everybatman69

[everybatman69]

oh my fucking god it's been a year. thankfully I still care about batman so I can get back into it

#me: this post will just be a quick review of a comic nothing fancy #also me: i need to describe every page and joke with added screenshots for clarity #also the really early comics are like totally insane. which is tripping me up #mod talks #idk?! #i am a world champion project escalator. im like oh what if [simple project idea]? and then i escalate it #me: what if i read a bunch of books about the history of ww2 to put these batman comics in historical context #me: but i need to know about the period between ww1 and ww2 to understand ww2. and i need to know about ww1 to understand that period. and #etc etc etc. situation collapsed. read part of a book about ww1 and did not post to batman blog for a year. absolute crisis #anyhoo. this blog is actually way behind the amount of batman comics i've read. im like at 1944 now and this blog is still 1939 #hopefully that means that if i can keep myself from escalating i can just start zooming #i think trying to read every batman comic and then getting sidetracked by ever farther back periods of american history explains everything #you need to know about my personality actually #bye #hopefully new posts soon.

[everybatman69]

Detective Comics #30

Summary: Doctor Death’s actually still alive (gasp) and trying to steal diamonds

Cover date: August 1939

So Bruce is chilling at home, reading the news and smoking a pipe (I don’t put screenshots of it but he’s smoking in virtually every scene as Bruce, which is a lot of smoking for someone who’s depending on his lungs to run around rooftops) when he sees a news article about a guy dying mysteriously. Nothing about it is really distinctive, but Bruce soul-reads that only Doctor Death could have done it and goes to talk to the guy’s widow. Turns out Doctor Death WAS threatening them for money, but actually they’re flat broke, except for a treasured collection of diamonds which she still has and should probably do something about, now that she thinks about it. Bruce just tells her to keep those diamonds in a safe place and goes home.

(tfw you wear ur yellow plaid suit around town but you gotta change into ur green suit at home before u can change into ur batsuit)

Bruce proceeds makes a series of 6D chess move decisions beyond the fathoming of my mortal mind. He breaks back into the woman’s apartment at night and busts open the safe with the diamonds to do...something?? But one of Doctor Death’s minions also breaks in halfway through, so Bruce decides to sit back and let him take the diamonds so he’ll lead Bruce back to Doctor Death afterwards. Unfortunately, the woman comes into the room and the minion (a guy named Mikhail) attacks her, so Batman has to go to the trouble of actually fighting him or something (ugh). 

Then, once Mikhail is unconscious in the yard, Batman grabs the diamonds, in full view of the woman, and just tosses them down onto Mikhail’s body so that he’ll still take them back to Doctor Death when he wakes up. 

Woman: oh thank god you prevented him from stealing my diamonds- Batman: No.

The woman conveniently faints at this point, so we never see her reaction or protest to this. Mikhail doesn’t question any of this either when he wakes up (”oh, good thing I kept my grip on these!”), so he drops off the diamonds at a pawn shop and then goes back to his house, which Batman searches after knocking him out again. He doesn’t find much, but he takes so long that Mikhail wakes up a second time and starts fighting him until we get THIS iconic scene

Because 1930s Batman had no Alfred, no Robin, and absolutely no fucks to give about anything. Batman is now 2 for 2 on killing Doctor Death’s minions. After a brief period of zero remorse, he goes back to investigate the pawn shop owner who, shockingly, turns out to be Doctor Death in disguise. Batman easily beats him up and leaves, leaving another dramatic note behind.

All in a day’s work.

Batbody count: 4 (Batman snapping Mikhail’s neck like a toothpick)

#DC comics #detective comics #batman #golden age #1930s #1939 #detective comics 30 #liveblog #liveblogging #wow this has been in my drafts for a month....in the meantime i read a bunch of comics failed one of my classes and still survived! #all in a day's work

[everybatman69]

Detective Comics #29

Summary: Dr. Death tries to kill rich people with “pollen extract” and, failing that, tries to kill Batman, and epic gamer fails

Cover date: July 1939

So Doctor Death has made his pollen extract that will kill anyone instantly, which is the last thing he needed for his plan to threaten rich people and get their money (idk why he couldn’t have used an already existing poison for that but whatever). His only concern is that that guy Batman is so cool and based that he might figure out what’s going on- obviously, he needs to be dealt with.

His plan is to put an ad in the newspaper for Batman, telling him to go pick up a letter at the post office- at which point you may think that this is a trap so he can see who comes to pick up the letter and figure out Batman’s identity, but actually the letter just contains further instructions to meet him at a random apartment later that night. Listen, we’re playing checkers, Doctor Death is playing chess.

Everyone in the city, including the post office guy, peacefully ignores Bruce Wayne going to pick up a letter a public advertisement said was meant for Batman. Bruce goes home to retrieve his batsuit out of the chest he keeps right next to the window (no batcave yet), and shows us again how little sauce the Batmobile had in the beginning.

Anyways, Batman climbs up the side of the building to get to the apartment, and it’s shockingly a trap. He kicks the asses of the guys who are initially waiting for him in the apartment, does a little threatening to murder them because early Batman was like that, and then gets shot by Doctor Death’s somewhat unfortunate Indian assistant Jabah (who’s very pink and the first in a long line of characters who are not white all being somewhat unfortunate).

Bruce manages to escape, and calls the family doctor to help patch him up.

Doctor: how the fuck did you shoot yourself Bruce: I'm just quirky like that  (✿◠‿◠)

The next day Bruce manages to find Doctor Death’s house after seeing Jabah out trying to kill someone, and attacks and chases them around the house a bit before throwing a fire extinguisher at Death MD right as he’s pulling out a vial of “the fiery death”. This causes him to drop it at his own feet and engulf the room in flames, presumably killing him and Jabah (who’s on the floor unconscious) while Batman stands there and thinks about how we sure live in a society.

Batman body count so far: 3 (Stryker in the acid vat, Ricky off the building, Jabah in the fire- I’m not counting Doctor Death because (spoiler!) he’s not dead) 

#DC #comics #batman #golden age #1930s #1939 #detective comics #i should actually make a list of the tags i want to put because i feel like i make up a new list in a different order each time #how many screenshots can you put in a post summarizing a comics issue before the post starts feeling excessively long? #philosophical questions #liveblog #liveblogging #detective comics 29

[everybatman69]

Detective Comics #28

Summary: Someone’s stealing jewels and Batman has to stop them! (This will happen often)

Cover date: June 1939

They’re kinda still figuring out how to draw him, although they do that for a while. Bruce pretends to be Commissioner Gordon and threatens a police informant with jail time unless he tells him where the thieves are, as one does, and somehow this works. Also, CinemaSins ding noise every time Batman kills someone- this time it’s by kicking them off a roof. RIP Ricky 😔

(And it’s not a, he falls out of sight but maybe he’s not dead we just don’t know! thing, in the next page the gang of thieves is like “damn it sure sucks that Batman killed Ricky”)

Anyway, Batman has some convoluted plan where he pretends to be one of the thieves, and somehow he knows this will make the real thieves think they’re in the clear because the police will be chasing Batman instead of them, and thus make them reckless and commit more crimes

(Me when I think I feel a desire to be productive but actually it’s just a desire to read more Batman comics)

Batman catches the thieves on another heist, and does stuff like toss people off buildings to extract confessions, honk outside the police station until people come out and then throw a criminal at them and leave, and sign letters with a drawing of a bat because he’s melodramatic.

#DC comics #batman #liveblog #liveblogging #golden age #1930s #1939 #detective comics #woohoooj #idk how many screenshots i should be including. once i start thinking about which panels to include i want to include them all #what am i doing???? a good question #detective comics 28

[everybatman69]

Detective Comics #27

Summary: the first appearance of Batman! uh oh sisters, someone’s killing chemical company CEOs

(Cover date May 1939, but apparently on sale March 30)

The Batman story is only 7 pages long, but copies of this comic have sold for 1.1 million dollars before. Fun facts! Ngl batman looks fucking hilarious in this- they were clearly still figuring out his design. Also they still call him “the “Bat-Man”” any time they refer to him in the narration, and he had a car but it wasn’t very cool-looking 

no one’s really there in the way of famous supporting characters besides Commissioner Gordon. They start out with a sort of "oh there's batman, what a crazy dude, and there's bruce wayne over there dang he looks boring" thing, and it’s wild to think that for a hot couple pages in 1939 you could look at Batman and have absolutely no idea who he was supposed to be.

Anyway, the main plot is some mildly unclear thing about a chemical company CEO trying to kill 3 of his partners to get out of some contracts/become the sole owner of a company. It’s always a good time to remember that in the very beginning they wanted Batman to be super gritty and edgy so he killed people and used guns all the time, until about a year in when an editor (Whitney Ellsworth) decided to throw on the brakes and go in the absolute opposite direction. Batman kills the guy who was behind the murders by punching him over a railing into a vat of acid, and his reaction is basically “yeah fuck that guy he deserved it lmao”.

Get used to the “Batman punches a guy and he falls to his death” thing because it’s going to happen a lot. Anyway, with that, 80+ years of a bat-themed man punching people begins!

#DC #comics #batman #detective comics #liveblog #liveblogging #idk what tags you're supposed to put on this kind of thing #1939 #1930s #golden age #detective comics 27

[everybatman69]

Reading list

Every Batman comic by publication order, compiled to the best of my abilities. I only compile the list a few months forward from where I’m currently reading because if I could see exactly how many Batman comics there really are, Golden Age or otherwise, I would panic and quit immediately. Honestly I usually just use the dates given on DC Universe (which I think are usually cover dates) because trying to find the real publication date of any given comic is a harrowing experience where 5 different sites are giving 5 different dates and none of them are citing sources. Shoot me an ask if you Have found a source/if you think I’ve missed anything!!

Under read more because this is going to get Chunkier the longer I go

1939 Detective Comics #27 (may 1939) Detective Comics #28 (june 1939) Detective Comics #29 (july 1939) Detective Comics #30 (august 1939) Detective Comics #31 (september 1939) Detective Comics #32 (october 1939) Detective Comics #33 (november 1939) Detective Comics #34 (december 1939)

1940 Detective Comics #35-38 (jan 1940-march 1940) Batman #1 (april 1940) Detective Comics #39-41 (may 1940-july 1940) Batman #2 (july 1940) New York World’s Fair Comics #2 (july 1940) Detective Comics #42-45 (august 1940-november 1940) Batman #3 (november 1940) Detective Comics #46 (dec 1940)

1941   Detective Comics #47-49 (jan 1941-march 1941) Batman #4 (march 1941) World’s Best/Finest #1 (march 1941) Detective Comics #50-52 (april 1941-june 1941) World’s Finest #2 (june 1941) Detective Comics #53 (july 1941) Batman #5 (july 1941) Detective Comics #54 (aug 1941) Batman #6 (aug 1941) Detective Comics #55 (sep 3 1941) World’s Finest #3 (sep 3 1941) Detective Comics #56 (oct 1 1941) Batman #7 (oct 1 1941) Detective Comics #57 (nov 1941)  Detective Comics #58 (dec 1941) Batman #8 (dec 1941) World’s Finest #4 (dec 1941) 1942 Detective Comics #59 (jan 1942) Detective Comics #60 (feb 1942) Batman #9 (feb 1942) Detective Comics #61 (mar 1942) World’s Finest #5 (mar 1942) Detective Comics #62 (apr 1942) Batman #10 (apr 1942) Detective Comics #63 (may 1942) Detective Comics #64 (june 1942) current reading point Batman #11 (june 1942) World's Finest #6 (june 1942) Detective Comics #65 (july 1942) Detective Comics #66 (aug 1942) Batman #12 (aug 1942) Detective Comics #67 (sep 1942) 

#thought about whether I needed tags on this post and decided I don't #purple! #ok to be clear i've only made posts for the issues with links attached #i probably should have started making this blog earlier so there isn't such a massive gap btwn the actual posts i've made and where- #-im currently reading but oh well