Cover Date: May 1939
Plot Overview: Bruce Wayne is visiting Commissioner Gordon when Gordon has received a call. A man is dead and the man's son's finger prints are on the knife. Gordon and Wayne arrive on the scene and the son swears he didn't do. He explains that he found his father stabbed to death and pulled the knife out. He reveals that his father had three former business partners. A man named Steve Crane calls and says that he too has been threatened. Bruce Wayne excuses himself out of boredom at this point.
The scene shifts to Steve Crane after the phone call. A man shoots him and steals a piece of paper. The man meets a cohort on the roof when the Batman attacks. He ends up throwing one man off of the roof and disappears. Gordon arrives on the scene and we see the Batman driving somewhere else.
One of the other partner named Rogers has gotten worried and gone to see the remaining partner Stryker. Stryker's assistant attacks Rogers and puts him in a gas chamber. Batman arrives just in time to save Rogers. Batman and the assistant battle until Stryker arrives on the scene. He reveals that it was him all along. Batman saves Rogers again and explains that Stryker was killing them off so he could take control of the company and not pay out the money. Stryker tries to pull a gun on Batman but Batman hits him and he falls into a vat of acid. Batman finds it a fitting end.
Later, Commissioner Gordon is relating the tale to Bruce Wayne and Wayne calls it a fairy tale. Gordon muses that Wayne is a nice guy but has no interest in anything. The issue ends with Bruce Wayne revealing himself to be the Batman.
My Take: What's striking about this issue is the violence connected to it. The early scene with the stabbed man shows his corpse with the knife still in. They really don't pull any punches with the violence in this. The action is brisk and brutal. Batman doesn't do anything fancy, just whatever gets the job done at the moment.
The story itself was pretty bland. It read like any radio episode of the Shadow from this time frame. There wasn't anything overly original about it either. The art was also pretty basic and bad in this.
I find this issue interesting for a lot of reasons. I think people would be shocked to not see Batman's origin story in his first appearance. I also think that people would be stunned by the violence and how Batman has no real issues with killing people or letting people died. The final part that I don't think people realize is that this was just a six page story. Golden Age comics never just feature a single comic story. They usually featured 4-6 stories inside. Comics were a lot bigger then. This book was probably 80 pages if you add in advertisements. They only shortened comics and went to one story later on when they were trying to keep costs down without raising the cover price.
There you have it. The first appearance of Batman. Join me next week for more Batman fun.
I'd give this issue a C+ for purely historical reasons. The story is very forgettable and the art is not good at all.
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