Batman trading card stories #3: Yikes! Spikes! (And not Sugar and Spike)

© Heritage Auctions and DC comics - original painting of "Black Bat" Batman Card #17

Being Batman Day 2021, let’s turn our attention to one of the nastiest of death traps. Spikes!

Well, ol’ Bats does seem to be in a bit of a predicament in this one, doesn’t he? Even if the machinery must be incredibly complex to close in around him from four sides AND the top! Take a look closely at his eyes and you’ll see he’s a bit concerned! Only very infrequently do we see Bats’ eyes in the mask.

The image above is of the actual painting of Black Bat trading card #17 “Spikes of Death”. You’ll notice that the actual card as printed (see below) has removed the dots for Batman’s eyes before publication.

© DC Comics, Topps Cards

So what inspired this image? Well, as we’ve established in previous blogs, layout penciller Bob Powell and artist Norm Saunders had been provided with no “bible” for the upcoming Adam West TV show, nor view of advance episodes, so we have to look back to the pulps, to the 1943 Batman serial, and to a 1950’s Batman story published in Worlds Finest to determine where the inspiration for the painting came from.

The idea of a hero trapped between slowly closing walls has been a trope for many years in books and films. To then “up the ante” by adding spikes to the walls brings an extra level of sadism to what is definitively a torture chamber death trap.

Of course, the original idea came from the infamous medieval torture device, the Iron Maiden - a sarcophagus lined with metal spikes designed to first torture the unhappy victim before causing painful death.

The lurid pulps in the 1930s were not slow to get in on the act, with Dime Detective pulp from July 1933 being one of the earliest American crime magazines to display the Iron Maiden in action on its front cover.

A few years later Thrilling Mystery - the Fiend of Sleepy Hollow Vol II #1 Feb 1936 adapted the Iron Maiden concept for a particularly grisly cover painted by Ralph Desoto of a girl about to be impaled on a movable spiked wall.

But it wasn’t until 1943 that the first instance of Batman trapped between spikes attached to a moving wall occurred in the first Batman movie serial staring Lewis Wilson, a film serial responsible for many innovations which found their way into the canon of the Batman comics.

© Columbia Pictures 1943. Batman Serial

EC comics took up the spike theme in their Vault of Horror Vol 1 #13 (June 1950?) story Island of Death, where dogs fall into a pit lined with spikes.

If was a further three years later that the comic-book Batman finally encountered the spiked wall-menace on the printed page in Worlds Finest #62 (Jan-Feb 1953) "Sir Batman and The Black Knight" - where we find Batman &Robin trapped between walls of spikes.

In this story, Batman and Robin take on the guise of Medieval Knights to pursue the Black Rogue at Unqua Castle, north of Gotham City, a chateau in medieval style once owned by a rich millionaire and now abandoned.

In a surreal story by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang, our heroes (kitted our in armour), scale the castle, but find themselves in the spiky room. Only their quick wits, climbing abilities and a handy roof beam enable them to survive.

In April 1954,  Sprang/Finger concocted “The Testing of Batman” in Batman #83 , as Batman & Robin undergo rigorous endurance tests, of which one is running on a conveyor belt away from huge spikes! 

Once the Comics Code Authority cracked down on comics’ depiction of cruel and unusual situations in Feb 1955, that was the end of spiky threats in DC’s 4-colour magazines.

The British Avengers TV series of 1965 delved into medieval torture themes with an Iron Maiden serving as a secret entrance in the episode Castle De’ath, and walls with spikes shortly returned in the 1966 Batman TV episode “The Purrfect Crime” , which obviously owes a debt in staging to the original 1943 Batman TV serial. In this case, Batman finds the spikes are made of soft rubber, and the room is a decoy trap for Batman (the real trap subsequently being a man-eating tiger).

© DC Comics and Greenway Productions

Five years later, the Iron Maiden made its return to DC comics in Mr Miracle #4 (Sept/Oct 1971) as the death trap on a ghoulish front cover. The scene is repeated in the story within. (Mr Miracle escapes by the use of an acid spray to disintegrate the back of the sarcophagus).

© DC Comics

More recently the threat of a pit with spikes was to be found in the opening scenes of the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones subsequently finds himself trapped in a room with spikes protruding from a descending ceiling in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).

I’m sure there are other instances out there, but from the perspective of the Batman trading card, I think it is safe to say that Bob Powell and Norman Saunders were inspired by the 1943 Batman serial and the pre-CCA code World’s Finest #62.

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[Random Observation #1: the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed the similarity between the endings of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and Batman “The Perfect Crime” in that in each case the female villain falls into a crevasse in the ground, and is holding on with one hand while straining to reach out either to the Holy Grail or the treasure. In both cases, the women fall to their supposed demise because their greed outweighs their survival instinct, despite the best efforts and exhortations of our heroes.]

Random Observation #2: the chivalric characters adopted by Batman and Robin in the 1953 World’s Finest tale probably contributed to the inspiration for Knight & Squire by Grant Morrison.