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icon_uk ([info]icon_uk) wrote in [info]scans_daily,
@ 2009-05-18 20:50:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:char: batman/bruce wayne, char: crazy quilt/paul dekker, char: robin/nightwing/dick grayson, creator: irv novick, creator: len wein, publisher: dc comics, title: batman, title: star spangled comics

It's about to get REALLY colourful as our villain meets his nemesis-to-be - Crazy Quilt Pt 2
Well, after Crazy Quilt had made such an impression on the Boy Commandos, it would be three years before he would appear again, and prove to be a threat to the one boy who can NEVER go commando...

From 1952's Star Spangled Comics 123 (Which was the first title to feature Robin's solo adventures)





Again, say what you like about his insanity and his criminal endeavours and his eventual loathing of brightly coloured sidekicks, he's being pro-active again, and finding the one job in jail he CAN do instead of moping about what he can't!

But of course, he has a cunning, and insane plan....



Cue a reminisce about how a gangster was blinded by his enemies, and driven mad after surgery which meant he could only see things which were brightly coloured (Everything else being a fuzzy polychrome visual mess)



Can you spot the teeny tiny flaw in CQ's latest plan?

Oh, and a prize for anyone who can guess the name of the movie/show playing next to CQ there; "Frogmen: The Epic"?



And yet again, see allowing his artistic creativity free rain, he's even invented an entirely new form of art to embrace his blindness!

After his seemingly harmless little dechromatisation (Is that a word) of the pennants, he gets a little more vicious with his next crime.

At a display of the exciting new world of colour television (Don't laugh, this was 1952, it was a big business)



I think if the bleach really was that powerful, you'd have problems with dissolved clothing and severe chemical burns... but this was the Golden Age... Science didn't work that way back then...

And others have already commented on just how... undisturbed by the naked life sizr figures of himself Bruce keeps around the cave.. and we will draw a curtain over the seven hour measuring process Bruce insists on for each new one...



Good lord Dick, how the hell can a 43 year old guy wearing that outfit, sneak up on you?

And now we're entering that old favourite - Death-trap territory!



...and why didn't he think about trying to smash the sunlamp bulbs? Oh well, we'll put it down to heat exhaustion.

And of course Dick always was a clever little Boy Wonder....



And thus ends the first encounter between Robin and Crazy Quilt!

So positive was the fan reaction to Crazy Quilt as a bat-villain, that it was a mere 28 years before we saw him again!

From Batman 316 in 1979 comes the marvellously melodramatic "THE MAN WHO STOLE HIS EYES!

We open with Batman and Robin (Visiting from Hudson University dealing with a fire at a hospital, and catching the young thug who was the fire raiser... Commissioner Gordon is in something of a bad mood. No one was injured in the fire as the evacuation went smoothly, but even so, it takes a special kind of malevolent to torch a hospital...



Yeah Jim, it's not like your daughter any gave you any cause for conern is it? Oh, and Robin was having minor angst issues at the time, but I can see why Jim forgetting that Robin is the same age as the arsonist might be a trifle tactless.

Meanwhile, at a nearby STAR Labs work on a laser intensifier is finally finished....





Oooh! That has to smart... on a number of levels... Batman realises the helmet lights messed with their depth perception... Yeah, okay, we'll believe you...

Sadly I've had to cut a nice little moment where on returning to the Batcave, Dick comments on how much like home it feels, and Batman notes how glad he is to have his pal around again, and that "It always seems a little emptier around here without you"

And whilst they dust themselves down, CQ is a being a busy little blind bee..





Meanwhile a nice little moment back at the Wayne Foundation, where Dick (Styling turtleneck sweater and jaacket there Dick!) says hello to "Mister Fox"



"There goes one of this corporations biggest assets Bruce"

I still regret the fact that Dick having a decent college career was retconned out of existence, it added grounding to him as a character.

Meanwhile... we discover again that Crazy Quilt may be mad, but he's not stupid, the entire fire was staged so that the Hospital would be evacuated, leaving a top class surgical theatre free for his use.





Gratuitous, but perfectly formed, Robin bubble-butt shot in the fifth panel!



And there's the first sign of that fatal flaw; overconfidence!

Batman deals with HIS lethals colour flairs by using a minigreande from his belt... Though we don;t see it, it's assumed Robin does the same..

And since turnabout is fair play, when Batman encounters some whirling hypnotic lights, we don't see how HE sorts it out, but we DO see how Robin deals with HIS...



So Robin (and again, presumably Batman) use the traditional superhero approach of punching things until they are no longer a problem (You'd think turning around and kicking backwards might have occurred to them, but again, such is life)

For the next page there's a great sense of 1960's Batman opening titles... IMHO at least... (and another great ass shot on Dickie boy)



But are they in time to prevent the operation from being completed?






Nope



Yeah, there's a novel use for a high powered laser intensifier Robin! Sheesh!

Whilst Quilt is focussing on Robin, Batman manages to let fly a Batarang, which damages the laser.



This next panel will have... repercussions!



The Dynamic Duo check on Doctor Dexter, and in doing so, turn their back on Crazy Quilt.





And this is where Crazy Quilt hatred of Robin REALLY stems from, not the first defeat, but the second, where accidentally and in an effort to save Batman's life, Robin permanently blinded him...

There is one more key appearance of Crazy Quilt, which will form part of the long-delayed next instalment of "The Original Origin of the Original Non-Original Robin"



(Post a new comment)


[info]sistermagpie
2009-05-18 03:20 pm UTC (link)
I wonder how many of those dummies the bat cave has by now...

(Reply to this)


[info]jkcarrier
2009-05-18 03:44 pm UTC (link)
Villains jumping from one series to another is commonplace now, but was almost unheard-of back in the '50s. I could see a writer recycling the *idea* of Crazy Quilt, but they make it clear that it's the same guy (though it looks like they don't reference the Boy Commandos specifically). Very peculiar.

(Reply to this)


[info]merseybeatler
2009-05-18 03:53 pm UTC (link)
*snort* How absolutely...ultraviolet!

For some reason CQ's little gray scarf amuses me the most.

(Reply to this)


[info]nagaoka
2009-05-18 05:22 pm UTC (link)
Gee that was really nice of him to make sure the escape mechanism of the death trap worked. There could have been a malfunction where none of the buttons worked and Crazy Quilt, of course, decided to do the honorable thing and potentially sacrifice himself in this situation instead of Robin. What a guy!

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]icon_uk
2009-05-18 05:33 pm UTC (link)
Maybe he only attached the poison gas canisters AFTER he'd checked the lock release worked.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]nagaoka
2009-05-18 06:04 pm UTC (link)
Nah, I wouldn't think Crazy Quilt capable of that sort of foresight.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]vignettelante
2009-05-18 11:28 pm UTC (link)
Why, you're coming close to questioning the very idea of a death trap!

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]psychop_rex
2009-05-19 03:32 am UTC (link)
I'm a little confused about Batman's statement that "this time... it's forever!" That implies that he was blind before the operation and has become blind again, but that's not true, is it? I thought he didn't see CLEARLY, except for bright colors, not that he couldn't see at all - seeing colors was his whole thing. Is he one of those people who are 'legally blind', and that's what Bats is referring to, or what? (Come to think of it, I bet he'd have a hell of a hard time driving a car...)

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]icon_uk
2009-05-19 03:41 am UTC (link)
Sorry, I had to trim the panel where CQ mentions to Dr Dexter that the reason he's sought him out is that even his weird vision is deteriorating, and he was now nearly completely blind again.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]psychop_rex
2009-05-19 04:21 am UTC (link)
Ah, well that makes sense, then. I thought I was missing something. Thanks!

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]freddylloyd
2009-05-19 12:54 pm UTC (link)
Another...curiosity of Crazy Quilt's chemical in Star-Spangle #123 is that Robin gets sprayed in the face ("Ouch! My eyes!") yet his black mask is the one part of his costume that doesn't turn white. Nor do his skin and hair.

The cloth-shrinking side effect must be gradual because Robin doesn't notice it until he starts working with the dummy. I wonder how comics could have depicted the other way: the lettering for his words getting smaller and higher up in the word balloons?

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]icon_uk
2009-05-19 04:44 pm UTC (link)
I'm guessing Dick's mask is not made of standard fabric, as they'd want a non-permeable material to protect his eyes from the likes of mace sprays etc. Probably some flexible plastic.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]freddylloyd
2009-05-19 08:38 pm UTC (link)
Probably one of them Golden Age plastic-don't-work-like-that plastics.

(Reply to this) (Parent)



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