Monday, October 25, 2021

It's a somewhat iconic cover, but what about the story?

Try the link first: from 1985, Detective Comics #546, "Hill's Descent" Written by Doug Moench, pencils by Gene Colan, inks by Bob Smith. 

Mayor Hill receives two gifts from his assistant Blevins, as he trashes his mansion office: one is Batman's glove, the other a lump on the head. All the better to sell his narrative: having already suspended James Gordon, he then claimed Batman had broken in to plant evidence and struck him when discovered, but Hill claims he got the glove in a struggle. Watching the televised announcement, Alfred indignantly notes it was a pretty thin frame-job, but Batman has to acknowledge some cops just don't like him. Cut to: some cops that don't like Batman.
One of those cops is of course then the first to see Batman, who had been on his way to see the recovering Gordon. (He had recently had a stroke, possibly the first health scare he would have over the years.) Batman tries to talk them out of it, but does have to slap four good cops down. For certain values of 'good': they aren't working for Hill or completely corrupt, but still mindlessly follow orders they have to know are wrong. Meanwhile, on a subplot page, a blind girl is starting to realize the 'Batman' she rescued is kind of a jerk: it's Anton Knight, the Night Slayer, who's all kinds of obscure now. More subplot: somehow Nocturna has gotten custody of Jason Todd, and she's a little hurt he doesn't act like her son. These early Jason Todd stories are kind of a mess, since he was entirely a Dick Grayson-knockoff then.
Batman gives Gordon a call from a phone booth to check in, while an assassin takes a shot at Harvey Bullock and misses. Harvey gets the killer, who takes a dive off the top of a building, but has had more than enough of Mayor Hill. Since he was still "assistant to the commish," Harvey is able to bulldoze his way into Hill's office, but not in time to hear Hill get a call from Blevins about the hit failing, and Hill orders an APB on Bullock for murder. Bullock angrily confronts Hill, possibly mad that he worked with him against Gordon: he had thought Jim was going soft, but admits "in his sleep, Gordon's a better cop than I'll ever be." Hill notes Bullock's already killed one man tonight, which makes it easier to shoot him in self-defense. (The layouts don't quite get the job down, half the panels look like Bullock should've seen Hill get the gun from his drawer.)
Is this the end of Harvey Bullock? It kind of feels like it, since the Batman story trails off after the shooting, and the rest of the issue was a Green Arrow story, with Ollie versus Vigilante Vengeance! Seriously, I thought it was Vigilante at first. ("Clash Reunion" Written by Joey Cavalieri, pencils by Jerome Moore, inks by Bruce D. Patterson.)

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Oh he most DEFINITELY was a knock off of Vigilante, both in name and look. How could he not be?

I'm guessing the whole Nocturna/Nightstalker thing never really caught on after CRISIS because neither has been used ever since. I wonder why. Guess they never really made enough of an impression on future writers or they or, rather Nocturna, was maybe considered too problematic to reimagine?