InsaneJournal

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"