InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "with my medals on my chest."

perletwo (perletwo) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-06-16 20:49:00

Entry tags:

char: batman/bruce wayne, char: superman/clark kent, creator: dennis o'neil, creator: dick giordano, creator: joe staton, title: world's finest comics

Request: Batman, Child Whisperer pt. 1 of 2
Runespoor7 requested any examples of interaction between Batman and children. I have two examples, this one from a 1980 World's Finest story, and in the next post a more recent interaction circa 2004. Here we have 4 pages and 2 panels of a 17-page story (my calculator says 1/3 of 17 pages is 5.666666etc. pages), "The Power of the Pi-Meson Man!"

Betsy, blind since birth, lives at the Lonsdale Orphanage. She gets separated from her group at the dedication of the new Gotham Municipal Center, and SEES! a strange man in the basement she's wandered into. The strange man is sabotaging the "pi-meson field" which powers the building (city halls have their own power plants? who knew?), a disaster Superman averts.

There's an obvious suspect, the inventor of the pi-meson field, who was irradiated in an experimental reactor explosion. Physically he's confined to a cell at the state hospital, and he can't be in two places at once...or can he? ba dum bum Betsy's orphanage just happens to catch fire as Bats arrives to interview Betsy, and away we go:

"Honey"? Does Robin know about this, Bats?

Bats can't touch the Pi-Meson Man's energy form, but it can touch him and Betsy. Supes is invulnerable to the radiation it projects, but he can't touch it either. They don't get very far fighting him in the Batcave.

The trio lures him to Gotham University's atomic energy lab (again, who knew?) where Supes traps the Pi-Meson Man in an atom smasher, brings his physical form to the lab and reunites them somehow. Pi-Meson ends up locked in a lead box. Supes explains that Pi-Meson Man's energy form is only visible in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum; apparently Betsy can see perfectly well in there.

Alas, they lie; as best a little research at the Grand Comic Book Database can tell me, this IS the last we ever saw of Pi-Meson Man or of Betsy Pyatt. Hey! Maybe she's the new Batgirl?

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	hyperactivator 2009-06-17 10:09 am UTC (link)
	I would love to see her just show up at the JSA brownstone for tryouts. She could be Doctor Midnight's sidekick. (Reply to this)

runespoor7
2009-06-17 01:41 pm UTC (link)

Batman risking his secret identity to provide someone with a safe place will never, ever be not awesome. I like to think that he's not taking the usual Batvoice to talk to the kid.

The last panels of the last complete page are gold. "What are you afraid of?" "Over there!" That's a lovely symbol; children should not be afraid of Batman.

"It feels cool!" ♥ This scene is the anti-ASBAR.

Thank you for posting this!

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psychop_rex
2009-06-17 10:58 pm UTC (link)

I find that last panel to be particularly heartwarming. No 'Oh, no - I'm a freak!' reaction here - she's told she has a special kind of vision, and she goes 'Cool! I'm unique!' That's the sort of thing I wish we saw more of in comics - I mean, the general message usually swings around to something like that sooner or later, but it's a nice change to see someone happy about the fact that they're special from the get-go - especially a little girl who has her whole life ahead of her.

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