“No, I forgot to shave today!” “Wait until a few reboots.”
Batman #9 (Facsimile Edition)
DC Comics (February/March, 1942, reprint date August, 2025)
A Golden Age comic where the title character is the majority of the book? That’s been surprisingly rare, though there are still some bad comedy bits to ignore and a back-up not featuring the Dynamic Duo. That I expect. Also of interest is the credits. According to the Grand Comic Database and a list of credits printed in Alter Ego magazine #25, stories credited to Bob Kane alone were actually written by Bill Finger. That’s kind of strange to me because I thought Finger did the drawing uncredited, but Kane is credited as the artist.
Also credited on art in some of those stories with Kane is Jerry Robinson with George Roussos on backgrounds and lettering. Nobody ever remembers who did the colors in these comics, which is a shame. Fred Ray, the source of these credits, claims to have made the cover pencils with Robinson on inking. I don’t know. It’s all a mess to me, but that’s not new from the period. Let’s look at the stories.
“The Four Fates” (named by GCD based on the last line of the splash page blurb)
Four criminals try to steal a visiting Hindu mystic’s ruby…not realizing he was being interviewed live on radio at the time or that Batman and Robin were listening when the criminals were cursed by four separate fates and one of the crooks shot him dead. There are some interesting interpretations of the individual curses which make the story fun if you like seeing dead bad guys. Our heroes really didn’t need to be in the story, though. This one the cops could have done on their own even in Gotham City given that the curse is what does them in. It’s still a good story, though Batman questioning curses is different given what his life and the DC Universe would become.
The White Whale
A white whale is sinking ships, but it’s not Moby Dick and Captain Burly isn’t Ahab. He just wants the money, and he’ll kidnap a crew to do it, including a disguised Bruce Wayne. Frankly, dealing with him could have been the story on its own, but it turns out one of the insurance company workers is taking a cut of his company’s insurance payouts in exchange for sinking the ships. It’s two cases that should have been separate stories but it wasn’t a bad story as is.
The Case Of The Lucky Lawbreakers
We get one of Batman’s usual villains, the Joker, in this tale. It’s actually an interesting scam. Joker robs a bank and the amount stolen just happens to match prizes won at raffles by crooks who just finished their time in the slammer. What a coincidence? Not to Batman and Robin. Batman comes up with an ingenious way to get out of a trap that nowadays he’d probably have a gadget for…or a large jack that somehow fit his utility belt in the 60s TV show. I’m also noticing that Batman is a lot more quippy in these stories. In the last one he even chided Robin for a really bad pun. This isn’t the moody brooding Batman we’re used to these days, which is fine but this might be a bit too far the other way.
Private Pete by Henry Noltinoff
Unfortunately for me, this comedy has enough pages to be reviewed instead of the short gags he did earlier in the comic. It’s still a bunch of gags as Pete annoys his sarge a lot. It’s like a discount Beetle Bailey except Pete isn’t nearly so lazy.
“Christmas”
I guess they just went for whatever word had a difference in the typeset and decided that was the title. So here’s a late, additional Christmas review I guess. While bringing toys to a local orphanage (take that, Batman haters), Bruce and Dick overhear a boy convinced Santa Claus will bring him his daddy. He believes the man is on a trip, but it’s a trip up the river for a murder he swears he didn’t do. So the Dynamic Duo work to expose the man who is responsible, get a crooked lookout man on the straight and narrow with his own Santa guise, and even Robin gets to have a Christmas party. Naming the framed man Bob Cratchit seems a bit odd given that this isn’t a Christmas Carol type story, and Batman had to threaten the fake Santa to play Santa at the orphanage (plus we know Santa IS real in the DC Universe even back then–pretty sure Superman helped him once during this period) but otherwise the story wasn’t too bad.
overall
The facsimile uses a cheaper paper but I don’t think it’s newsprint. That was a nice touch along with the reprinted old time comic ads. And they didn’t try to update the coloring, which always looks terrible. Outside of the Christmas story for a comic that would be reprinted at Christmastime, I don’t know why this issue was chosen. Nothing significant to the history of Batman, Robin, or the Joker takes place here. They’re just average Batman stories of the period, even the Christmas one. I guess $6.99 (with some slightly higher priced special editions) is cheaper than the $12,000 the original is going for on eBay according to Comic Book Realm, but I’m still surprised they spent the time on so average an issue. Still an enjoyable read but the price is kind of high, like so many other comics nowadays, while the Action Comics reprint I’ll be doing next week isn’t nearly as high and has TWO important stories. I don’t feel robbed, just underwhelmed.
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