Detective #426 Aug 72, on sale June 29 1972
The penultimate Frank Robbins-drawn Batman story, close to the end of an arc he started in Detective #416 with "Man-Bat Madness".
Fan reaction to his artwork had been varied to say the least. For those fans who had come to know and love the realistic, athletic Neal Adams Batman, the artwork of Frank Robbins was a smack in the kisser, an unsettling throwback to the 1940s and a style of art pioneered by Milton Caniff. I was one of those fans in the summer of 1972, knocked off-kilter by the abupt change in style, by the cartoonish and unrealistic physiques. Yet, like so many of the early detractors, I became a huge fan. Darwyn Cooke is probably the closest we have today who epitomises the same use of a cartoonish style to bring energy and verve and excitement and a sense of place and time in equal measure.
Robbins only drew five Batman stories between 1971-1972, each one a classic of genre storytelling - the Gothic Horror, the Locked-Room mystery, the Prison Break, the impassive Hunter, and the Modern Horror - the stories bookended by Man-Bat's closure.
Most of Robbins' Batman work was as a writer, but the stories he also drew have a power and pacing that the solely written efforts do not evince. Like his previous solo effort - "Blind Justice, Blind Fear" (Detective #421) - a melodramatic ode to the prison break dramas of the thirties, this story is classic Frank Robbins; a pared-down story - tight plotting - spare artwork - fifteen pages of taut tale framed in a classic three-act story arc. Robbins' Batman is a private detective working pro-bono. The Bat-costume is his work clothes, his trench-coat. He's first and foremost a shamus - a colder Philip Marlowe, roaming the mean streets, the deserted wharves, mixing with the big money, hiding in the neon shadows, going where the police cannot go.
Robbins only drew five Batman stories between 1971-1972, each one a classic of genre storytelling - the Gothic Horror, the Locked-Room mystery, the Prison Break, the impassive Hunter, and the Modern Horror - the stories bookended by Man-Bat's closure.
Most of Robbins' Batman work was as a writer, but the stories he also drew have a power and pacing that the solely written efforts do not evince. Like his previous solo effort - "Blind Justice, Blind Fear" (Detective #421) - a melodramatic ode to the prison break dramas of the thirties, this story is classic Frank Robbins; a pared-down story - tight plotting - spare artwork - fifteen pages of taut tale framed in a classic three-act story arc. Robbins' Batman is a private detective working pro-bono. The Bat-costume is his work clothes, his trench-coat. He's first and foremost a shamus - a colder Philip Marlowe, roaming the mean streets, the deserted wharves, mixing with the big money, hiding in the neon shadows, going where the police cannot go.
