I probably could've taken this comic apart for better scans, it wouldn't have hurt it any.

Back in the second year of this blog we saw a later Batman/Mister Miracle team-up from Brave and the Bold, and today I just so happen to have an earlier one. Sure it's beat to hell, but that just means it's been loved! From 1974, The Brave and the Bold #112, featuring "The Impossible Escape" Written by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo. 

This was a hundred-pager, but it's sadly lost the cover and a few pages, so I don't get to see the conclusion of Batman and Green Lantern's team-up against the Time Commander, or the first few pages of this one. And since it's Bob Haney, we could've already missed an alien invasion, a South American coup, three visits from Morgana the kissing bandit, and the astonishing return of Jim Brown.

We meet Batman and Commissioner Gordon, fighting invaders to an Egyptian tomb moved stone-by-stone to Gotham, already in progress. (An aside here, possibly for my own reference: I have seen the phrase "stone-by-stone" dropped casually in a number of comics, usually to justify why there would be a Transylvanian-looking castle in New Jersey or something, but while it sounds like a massive undertaking it did happen on occasion! Pretty good article here.) The invaders are probably mummies, guessing by how hard they were to kill; then there's a legend about the location of another tomb, of Atun, Egypt's first pharaoh, who allegedly possessed the secret of immortality. Supposedly the secret was lost, but the ancient Egyptians had been imitating it after him, packing their tombs with "food and things the dead would need." Throw in territorial beef between the museum curator and an Egyptian cop: the former claims the tomb was bought legitimately, the latter rebukes that. 

Then, we get Mister Miracle, in another daring escape from the Eiffel Tower in a lightning storm...and then some more missing pages. Reading Haney is sometimes like reading comics blackout drunk, but I can't put that on him! Batman and Miracle are both in Egypt by page 8, albeit separately: Batman on camel with a guide, Miracle in a helicopter with a "gorgeous girl...(who) challenged my ego!" Pretty obvious she challenged Miracle to get into the lost tomb, although how she avoided Big Barda folding her into an envelope may be a more impressive escape. Miracle uses his anti-gravity discs to escape with the unfazed girl, then begin exploring the tomb; as Batman's guide turns on him, then collapses, and Batman begins investigating the tomb from the water. He had followed a bat-shaped clue, because of course he did.

Ooh, not a great scan there. Miracle and the girl, Ingrid, find the unaged pharaoh Atun in the tomb, where he announces he had returned seeking his people. Ingrid innocently asks about the secret of eternal life; when Atun says it's in his scepter, she grabs it and tries to yeet out of there, only to get herself and Miracle into a series of traps. Ingrid couldn't be more obviously evil if she had a mustache to twirl, but she also blurts out "by my master's life" as an exclamation, which seems totally normal. When Miracle says they've found the way out, she turns on him, and manages to get herself killed by one of her bullets ricocheting back at her. Miracle had lied, to get her to tip her hand, but finds his way to another "mummy case," containing...we don't get to see, as Atun returns, demanding his scepter; but Miracle defeats him and unmasks him as Batman! Unmasked, even, although he doesn't seem to mind: his costume had been in the sarcophagus. Feels like they stepped on the reveal there. Bats had been controlled by Atun's helmet...for reasons. I'm not missing a page here, I'm just not 100% on the why. 

Batman and Mr. Miracle are chased through the tomb by a weird beam, but manage to get to a small alien ship and escape. Outside, as the tomb is swallowed by avalanche and flooding, the ship and the scepter disintegrate, leaving no proof of anything. A few days later, Ingrid's boss, who apparently caused a lot of the ruckus searching for the secret to immortality, dies of old age; as the alien Atun is told by a tribunal of some kind that we know you love earth, but those primates couldn't handle immortality, and Atun agrees, never to return. Well, it's an efficient wrap-up, you have to give it that.

We may look at some of the reprinted features later, but that Time Commander story was from Brave and the Bold #59, and he somehow thinks sending GL to yesterday and Bats to tomorrow will somehow let him win today? It seems like a lot wrong with that idea.