Cover Date: October 1939
Plot Overview: Batman approaches a carriage that he thinks is carrying the Monk but instead finds a woman named Dala. Dala ends up being a vampire and bites Julie Madison, fiancee to Bruce Wayne. Batman confronts her and she begs for her life. She pleads fear of the Monk and Batman vows to take care of him.
The Monk captures them and hypnotizes Batman. He also summons Julie to his castle. With Julie present, the Monk reveals that he is going to toss Batman into a pit of werewolves. Batman misses a chance to escape but uses his gas pellet to knock out the wolves. Batman finally escapes using the Batarang. Batman finds a silver statue and melts it into a silver bullet. He finds the Monk and Dala and shoots both with the bullet. Julie is freed from the Monk's power as a result.
My Take: There wasn't a lot to the conclusion of the Monk storyline. My main issue with this part is that the writer's seemed to confuse vampire's and werewolves repeatedly in the story. It wasn't a deal breaker or anything but it was annoying enough to take me out of the story.
I felt the art was pretty strong in this issue and they seem to have improved that a lot over the last several issues. The writing was better overall in this issue too. They went for a little more visual storytelling and that helped overall as it cut down on the clunky writing. There were still a few random things happening though. It really just feels unrefined and really shows why comics were considered kids fare at the time.
I strangely don't have the nostalgia for the second half of the Monk storyline like I do for the first half. That's going to effect the grading of this one so...
I give this a D+ overall.
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