During one five-year period, Batman gained debilitating super powers from a comet, literally turned negative, grew to giant size, became an “element man,” superheated and was transformed into a bronze statue, a human torch, a mummy, a Clayface Batman, a green-skinned telekinetic alien, a paper-thin Batman emitting green eye beams, an energy duplicate of himself and a distorted mirror image of himself.
In a way, I suppose, these were all distorted mirror images of Batman during an era when temporary radical physical transformation was a recurrent story element at DC.
Typical of these tales is The Zebra Batman!, a story written by Bill Finger and drawn by Sheldon Moldoff for Detective Comics 275 (Jan. 1960).
Mixing his flying mammal imagery with that of an African equid was obviously not designed to strike terror into the hearts of criminals, but Batman had no choice in the matter. Magnetic lines of force had painted the black-and-white stripes on a super-powered villain, Zebra-Man, and on Batman himself following an accident.
“This meant a sad existence for Batman” noted comics historian Tony Guerrero. “He couldn't get near anyone. He couldn't eat. His secret identity would be in jeopardy if he tried walking around as Bruce Wayne.”
“For a campy ’60s story, it brought up some interesting points. Aside from why energy has force lines that cause a person to turn black and white and repel everything, it’s great that some of the side effects were considered. The fact that Batman wouldn’t be able to eat (poor Robin almost got hit in the head by a platter of food in the scenario) and having his secret identity be in jeopardy was a nice touch. Usually in this time period, strange and bizarre things happened and any possible consequence was thrown out the window.”
The story was quickly reprinted during the summer of 1963 in the fifth Batman annual, which featured the theme The Strange Lives of Batman and Robin.
Strange indeed.
Bob Doncaster wrote: Unknown to readers was that Batman and Jimmy Olsen were having a transformation competition.
ReplyDeleteMichael Iozzino wrote: That era of Bats was very weird and very cool ! 😎
ReplyDeleteBruce Kanin wrote: Sci-Fi & fantasy elements opened up a near endless number of stories for otherwise "ordinary" characters like Batman (as opposed to characters grounded in Sci-Fi like Superman & GL). Tomahawk was another one that went from somewhat ordinary frontier adventures to stories almost as bizarre as Batman's during that era.
ReplyDeleteWhile I enjoyed these stories as a kid, and can re-read them as long as I put myself back in that era, mentally (lol), they do not represent "The Bat-Man" that I much prefer, which is a highly driven man bent on eradicating the "cowardly lot" of criminals (and, no sidekick, please). :)
Carl Thiel wrote: Nice overview of a weird period in our cultural history. Movies at the time were constantly transforming a variety of fauna into monsters many times their normal size (or shrinking them!), so why not transform Batman (and Jimmy and Lois et al.)? How much may be attributed to cold war anxiety is debatable if entirely coincidental, of course...
ReplyDeleteJames Beers wrote: They may seem silly now but they were absolutely thrilling when I was eight years old. The 1964 New Look came as something of a shock as the SF Batman was the norm to me.
ReplyDeleteRobert Milne wrote: We so need these stories in a collected format.
ReplyDeleteThomas Payne wrote: I so wish there was a collection of all of Batman's weird stories from this period. This was the Batman I started with, and I loved the stuff. Appreciated the more classic crime/superhero adventures, but the Dark Knight will never grab me like the Zebra Batman or the Rainbow Batman, or the Alien Batman. These stories of alien dimensions and such got me interested in science fiction, which led to me reading books as well as my comics.
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