That kinda stuff would blow a young kid's mind back before cable and the interwebs.
Y'know, I'm giving serious thought to ordering a copy on E-Bay or somesuch.
Not this month, though. Financially I'm balls to the wall right now. These are cheap meat-eatin' days.

M.P.

Anonymous said...

I’m sure a lot of people of our generation first knew The Spirit from the Warren reprints and / or the Steranko HISTORY. That’s how it was for me — I’d gotten a tiny glimpse of the character via ads in the other Warren mags, was intrigued that the art looked a lot like Mike Ploog and thought it seemed like a really odd outlier next to CREEPY, EERIE, VAMPI and FM (no monsters?). They were even selling bagged ‘Spirit Sections’ in the Captain Co. catalog pages in the back, and I couldn’t wrap my head around whatever THOSE were supposed to be. Then I saw THE SPIRIT #6 on the magazine rack at the liquor store, had to have it, devoured it and became an Instant Fan.

As luck would have it, I got the Steranko HISTORY V. 2 for Christmas just a few weeks later, and also that great Les Daniels book too. Spent many wonderful hours that Christmas vacation, reading and re-reading those two books.

-b.t.

Charlie Horse 47 said...

b.t. and Redartz - The process by which you became exposed to The Spirit is nearly identical to mine. Granted there is more than one way to skin a cat (I've only skinned rabbits and chickens.) But how's a 15 year old going to stumble over The Spirit today?

I can't argue with what Sean and Red are saying that "If a kid wants to he can find it." Indeed he can! And the kid today would have access to the whole run of The Spirit via the DC Archives and possibly digitally. But why would the kid look for it in the first place? Where would he encounter The Spirit to inspire his curiosity in the first place?

Put another way, in 1975, our catalyst was the Warren Mags on the stands and Steranko taking us to 30 years earlier (1945).

A kid today would be looking at the Death of Superman that was all the rage around 1990 if he went back 30 years! If he goes back 60 years, he's looking at the beginning of the Marvel Age!

What would serve as a catalyst today that would trigger a kid to go back to 1940 and Quality or Fawcett or Fiction House comics. He won't see diddly in comic book stores based on the ones I visit every few months. That being said, I don't know what kids look at online and if they may get exposure there?


Anonymous said...

But Charlie, theres nothing particularly interesting about the Death of Superman, unless you're really into the character.
My point was that the Spirit - or rather, Eisner's work - is impressive and remains so, which is why new readers will find it, whether its 30 or 70 (yikes!) years old is neither here nor there.

Sure, if you argued 40s comic artists like, say, Lou Fine or Mac Raboy are unlikely to be rediscovered by youngsters at this point I'd agree, but even back in the 80s I wasn't that interested. Because while they were clearly much better artists than most of their contemporaries, unless you're really into the history of superheroes old Dollman or Green Lama comics just seem dated.

I suppose the thing that might limit the Spirit's appeal today is a character like Ebony White.
Not to be a nostalgia killer;) but whatever you think about the rights and wrongs its not hard to see how that could be off-putting for some.
That kind of thing was already very questionable in the 80s, and it probably helped that I first read a lot of the stories in the early Kitchen Sink - rather than Warren - era, which tended to play down that aspect of the series.

-sean

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Hi Sean!

You are more optimistic than me.

But I would agree that Eisner at least has his name attached to the Eisner Awards and it's possible that may pique some kid's curiosity, should he come across those annual awards. (I assume www sites that kids frequent would mention the awards?)

And yes, regrettably, the others greats are fading fast... Cole, Crandall, Fine, Raboy, Foster, Hogarth, et al.

Back in the 70s, you could not help but be exposed to these names, if you subscribed the bi-weekly / monthly journals like The Buyers Guide for Comic Fandom.

In this digital age, it seems to easy to create and live inside an internet / digital bubble or our choice and not get that exposure.

OK... Green Lama isn't exactly a pager turner, LOL!

Anonymous said...

Well, I don't disagree with the basic idea that comics - like other popular artforms - have a cultural life of maybe 30 years or so then disappear from view Charlie.
But exceptional works persist, as classics. I expect people into films are still discovering Citizen Kane too.

-sean

Graham said...

More than anything at the time, this Super Spectacular run in Detective Comics got me going again with Batman. I had been hit or miss for a few years, coming in at the end of the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams run, but losing interest afterward. I really liked Archie Goodwin's stories and the artists who drew that run (Aparo, Amendola, Chaykin, Toth, and Simonson) were very inspired choices to me. Also loved the Manhunter back feature, too, and the reprints were fantastic, too.

Steve W. said...

Hi, Graham, apart from one issue of The Brave and the Bold, my first Batman comics were all 100 pagers. They really sold me on the character.

Red, Sean, Charlie, MP, Bt, my first exposure to Will Eisner and The Spirit was in a book on how to draw comics that I bought in the very early 1990s. Up until that point, I'd been totally unaware of their existence.

Sean, the Simon and Kirby sensation is indeed the Golden Age Manhunter. As a kid, I loved that it was included and gave me a chance to compare it with the modern incarnation of the character.