Pre-Crisis Primer: Long in the Tooth

Batman 372

Detective Comics 539

“What Price, The Prize?”

Most exciting image from this story. Doesn't happen in story.

Dear reader, if one will recall, I admitted to being very excited to finally sit down and and read this run of Batman stories. While I'm not going to go all out and say I'm disappointed, because I'm not, several stories, namely the Deadshot and Joker stories have been bang-on. I've also enjoyed the Jason Todd sub-plot that's been the main push behind the characters action in these stories. I'm not blown away though, for everything good story, there's a horrible story. There was even one Catman (not a typo) story that was so bad I just up and decided not to even write an article about it. This is why we jumped from Batman #370 to Batman #372. And I like cheesy villains like Catman as I've gone on about numerous times in the past.

Long preamble all to say: I do not like this Dr. Fang sub-plot, Sam I am. I've mentioned before that Fang is a pretty weak creation, all cheesy gimmick but with no real characteristic. He's even a boring visual: bald, muscular white guy in a cape with some theater fangs in his pie hole. Yawn. 

Dr. Fang: Doctor, Mob Boss, Actor, and now...Boxer!

I was excited for this sub-plot when it started: Gotham City Detective Harvey Bullock learns through underworld contacts of a new up and comer in the mob business going by the name of Dr. Fang. Bullock pursues the case and eventually gets Batman involved who responds by punching the shit out of about twenty dudes. This is how Batman detects. It worked though, this attack from The Bat drove Fang back into the shadows and put a temporary stop on his designs to take over the Gotham crime scene. This is where we find Fang now on the eve of his fall.

How does Fang fall? What grandiose plan does he have up his sleeve to finally bring the Gotham underworld together under his wing the leads to his incarceration? Rigging a boxing match. Sure, crime, don't get me wrong, bad guys do it. It just seems so...anti-climactic. This is where the audience learns that not only is Fang an actor, but he was also a boxer in his earlier years. Boxer, actor, mob boss: at least the guy doesn't remain stagnant in his career. Fang's big plan is to prove that he is a rule-maker and rigging the championship match will be the way to do it. I think he's crazy anyway, so the crazy logic here makes perfect sense.

The boxing rigging goes poorly in that the current champ, the man who has been paid to throw the fight, refuses. He wins the fight in a decisive manner and is shot for his troubles. Fang, even though he's only proven that he can't even rig a fight correctly now gets Batman back on his ass because of the poorly planned murder.

Oh Batman's not happy now.

The kicker: Batman doesn't even take down Fang. No, instead it's the opponent of the rigged fight, the guy tricked into fighting the champ in a fight he wasn't supposed to win. He helps Batman navigate the boxing scene to find Fang (who used to be a boxer, ho ho ho) who's hideout is in an abandoned gym. Pretty anti-climactic, as I said, but at least Fang is finally down and out. In fact, he's predictably punched so damn hard that his fangs are knocked out of his stupid head. Whatever, at least this sub-plot is finally done. 

Batman just watches, Fang is beneath his contempt. Crazy honky takes him out.

As I mentioned earlier, I think this sub-plot did have some promise, and apparently so did the writer as he'd return to this sub-plot with a different character in a story almost ten years from this point. The stories from here on out will begin to focus more on Jason Todd and specifically the legality of Bruce Wayne's adoption of the boy, so I still have some level of excitement for these stories and we'll see how it plays out.

Pre-Crisis Primer: Children of the Night

Batman 370

Detective Comics 537

“Up Above the Sin So High”

This scene DOES happen in this book!

Detective Harvey Bullock's been trailing the elusive and comically named Dr. Fang for a several stories now. Fang's poised to take over the criminal underworld, although we're not really sure how or how he's taken seriously given his sobriquet. Regardless, Bullock's done the leg work, but now it's time for Batman to meet Dr. Fang. One Dracula cosplayer to another.

Fang's been on the fringes of the Gotham City underworld, making small power plays in the protection rackets, shaking down bar and arcade owners as well as other small businesses, and he's eager for the big time. So eager, that when Sgt. Harvey Bullock of the GCPD just appears claiming he's a crooked cop and that he'd be willing to part with information helpful to Fang for cash compensation, the falsely-named doctor just sees this as his opportunity to make the big time. Too bad for Fang that as soon as he has an in and some information on the organization, Bullock's on the phone with Batman telling him who to punch and where they'll be so some punching can occur. 

Dr. Fang. Don't laugh. You'll hurt his feelings.

The first part of this story is the exciting part: Batman and Robin act like a team for the first time since Jason Todd came on board and proceed to kick the shit out of 20-25 of Dr. Fang's hench-people in a battle royale that starts in the back alleys of Gotham before spilling out onto her streets. I like when Batman sneaks around in the dark and really puts the fear of god into some asshole, but I REALLY enjoy it when he takes on all comers, pummeling people until there's no one left to hit. At one point Batman shows off my favorite move: slamming a trash can over some chump and then punching him. Taking out the trash, yeah!

Hot trash can action.

In all the excitement and broken bones, Dr. Fang makes his getaway and then the more boring second half of the story begins: the search for Fang. Why would this be boring? Because it ends with Fang still missing; not much of a story there. Batman does manage to help one bum who lives in the sewers though, but he also oppresses and punches out another bum who lives in the sewers, so he's neutral on the 'helping bums' thing.

Robin kicks a guy in the junk really hard.

As I've mentioned numerous times before, I enjoy sub-plots. I enjoy the continuing story in a comic book series where sub-plots weave into the main plots and give the impression that the audience is not just reading a story about a character but taking part in a myriad of stories that make up this particular characters life, no matter how fantastic it may seem. In that respect, I've enjoyed the build-up of Dr. Fang from a shadowy menace to a full-fledged character as well as how this build-up has included side characters like Harvey Bullock. The problem for me here then is Dr. Fang. He's not a believable threat, even in a city with crime as crazy as Gotham. 

Fang is an ex-boxer and ex-actor, who decided that in order to force criminal gangs to follow him and ordinary citizens to fear him, would dress up as a shirtless man in a cape with a penchant for fake fangs. Even in a fictional universe where a clown is the gravest threat, I just don't see how Fang is able to take over the underworld as Bullock posits. Sure, he looks like an asshole, but he's barely above the level of shaking down people for protection money. He's no gangland, he's a common street criminal. It's disappointing that character full of possible pulpy appeal like Fang turns out to be another chump that will eventual end up in prison on the other side of Batman's fist. Another sub-plot soon to bite the dust. 

He's punch-drunk here.

 On the flip side, in a back-up feature to this story, Green Arrow is introduced to the Post-Crisis Post-Script.

Green Arrow is a former billionaire Oliver Queen as well as a former member of the Justice League of America and a master archer. Clad all in green (obvious) he acts like a modern day Robin Hood, protecting those without power in the social sphere from the crooked politicians and other white collar criminals that would prey on those without power or voice. 

Real arrows would just be too bloody.

While moving into an apartment in a new neighborhood Green Arrow becomes embroiled in a plot by a crooked landlord to wrongly evict residents from low-income housing. When the evil landlord resorts to trying to burn his own building down, the Emerald Archer catches him red-handed.

Green Arrow appears as a back-up in the Detective Comics series, and I'll be covering the stories as they wrap up for the foreseeable future.