This issue of BRAVE AND THE BOLD was another comic book that my household wound up owning two copies of, meaning that at some point my younger brother Ken picked up his own copy. Which is understandable in a way, as I would never let him read my comics for fear of them getting damaged. What it was about this specific issue that attracted his attention I really couldn’t tell you. I don’t remember much about the story, my strongest memory of it is the fact that we had two copies of it. So let’s see what it was all about together.
B & B writer Bob Haney had a distinctly individual relationship with continuity. He clearly didn’t care at all about the larger DC cosmology of Earth-1, Earth-2, etc nor even the specifics of a given character’s status quo beyond the needs of whatever immediate story he was telling. And yet, he developed a fondness for a number of Batman’s co-stars in the title, bringing them back again and again. In those case, such as with Wildcat and Plastic Man, he tended to reference his own continuity as though none of the hero’s other exploits outside of B & B mattered. Metamorpho, on the other hand, was his own co-creation, but even here, he skewed away from the broader tone that had been established in the Element Man’s solo outings in order to bring him for firmly into Batman’s world. This shift was carried through in the somewhat grittier artwork of artist Jim Aparo.
This particular adventure opens with Batman heading into the No-Man’s Land area of Gotham City, the most crime-infested section of the metropolis. He’s been promised info on a recent heist by an anonymous informer, but instead he winds up getting jumped by a gang of thugs. But the Masked Manhunter proves more than a match for these lowlife goons, and once he’s dispatched his attackers, the woman who hired them steps out of the shadows. This is Sapphire Stagg, the spoiled daughter of zillionaire Simon Stagg and the girlfriend of Metamorpho. She lured Batman down her in the hopes of enlisting his aid in locating Metamorpho, who had taken off to parts unknown months ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Why she had to go to all of this subterfuge rather than just asking Batman for help is anybody’s guess, but by dangling a million dollars for a Wayne charity in front of Batman, Sapphire recruits him to her cause.
With his new mission, Batman takes off–but he quickly doubles back to waylay a guy who is trying to tail him. This turns out to be private gumshoe Harry Cathcart, who was hired by Simon Stagg to keep tabs on Sapphire and anybody she comes in contact with. Batman scoffs at the idea that Cathcart could tail him anywhere and takes off, but the private eye proves relentless in the hours that follow, always turning up one step behind the Masked Manhunter. Unbeknownst to Batman, however, there’s another party who’s also on his tail. This is Achilles, an international assassin who’s been hired to take out Batman. Anyway, the World’s greatest Detective probes films of recent sporting events, focusing on a Grand Prix race in which one of the drivers was killed but no body was found. By studying the tape, Batman dopes out that the driver was Rex Mason, Metamorpho himself, operating under a fake alias. He survived the crash by transforming himself into a gaseous state. This sends Batman off to the Riviera to attempt to pick up Mason’s trail.
From the Riviera, Batman follows a string of Rex mason’s aliases to first Marsailles and then Turkey. Along the way, he’s twice accosted by Achilles, whom Batman describes as “the only international assassin who uses darts”, apparently a signature move, In each case, the Caped Crusader had been hoping to turn the tables on Achilles but in each instance he’s fouled up by the unexpected presence of Cathcart dogging his tracks. (On one occasion, he’s saved when Achilles’ dart gets blocked by a cheese given to Batman to pass on to the well-loved Metamorpho by a friend in Marseilles. Eventually, though, Batman heads towards the hidden city of Kaldoz, where he’s heard that Metamorpho has agreed to drive a truck across the border. Figuring that there must be something nefarious going on, Batman intends to intercede.
But the helicopter that Batman is travelling in almost crashes when a condor flies into the rotor blades (!). Before Batman is killed, though, a colossal magnesium hand reaches out and grabs the plummeting copter out of midair–it’s the elusive Element Man at last! Batman and Metamorpho confab, and the Masked Manhunter voices his suspicions that the truck Rex is meant to drive back to Kaldoz will be smuggling something illegal. While the two heroes wait, they se a wagonload of gold being prepared as an offering to Dabushka, the Mountain Devil. A giant monster is something that Metamorpho has to see for himself, so he extends his legs and makes for the cordoned-off sacrifice site. And there is a giant fire-breathing creature there. So Metamorpho goes on the attack.
Rex penetrates the shell of the monster, discovering that it’s just a made-up gas balloon meant to frighten people Scooby Doo-style. Down below, a criminal gang has the truck he drove there and is replating the entire thing with the sacrificial gold, intending for it to be driven back over the border. Oh, and Achilles is clobbered in the melee too, turns out he was hired by the bad guys to keep Batman away from Metamorpho, which doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. There’s also a last panel reference that seems to hint at the idea that Metamorpho had been posing as Cathcart the entire time, but that thread doesn’t add up either, nor is it truly tied up properly. In fact, the plotting on this story is pretty godawful and stream-of-consciousness, as though Haney was just making things up as he went along.
This issue did include a new week’s edition of the Daily Planet promotional page, with another quirky Fred Hembeck cartoon strip and more answers to the readership’s assorted questions by Bob Rozakis.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 