Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Batman #93: Bye-bye, Bad Baby!

So while Robin is baby-shaming Junior...


what is Batman doing?  You know: Batman stuff.


You KNOW he was waiting for some opportunity to try that trick for MONTHS.

Just to recap, Batman jumped on a moving armored car, and with no purchase and in danger of being thrown off any minute, lassoed a branch from a passing tree, and wrapping it in cloth (somehow) ripped from his costume, fashioned a makeshift torch that stayed alight atop this speeding vehicle so he could smoke-out the driver.  Apparently the utility belt DOES run out of smoke pellets, or Batman's just showing off.

Robin's been performing ridiculous acrobatics for Junior, rather than just plopping him in a secure bed in an unused wing of the mansion til he cries himself to sleep. Why did you take him out of the Penguin's cage AT ALL?


Given your 'simple' solution to the armored car after you hung upside from a helicopter defusing a bomb, Batman, I shudder to imagine what "something more elaborate" means to you.

Holy crap, I hope these two never have kids, cuz they are SUCKERS.  At least they haven't involved sensible Golden Age Alfred in their--


--oh. My mistake.

So Batman and Robin decide to just toss their elderly butler around like a ragdoll to keep a baby amused.  If that's not enough to keep you up tonight, then riddle me this: where ARE they and exactly how can Alfred tell Cousin Jane is approaching the front door?


Actually, the baby can live to become the next Robin. It's Cousin JANE who will need to die.
"Alfred; get the Oejay IllChay Ostumcay..."

ARE THERE NO PHONES ON EARTH-1? I suppose it would explain the Bat-Signal.


"Well, that's it, Robin; you've done it again!"

Why would he do that, Cousin Jane? Because he's a BABY. They also stuff peas up their noses and poop their pants.  Why would they do THAT, huh?!


I'm pretty sure I saw this on "Frasier" once.

When you long for the innocence of old comic books stories... please remember this one and re-think.


The Day Alfred's Hair Turned White.

Gone forever, eh?  Well, at least until some writer thinks to bring back JUNIOR as the mysterious foe who threatens to expose Batman's secret identity, kind of like the brought back Jim Gordon's boy as a psychokiller....

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I spotted a typo; it was supposed to say, "Then we'd better switch too, Bruce -- and dick, fast!"

Also, Wesley Willis would agree with Robin on this whole thing:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/wbez-cdn/legacy/image/1ww.jpg

John C said...

How far away is Gotham City from "the tropics"? Dick has been wearing that poofy green shirt the entire time, except for that weird interlude where he decided to wear his costume around the manor. And Jane doesn't care about him screaming "bad baby!" at her child for no reason?

I was going to make a comment about Jane "departing forever" because Alfred cut the brake lines, but then I started looking at that last panel and...is "the manor" just a bungalow with a small front yard? It looks a lot like the curb is visible out those picture windows.

Bryan L said...

Yeah, I've spent time around a lot of mothers (I've got a passel of sisters and nieces) and no way would you get away with unwarranted screaming at one of their kids. Getting your ass chewed would be the mildest thing that happened to you.

Maybe Wayne Manor is a compound, and the Bat-gang just moves to another residence while the main manor is being cleaned? Baby-proofed? Eh, it's probably easier to accept that Golden Age reality was a fluid and malleable thing.

The Silver Fox said...

Saying "bad baby" was nothing when this story originally came out. (And maybe the kid actually had done something wrong. Jane didn't ask.) In those days, people would even SPANK other people's children occasionally.

The Silver Fox said...

There's no typo. Robin's saying they need to switch to their secret identities, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.

Scipio said...

"that poofy green shirt"
I LOVE that shirt. Dick should always dress like a tiny flamenco dancer. Always remember, he's still circus folk.

John C said...

It is a surprisingly nice shirt, given DC's poor history with poofy clothes. But it seems like he's been wearing it (except for some brief Robin-y interludes) from the time the burglars simply walked into Mortar (after midnight) through milk delivery time, early-morning helicopter gymnastics, broad daylight smoke-pot improvisation, clairvoyant butler trapeze, and Jane's return. Seems like Jane couldn't have gone far in that time, unless this story took weeks.

Probably a long way to go for a half-joking comment, but it looks like the closest point in "the tropics" to a New York-like place would be Havana, which sounds like it would've been about a four hour flight at the time. So, maybe Jane did drop off the kid, fly down to high-five Mr. Jane, and fly back home for her important dinner reservations at Bob Evans.

Bryan, I think the room they're in at the end is the same one as on the splash page, which...it's hard to imagine a less baby-proofed location, given the couch and cushions. Although it's probably not out of the question for Bruce to have cloned the room in every building on the property, complete with secret staircases to the Batcave...

Bryan L said...

I know they did, Silver Fox. I'm old. I was the recipient of several spankings in school (I think most were unwarranted but I'm not an impartial observer). But warranted intervention is different than unwarranted intervention, even then. I suppose it's possible the kid did something wrong, but there wasn't much time between outing Bruce and Dick's crazed outburst (I mean, look at that expression).

That probably explains why we never saw Cousin Jane again.