Batman #128

Issue Details

Synopsis

THE INTERPLANETARY BATMAN Batman and Robin, in their Batmobile, stop to answer a cry for help--a cry from an alien being. They are hardly out of the car when other aliens, not from the same world as the first one, paralyze the first alien, whom they call Kraak the space pirate, and Batman and Robin, whom they mistakenly believe to be Kraak's partners. All are taken to a prison on an alien planet's moon, Ergon. During an exercise period, Batman and Kraak get into a fight after Kraak takes a poke at Robin. The two are separated and Batman and Robin are taken in for questioning, then returned to Kraak's cell. Batman informs Kraak that they intend to break prison and Kraak offers to be their guide on the unfamiliar alien moon. After breaking jail, the threesome endure deadly natural perils and the efforts of the authorities to recapture them. They make their way to a police airstrip, where they hijack an unattended space cruiser and escape from the moon. When Earth comes into sight on the viewport, Kraak informs them that they are not bound for Batman's home planet, but for the Claw Asteroid, where he hid his loot. After they disembark, Batman and Robin are seized by Kraak's gang, but the heroes break free and Batman subdues Kraak with judo. Shortly after, the Ergon police arrive in another space cruiser. Batman reveals that he convinced the police, during questioning, to let him prove his innocence by getting Kraak to show them the hiding place of his loot. The Ergon leader shakes hands with Batman, calling him the greatest crime-fighter of two solar systems. THE MILLION DOLLAR PUZZLE Batman and Robin respond to a call for help from Sawyer, a wealthy man who has been assaulted and robbed--but only of an ordinary vase from the Thaddeus Moore auction. The two heroes recall two earlier burglaries of a clock and a thermometer, both bought at the Moore auction. Later, they check with Logan, a lawyer handling the Moore estate, and his aide Hillery, and learn that Moore said he would leave a million dollars to his nephew, but would have to work hard for it and take care of his possessions. A fourth burglary, of Moore's desk now owned by Cora Dale, leads Batman and Robin to hear a poem Moore left in his desk: "Mr. Field laid down a chain / Another Cyrus gave us grain / James knew all the what’s and whys / If you know how you'll win the prize." Batman, realizing that Moore built models of great inventions, prompts Robin to guess the meaning of the riddle: Cyrus Field, the man who laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable, Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper, and James Watt, who invented the steam engine. This leads them to a series of adventures against crooks hired by an unknown mastermind to steal Moore's models, resulting in the discovery of a key to a secret deposit box of the Gotham City Bank containing Moore's hidden million dollars. Hillery, the lawyer's assistant, proves to be the mastermind behind the thefts, but is captured by Batman and Robin when he tries to recover the key. THE BATMAN BABY Kathy Kane, in her capacity as a director on the local orphanage's board, she has received a baby on the orphanage's doorstep with a note from the parents (unidentified) asking them to keep the child in hiding until he can be reclaimed, and ask the police to keep the secret. Kathy, not wishing her Batwoman career to be impaired, trusts Bruce to be a good guardian to the child until the parents can be located. Batman attempts to leave the boy with Alfred when he goes for a nightly patrol, but the baby puts up such a squawk at Batman's attempt to exit, and he is forced to stay with the child to keep the neighbors from discovering its presence, while Robin patrols with Batwoman. The next day, from telltale threads in a crest pattern on the baby's clothes, they determine the boy is one of the royal family of Morania, a tiny European country. When they attempt to meet the ambassador of Morania, whose old king is dying, they are detained and then attacked by thugs, whom they beat back. Realizing that Lekkey, the assistant to the ambassador, was the only one who knew of their appointment, Batman and Robin trail him to the hideout of Bruno Groft, a foreign agent and assassin-for-hire, and defeat him and his gang and manage to rescue the abducted ambassador. He directs them to the hiding place of the prince and princess of Morania, the child's parents. They arrive just in time to prevent Lekkey from assassinating them so that Baron Karl, cousin to the dying King, may assume the throne. The plotters, including Baron Karl, all wind up behind bars. Not long afterward, the king of Morania dies and the prince and princess assume the throne of their country. Alfred, for his part, has a delayed shock upon realizing he held a tiny bit of royalty in his hands.