Holy Ghost Sex! Spooky Season is back and Batman Knightcast is hot on its heels! First, Ryan Daly and Chris Franklin discuss Batman’s strange Gothic Romance adventure in “The Demon of Gothos Mansion” from Batman #227. Then they continue their coverage of the Dynamic Duo’s earliest escapades in Batman & Robin Year One #10.
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Music: “The Batman Theme: Epic Version (feat. Mask of the Phantasm + Imperial March” arranged by Samuel Kim. Check it out on Youtube right here: https://youtu.be/m-AnLl9Vyb8?si=H5SsJPY_L8FMdtG5
Additional music: “Little Ghost” by The White Stripes
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Just a quick “thanks” for your brief tribute to Peter Cullen at the top of the podcast. As you may have noticed, it was an odd coincidence that the network dropped a Transformers-themed podcast this same week, although we had recorded our episode of “The Fantastic Pour” just *before* Cullen’s passing, and so had to make do with only a few words, recorded afterward.
I’ve only heard the first twenty minutes of the new FP but I liked your tribute to Cullen in the intro.
Great episode. Enjoyed both stories
Quick question dc comics put two Batman related dc finest one that combines year one and two in to one collection and a book focusing on the joker are these books worth getting and they have new reales of Gotham central . I’m sorry to bother you but figured your Batman guys so would know if I should pick up these collections .
There are several DC Finest collections starring Batman out right now.
1. Batman: The Case of the Chemical Syndicate collects his earliest Golden Age appearances in Detective Comics #27-52 and Batman #1-5.
2. Batman: Red Skies collects the 1980s stories before and during Crisis on Infinite Earths in Batman #386-400 and Detective #553-567.
3. Batman: Year One and Year Two collects Batman #404-414 and Detective #571-580, which are comics we covered in the earliest episodes of Batman Knightcast.
4. Batman: The Killing Joke and Other Stories picks up where the previous volume ended with Batman #413-422 and Detective #581-589.
5. Batman: A Death in the Family picks up right after again with Batman #423-429 and Detective #590-595.
6. Batman: Blind Justice continues the run with Batman #430-435 and Detective #596-603.
So they’ve collected most or all of the Batman comics from the mid- to late 1980s from his two main titles. There are two more collections schedule to come out later this year: Batman: The Curse of Crime Alley collects the Len Wein run, which was fun, and The Demon Lives Again collects the Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams issues.
The Joker book you mentioned, Joker: The Last Laugh, collects “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” plus his monthly series and his big appearances in The Brave and the Bold in the 1970s. I have this collection. It’s okay. I thought the Joker comic started strong and fizzled out.
To the question of *should* you pick up any of these books? That’s up to you based on what you think you’d like.
Thanks for another fun discussion. I remember reading the Gothos Mansion story in black and white in Batman From the Thirties to the Seventies, and loving the moody nonsense of it all. I now have it in the recent Strangest Cases tabloid and it looks almost as good in colour. Irv Novick is so underrated outside of this podcast.
Daphne, though, is awful, as in her other appearance, describing perfectly regular dwarfs as hideous. Do we think she’s the mother of new character Verity Pennyworth?
That ‘portrait in the tree’ business was very silly. At least when Supergirl met a ghost girl the following year in Adventure Comics #408, her painting was on a wall.
Batman in trees is a great idea for a collection, how about Legends of the Bark Knight?
And I’m guessing the next episode is not the obvious Detective Comics #405 with its tree cover – not spooky – but #413, with a witchy cover that freaked me out as a kid – I’m sure there’s a tree in there someone. And for outro music, howsabout ‘Someone in a tree’ from Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures? (Batman link – BD Wong, who played the Reciter in a revival, was Hugo Strange in Gotham.)
My suggestion for someone to direct an early Seventies spooky Batman movie would be Paul Wendkos, based on his chiller The Mephisto Waltz… imagine that drawn by Adams or Novick. Wendkos previously directed a couple of Batman 66 episodes. (Chris, The Mephisto Waltz might make a decent House of Franklinstein entry based on the massive amount of Batman links which come up when you feed the poster into Gemini and ask… none of which I’m putting here as that would be cheating, BD Wong was in my head!)
Hello, guys,
I really wouldn’t have gotten angry if you had savaged “Demon of Gothos Mansion.” We all have our own tastes. Obviously, it is one of my favorites.
I agree that I wish the story would have been longer, and there are some plot holes. I would rather read a story that leaves me wanting more than reading one that drags a two-or-three issue idea out over several years.
Keep in mind in the Bronze Age, writers had to come up with three or four stories a month, depending on how many titles they were working on. Most stories in the period were probably first drafts, I can think of several Batman stories from the early 70s that are excellent but have that one nagging bad page that sticks out like a sore thumb. If you want examples, “Challenge of the Man-Bat” from Detective 400; “You Die By Mourning” from Detective 403; “The House that Haunted Batman” from Detective 408. I still highly recommend and deeply love each of these issues. If the writers weren’t under such tight deadlines, I’m sure they would have worked the kinks/plot holes.
I first read Demon of Gothos Mansion in the Batman’s Strangest Cases treasury when I was 7, so I’m going to forgive any sins it may have. While the text should have spelled it out better, I think Batman immediately falling in love with the ghost/spirit to be because she was a supernatural being and wasn’t human. Batman admits something weird is going on with his mind, but blames it on the near hanging. Batman doesn’t realize she’s a ghost and her unearthly nature affects his mind and maybe his libido. Since we don’t know the extent of her “powers” the ghost may have caused her portrait to appear on the tree, just so Batman will know who she really is.
I didn’t read Daphne’s first appearance until later in a digest. Since she was an actress in that story, I think luring her to Gothos Mansion to perform in a play would have made more sense than her teaching students/dwarfs. Daphne is a little too young for Bruce. In her first appearance, she seems more around Dick’s age. I don’t like the idea of Bruce hooking up with any of Alfred’s relatives, but Julia would have been in her 40s in the 1980s and would have been an “older woman” for Bruce. Keep in mind, I’m talking Bronze Age Batman here, and not Bruce Timm verse Batman. Timm seems to have a fetish for hooking Batman up with any and every hot lady. I like Bruce Timm but I can’t forgive the plot point that Bruce slept with Lois before Clark did. That is a rant for another podcast.
Thanks for discussing how great the art is. Novick doesn’t get nearly enough love. I hope you guys will cover some issues from his excellent run with Len Wein.
Overall, a fun issue that now gets overshadowed by its iconic cover. I never even saw the cover until 1989 in a Batman 50th anniversary book. Isn’t it weird that Batman 227 didn’t cost any more than the issues around it before the internet came along? I’m glad I got my copy before prices exploded.
BTW, I will be commenting a lot less going forward. I changed jobs and don’t have the opportunity to listen to podcasts at my new one.
Good luck on the new job!!
Great show, fellas. Thanks for all the hot tree action. It would be so easy to do a DC Finest collection of Batman in trees. It’s basically half of Neal Adams’ run. Let’s get that Fire and Water mojo going on this. We’ve manifested dumber things.
Like gothosmansion above, I first read this story in the Strangest Cases Treasury at age 7. I liked it well enough but it didn’t stick with me like some of the other stories in that collection such as A Vow from the Grave, The Batman Nobody Knows, and Night of the Bat (probably my first exposure to Swamp Thing). Great show as usual and looking forward to the next one.
Great episode as always. I also first read the Demon of Gothos Mansion in the treasury. The art is fantastic at any size. The story, while not one of my all time favorites, does hold a special place in my heart. Batman in a tree? I always figured it was just a substitute for him being unable to be on the rooftops when not in the city. Just feels like something Neal Adams would do if the writer had him walking around town.
I had to check my aging copy of Batman: 30s to the 70s, and sure enough, that’s where I’d read Demon of Gothos Mansion. It’s very chilling in black and white when I was a lil’ outcaster. Like you guys talked about, there was definitely a vibe in the 70s section of that book.
Gosh, Batman and Robin Year One continues to deliver! As much as the stakes were already raised by the two Faces, framing Bruce and isolating Dick was the bigger gut punch. I’ve been trying to read along with the show, and it’s so tempting to jump to the next issue! Must stay strong!