"She Was Only An Umpire's Daughter..."

A Batman/Joker story was running through my head the other day and then, coincidently, my friend Ulysses brought up the same story later that day. So now I'll share it with you (in case you've never read it).

Originally, "This One'll Kill You, Batman" appeared in one of those legendary 100-page giants that DC used to print in the 1970s (specifically, in Batman #260, 1975). As you can see from the cover, it was chockful of goodies: reprints, appended to one main, new story (as was the pattern for such issues).

This Denny O'Neill story has been described on-line as one of the worst he ever wrote. I strongly, vehemently disagree; Denny wrote much much worse stuff (just read some of his JLA work).

But this is the first story to show the Joker in an asylum for the criminally insane, rather than a regular prison. Two-Face is also there, so, although the asylum is unnamed, it is what we would later know as Arkham. Batman shows up (Poof, just like that! It was the Seventies, after all...), and during a struggle with other inmates the Joker has released, takes a bath in an overturned vat of coffee (yup; it was the Seventies).

Throughout the story, Batman starts giggling more and more at very inappropriate things. You heard me, giggling. Turns out the coffee was drugged (the Joker's a busy guy) with a specialized Joker venom that progressively inverts your humor reaction while poisoning you.

I usually hate Denny's writing with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, but, dang, you gotta give him props for imagination on that one.

Anyway, so when Batman goes to find "the only physican brilliant enough to cure him", he finds that the Joker has kidnaoped him. In comic books, it is always that case that medical, technical, or scientific problems can be solved only by a maximum of one to three people (and if it's two people, one is evil and one is good but gets kidnapped; if it's three people, the third is in an accessible, politically unfriendly country).

When Batman catches up with the Joker, he's in an abandoned theater with the physican trapped in a guillotine sitting on the stage. All Batman has to do is reach them, but he can't because he's doubled up with laughter at the moldy vaudeville jokes the Joker is spouting.

My personal favorite was "she was only an umpire's daughter but she was never safe when she was out."

The hook? Batman stops laughing by concentrating on something he considers genuinely funny: scenes from the Marx Brothers movies.

And that is why the story could never be retold; what the heck would our humorless Batman concentrate on to save himself?

If you want to read it for yourself, you can buy it in the Batman of the Seventies volume.