Friday, June 22, 2012

There Is No Hope in Crime Alley, Night 22


Panels from "How to Be the Batman!" in Detective Comics #190 (December 1952), script by Bill Finger (?), pencils by Bob Kane [Batman & Robin figures] and Lew Sayre Schwartz [all other pencils], inks by Stan Kaye



6 comments:

Blam said...

If only the Waynes had encountered a plain old bandit instead of a hoodlum bandit. Of course, Bruce is danged lucky that it wasn't a hoodlum ruffian bandit punk goon. There'd be nothing left of his parents to bury and none of Bruce left to bury them.

Chance said...

Why do you call this revisionism? From this series you've been running it seems at least a few other versions have Martha dying of a heart attack after Thomas is shot.

Bully said...

Chance: I did it for the kicks.

Blam said...

Bully's hardly running 'em in chronological printed order, though. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure that both Waynes are shot in the first telling; this may well be the version in which, Batman's adventures having become a mite less dark (if not yet a whole Mite less dark...), Martha's death is retconned to a heart attack after Thomas is shot. The colors are really impressive here, by the way.

Blam said...

I just took my beloved, beat-up ol' Secret Origins of the Super DC Heroes off the shelf. And I can confirm that the, um, original origin, reprinted popularly from 1940's Batman #1 although it actually first appeared with a different splash in Detective Comics #33, has Martha shot after she screams for help when Thomas is shot. "The Origin of The Batman!" in 1948's Batman, which precedes the story whose panels are excerpted here, shows Martha dying from the shock of Thomas's shooting. I suspect that Bully has enough of the relevant material queued up for later Nights of Crime Alley that he could pinpoint an earlier transition if one exists.

Blam said...

Annnd my chronological search for Joe Chill in the Character field at the GCD revealed that, as I suspected, the 1948 origin didn't just introduce Lew Moxon as the guy behind the Waynes' murder but named Joe Chill. I don't think that there was any earlier extended origin, but I'll give Bully a chance to chime in on that score. 8^)