Batman #138

Issue Details

Synopsis

BATMAN’S MASTER Batman decoys a villainous scientist, Dorian, into wasting his rocket-ram weapon on a Batman robot who precedes him into the savant's hideout. Batman and Robin capture the scientist, who swears that someday Batman will meet a criminal who will make Batman look like a robot. Later, Batman and Robin prepare for an encounter with the Tiger Gang, who intend to steal a projector from the Gotham Planetarium and hold it for ransom. Their defense is complicated by the fact that a mysterious masked man called Kadar who has thrown in with the Tiger Gang. Kadar claims to be able to anticipate Batman's every move, and proves it during the planetarium caper by foiling Batman's and Robin's secret emergency maneuver planned against the gang. The villains escape, and Batman, knowing only a man with access to the Bat-Cave could have known their plans, fears for his and Robin's secret identities. In the Batcave, Batman receives a strange hunch as to the Tiger Gang's next job, and is correct in pinpointing it as the Gotham Oil Refinery. However, Kadar is actually able to command Batman to grab Robin and jump with him into an oil vat below. They land unharmed and the gang escapes, but Batman reveals that he knows who Kadar really is. Batman and Robin turn up later unexpectedly at the Tiger Gang's headquarters, and Batman informs Kadar that he must save Batman's life by fighting the Tiger and his allies. Kadar complies, and the gang is taken in. Batman takes Kadar back to the Batcave and unmasks him as their Batman robot. He explains to Robin that the robot had had its mechanical brain altered by the impact of Dorian's rocket-ram, enabling it to become attuned to Batman's brainwaves, but also turning it against Batman. However, its circuits which automatically commanded the robot to save Batman and Robin from deadly danger weren't damaged, and were able to be used by Batman against the Tiger Gang. Batman readjusts his robot's brain to normalcy, and the case is closed. THE SIMPLE CRIMES OF SIMPLE SIMON A buck-toothed, gangling fellow in hillbilly-cliched clothes who calls himself Simple Simon begins a crime wave using the poem which bears his name as a motif. His first crime involves buying out a baker's pies at a county fair, pitching the pies into a garbage can, and using the tins to enrage a prize bull into stampeding so that he may loot the gate receipts in the confusion. Batman bull-dogs the steer and Robin goes after Simon himself, who leaps astride a merry-go-round horse. But, Simple Simon proves anything but simple, as he has previously gimmicked the horse with fold-out wings and jet propulsion, enabling him to make a getaway. Simple Simon commits another crime on the Gotham docks with the aid of a tiny whale balloons which can inflate to giant size, and tries a third job at a winter resort where he smashes into a hotel with a giant snowball, trying to grab the $10,000 in prize money for a festival winner. Batman and Robin chase the "simple" criminal onto a frozen lake, where he boards an ice boat, but Batman cracks the ice with a ski pole, immobilizes the boat when its runner snags in a crack, and skies into the boom of the boat, disarming Simon. Simple Simon hits the ice with a solid impact, cracking through so that he has to grab the edge of the hole to stay afloat. Batman comments that it finishes off the "Simple Simon" rhyme motif, since the rhyme ended with "Simple Simon went to slide upon the ice/ Before the ice would bear". THE SECRET OF THE SEA BEAST The yacht of stockbroker Hal Torson and the launch of Lester Guinn are attacked in two separate incidents by what appears to be a huge, dinosauric sea-monster, which becomes dubbed the "Sea Beast." In each case, all passengers are recovered save Torson and Guinn. Batman and Robin, on patrol of Gotham Bay during the second attack, don scuba gear and shoot at the monster with spear guns, but their weapons bounce off. the beast's tail whips about, causing Robin to become tangled in a brace of seaweed; Batman is forced to cut him free and let the beast escape. Later, Batman and Robin capture Chips Hassel and his gang, after overhearing Hassel tell an unidentified phone-caller that he intends to fake his death to the police off a Gotham pier. Batman secretly takes Hassel's place, impersonating him in make-up, and, after falling off the pier, finds a hatchway opening in the underwater Sea Beast's exterior, proving it a submarine. However, once inside, he finds that his makeup has run thanks to the churning water, and becomes Batman before his identity can be revealed. The criminal crew of the sub have him outnumbered, and, after they dock, Batman confronts the two masterminds of the "Sea Beast" caper--Torson and Guinn. He relates to them how two handy business deals had forced them into the "Sea Beast" plot to avoid investigation, and that they intended to surface elsewhere after plastic surgery and spend their ill-gotten gains. But Robin has been following a signal in Batman's Utility Belt radio, and, entering the Sea Beast, turns the mechanical monster against its crew. The two heroes are able to subdue the crooks, and cart them to Gotham Island Prison in their monster-submarine.