Even though I had other posts scheduled, I still missed last Friday, since I was down with a pretty bad cold. But, one 2-liter bottle of generic Nyquil later, and we're back in business! Today, we've got a Batman comic overshadowed by it's back-up feature: Detective Comics #449, "Midnight Rustler of Gotham City!" Written by Elliot S! Maggin, pencils by Ernie Chan (spelled Chua here) and Jose Garcia-Lopez.
With Gotham City in the middle of a "meat shortage," Batman is investigating a string of cattle rustling, using a scuba-jet thing to swim out to a cattle boat. The rustler has the drop on Bats, but has a misfire, and Bats brings him in. The rustler's name is Tad Wolfe, and while being processed, his twin brother Zachary shows up to yell at him. Zachary was a trucking millionaire, and part of Bruce Wayne's social circle; but Wayne is having dreams about an old medicine chief he met in New Mexico and Tad's misfire.
Batman goes to Zachary's, and hears him on the radio giving instructions. Desperately, he tries to order his men to unload their cargo before Batman slugs him. The cargo, of course, is the stolen cattle; and Batman has to help out rounding them up.
And the rest of the story doesn't make a lot of sense: Tad had been in debt to the mob, and Zach called in the tip to get him put in jail for protection. Tad had faked the misfire, which doesn't seem like it helped him any. Maybe he wasn't a killer, but I'm pretty sure shooting Batman gets you a lot of credit in Gotham; and I don't know how much protection prison would get him, either. For some reason, I thought there would be a twin-swap in there, too.
OK, so not a Bat-classic. But the back-up's a bit stronger:
"The Mystery Man Who Walked on Air!" Story by Mary Skrenes, art by Dick Giordano. On a second honeymoon, Ralph and Sue encounter a funny old man, who flies with a bird, and swims with a fish. Three seconds on Google and you can find the answer to this one, but I think this might've been the first Elongated Man story based on his birthday mysteries, set up by his friends to challenge him.
I thought this one had been reprinted more than once, too: I had it in a DC Digest. By the way, Ralph solves it...but by misreading a clue!
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