"THE SECRET OF THE WAITING GRAVES"
SCRIPT BY DENNY O'NEIL
PENCILS BY NEAL ADAMS
INKS BY DICK GIORDANO
EDITED BY JULIUS SCHWARTZ
The early Bronze Age of DC Comics was a fascinating time of upheaval for the company as it struggled to keep pace with competition from the insurgent rival Marvel. Jack Kirby was brought aboard to great fanfare embarking on his FOURTH WORLD saga, Superman was revamped in the excellent "Sandman Saga", Green Lantern and Green Arrow became "hard travelling heroes" in search of America's soul. Stories got more socially conscious, and then as the decade progressed, ever more fantastic as DC frantically searched for the angle that would catapult them back up the sales charts. Many of these experiments are more fondly remembered in hindsight than they were in their days. However, there was one decision in 1970 that bore as much fruit commercially as it did creatively. One rock dropped in the pond that became a boulder and changed everything.
For, in 1970, DC Comics brought back The Batman.
After twenty years of quizmaster villains, contrived mysteries, technicolor camp, and silly gimmicks Batman's sales had dropped dangerously close to cancellation levels. Meanwhile, in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, a B-title where Batman would team with a different DC hero each month, the brilliant freelancer Neal Adams had been telling spooky, moody, stories teaming a subtly redesigned Batman with his own character, Deadman. Mail began to pour in, asking why Batman seemed so much more vital, so much more interesting in this team up book than he did in his own books. In late 1969, faced with no better alternative Julius Schwartz finally agreed to put Neal on the main Bat-books, and teamed him with his partner from GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW-- Denny O'Neil.
O'Neil had previously done fine work in the aforementioned GL series as well as a benchmark run on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, in both titles he had shown himself to be a clever scripter with heart and perhaps a slight tendency towards preachiness on the social issues of the day. Batman, however turned out to be a magical assignment for him. Batman was a perfect vehicle for his love of pulps and Golden Age sensibilities, as well as his keen interest in pop culture phenoms like James Bond and Kung Fu. It was a tapestry big enough for every adventure plot he had ever dreamed up, and one too busy to talk about the population explosion or whatever was in the opinion section of the Times that week.
This story is the first Batman issue between the two of them. This is, for all intents and purposes, the comic that invented the modern Batman.
No Gotham. No Robin. No costumed villains. No Alfred. No Batmobile. No gadgets. This first story goes beyond "back to basics" and feels like superhero minimalism. Bruce Wayne is invited to swanky soiree in rural Mexico at the plantation of a wealthy couple who claim to be immortal. When there's an attempt on the life of a guest who happens to also be a federale, Batman springs into action.
The revolution here is entirely in presentation on both ends: Adams' joyful experimentation with panel layout and point of view in DEADMAN comes to full fruition here as he choreographs incredible and athletic fights and action sequences set against an eerie twilight backdrop. O'Neil re-establishes Batman not just as a detective but as an athlete and a fighter, having him save lives and evade capture with startling physicality. If Kirby's action felt like sledgehammers, then the O'Neil/Adams team moves with the grace and power of a Shaw Brothers kung fu film. There simply was nothing like this on the shelves at the time.
Even the one true holdover from the camp years-- the villains attempt to dispose of Batman in an intricate death trap feels stripped to its very bare essentials here. Killer falcons and psychedelia leave Batman at his wit's end. The villains, Juan and Delores Muerto, are a strange choice for a first story. Any writer asked to revamp Batman now would assuredly select a member of the Dark Knight's austere Rogue's Gallery, but their courtly manner and supernatural evil make them feel like a rough draft for later Bronze Age foes like Dominic Daark, Ra's al-Ghul, and The Sensei. Characters who could not be safely bonked on the head and taken to jail, but whose corruption could only be held back temporarily, who seemed to come from the pulp stories of THE SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE and not four color comics.
The final crowning image, of Batman filling in the couple's death dates on their now occupied headstones, carries with it a satisfying irony as in working as their undertaker, Batman has staved off his own slow death from low sales. The reader of Detective Comics in 1970 was in the enviable situation of welcoming back an old friend-- while having no idea precisely what to expect.