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popculturebuffet · 1 month

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Batmarch: The Secret Origin of Batman's Trophys (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Batmarch, or celebrations of all things that go bump in the dark knight

Today we've got a special treat... and i'm not just talking the nice art Kev had comissioned! Looks really good and I really appcirated it. Thank you KEv and thank you Alan Patreon. It was a nice suprise gift.

As for what this is about, this was a fantastic idea Kev cooked up: the batcave is one of the coolest hero bases in all of fiction. The layout is never 100% consitant across media but your usually guaranteed a batmobile, a big ass computer at the center, water falls, and over time a display for various costumes from past sidekicks, alternate outfits etc.

What really spruces the place up are three distinct decorations that we almost always see in the comics and ocasionally in other media, if not live action since these bitches would be expensive to make: A giant dinosaur, a big ole penny, and a giant playing card of a joker. These three are staples of the bat cave, to the point when the original was caved in during the earthquakes that ravaged gotham in the build up to no man's land, Bruce made a point of fishing them out for the new cave he built after that traumatic year.

Yet most of us.... have no idea where he got these wonderful toys. Even I didn't. The Joker Card comes from an obvious grinning source, but what CASE did it come from? Where did he get that dinosaur? What was someone using that giant Penny for? It's a question i've asked once or twice but never looked into. Kevin did though, and while the through and lovely DC wiki helped him find each one, he went the extra mile, asking for a review. And I was entirely on board with this comission as I just.. never had those answers and I doubt i'm the only one whose wondered what the context for these things were. So today we're looking at three disntinct golden age batman stories, at a time when goofy nonsense reigned supreme, logic was optional, and weird shit like this was just another day in the batcave. IN other words, this is going to be a LOT of fun so join me under the cut as we look at gambling themed death traps, penny obessed gangsters and batman being hunted by the most dangerous game: mechanical dinosaurs.

The Giant Joker Playing Card:

(from Batman #44)

I love these old titles, such flair and cheese. It's incredible.

Anyways this one starts because Joker decides to hit an off the books casnio after his win. Luckily for them, he just wants to play which feels entirely like a joker move: instead of robbing an easy target that can't call the cops and that the mafia presumibly running it would be stupid to retaliate on, he decides "fuck it let's try this whole gambling thing men, sounds like a hoot and a half".

And sure enough.. it goes really well. He spends what's implied to be the whole night just winning and winning until he cleans house. This being the joker this gambling bug can only end one way

I just.. love everything about this. Joker just had fun at a casnio and turned it into a death trap. It's such a brilliant setup.. and one that while nicely goofy, is also well done: it fits the joker's unpredictablity to just go a gamblin and it fits him just as much to turn a new hobby into a death trap. I also love Lewis' reaction calling it SUPERGAMBLING., like he's some gambling expert and most dangerous game shit is a type of gambling.. which given we're in the dc universe, you probably DO need a name for this kind of thing in the crime world.

So he set shte perfect trap: he has a random balding middle aged man tell the two he has info on a recent raidum theft, raidum a hospital badly needs. To save the presumed orphans about to die without eating their radium, Batman and Robin go to a sketchy island with one house perched on a hill

The World's Greatest Detective.. sees NOTHING wrong with this and goes ahead and gets caught in the most devious trap imaginable.

Several head injuries later, our heroes wake and joker reveals the radium theives, who he captured for this scheme but have kept the radium's location to themselves. This is by deisgn: the joker wants the two and their "radium screts" as the ante here, along with Robin to make sure Batman does this. Batman repedately states "I don't gamble' as if logic suddenly works on the clown man who set up a gambling death trap, so Joker reveals if Batman won't play his three supergambling games, he'll just kill the hostages. Batman reluctantly agrees,

Game 1 is super pinball.

But when Batman proves to be an expert at the snes Joker goes with plan b.. his giant pinball table of death. Sorry his giant SUPER pinball table of death.

As you can see the same joker face from the card is here and you see it all over his lable. it seemed to be Joker's logo back the. I love this whole setup and mostly show it not only because it' sdope but because those pins must've been what bumpers were. I also had no idea PInball used to be a gambling thing. Makes sense, it's just fun to find out.

The game goes well mostly though one of the guys nearly slams into a pin. Thankfully Robin is an expert gymnist and batman smartly saved laucnhing robin till the last minute and Dick's able to save the goon.

Game two is super rolling some dice, which apparently used to land on numbers. This yugioh style death game involves our bait being tied to polls on three of the numbers. If Batman guesses wrong, someone dies. Or maybe not since the board is pretty damn big. Not every death trap can be super murder pinball. Batman spots some mud on the dice though and correctly guesses they'll pivot. This is the weakest of the death traps here, a bit convolunted, not really guranteed to be as deadly. I know the chance of nothing happening is part of it.. but with pinball there's really almost no chance you won't hit the bumpers. Here it feels like pure luck or simple cheating that both dice flew at the joker.

Next game and the one that introduces our prop, though the dice apparently are also in the cave sometimes which I love. The game is a game of cards.. batman has to correctly guess which face matches the door Robin and the hostage goons are in or they'll choke to death on the deadly gas released inside.. and naturally he figures out it's the Joker card. It's too joker not to work.

Turns out though, naturally the joker isn't playing fair both having a final one on one game ofr him and Batman and having his goon go to get robin behind the joker card door... and Robin dispatches him hilaroiusly and awesomely

With that the hostages are free and the final death game begins. A giant super roulette wheel with both batman and joker getting in a slot. looser gets crushed alive. It's an awesome finale, and it fits joker to put himself at risk: after all he risks his life all the time why wouldn't he for such a fun gag?

Batman's able to get the wheel to turn fairly and then escape it, leading to a chase. THe Radium Theives agree to give themselves and the radium up but there's still the matter of the joker and we get a short but neat final chase as Joker uses the dice against the heroes then jumps off a cliff, gambling his life one last time.. and rightfully batman isn't betting on the joker having died.

Gamble With Doom is an excellent story. While the trophy we get out of it is only in it briefly the story itself is pure fun. It has some fun dated elements like Bruce's opinon gambling is EVILLLL and the old fashioned designs on the traps, but it's pure fun. The traps are clever, the tension palpable and the climax great. The gambling motif's really fit the joker and it adds up to an all time great joker story with a suprise impact. The Trophy Itslef. is barely in it but Robin DID break a guy's face with it so i'll say it was still cave worthy.

(From World's Finest #30)

The Penny Plunderer is a name I had heard but had no real context for. I assumed he was some goofy silver age villian with pennies for eyes who drove around chucking pennies at everyone.

I am an artiste.

Instead it's just a guy in a suit. He has the backstory of any good golden or silver age villian to justify his gimmick

I love.. everything about this backstory. It reads like if a writer was given the thought exercise "Make the pettiest batman villian origin you can find.". I mean other villians gimmicks make sense: Poison Ivy was a botonist, Mr Freeze had a horrible accident, the penguin was born looking like a penguin with a lot of money, the Joker fell into a vat of chemicals and came out a clwon, the riddler liked puzzles.

Here Joe just... got screwed over by pennies a lot. Even funnier is that the last one has nothing to do with pennies. Like.. even if it'd had nickels he'd still be arrested.

So Joe vows since pennies runied his life, he'l lbecome the penny! Sadly this does not mean him dressing up like a giant penny with a cane and top hat.. nad now I can't show you it that last drawing put me too far behind and... oh fuck it.

Instead he just wears a suit but makes his gimmick pennies. Commit to the bit man. I do get it as some golden age villians were just guy in a suit, even Joker and Penguin technically counts but one is a clown and the other is a rich penguin man. They have mor ethan just "suit and a vendetta against pennies that somehowturns into stockholm syndrome.

So the penny plunderer begins his reign of terror, setting up a penny arcade as a front, and cashing in a roll of pennies in the most diabolical scheme ever devised by man.

A true criminal mastermind.

Batman picks up on this pattern because it's what he does and finds his next case, a coin and stamp exibiton with a rare one cent stamp. It's here we meet the reason we're here: the giant penny!

Yeah to my shock the penny had NOTHING to do with the penny plunderer other than being at the site of one of his robberies. He prefered just.. chucking pennies at people.. which is awesome and a truly great tactic only topped by Batman's use of said giant penny

I adore the fact that this iconic artifact is there not because it was seized from the villians or a police options.. but because, presumibly, Bruce thought this penny he found was kick ass and bought it off it's actual owner.

Most of the theives escape but they find one willing to squeal. Unfortunatley he dies for his hubris

Yup bet you weren't expecting the penny guy to kill someone and to see his corpse weren't you but here you are. Also batman is apparently a cop now. George Lopez tried to warn us...

But we didn't listen! We didn't listen!

A fight breaks out at the gambling parlour and we get two of the best moments in batman history that much like the blue beetle film, ar ehighly underated.

I just.. I get the sense that is how batman ALWAYS plays pinball. Just judo kicks it every time even as bruce wayne. Both bruce wayne and batman have been banned from so many arcades.. often the same ones. Perks of having a secret identity. We then get coyne once again THROWING pennies at someone and it working. I don't know why he hasn't been brought back with the telkeentic ability to contorl pennies. Give him a copper helmet and a proper costume and oh dammit..

Then Joe knocks batman out iwth his one weakness: a roll of pennies. He's trapped them in the parlor for your standard batman death trap, having removed their belts and ripped out the phone lines as usual. He then throws them a few pennies when then prove to be a mistake as it's time for SCIENCE WITH DR. BATMAN, who uses one old penny, copper, and one new penny, zinc to make a battery. Good thing jimmy didn't wish it away THIS week.

The cops arrive to free one of hteir own and batman finds a clue once the parlor is cleared of gas. Turns out Coyne was catering a penny slot party for a rich billinoare's houseboat, and naturally their filled with gas. I swear it's always gas with these golden age villians. Get another knockout device fellas.

With that our final chase enses as Batman and robin chase Coyne and while he nearly bests them with a good game of 1940's donkey kong

He's foiled by his own gimmick: he has only pennies but the pay telephone.. dosen't.. take 5 seperate pennies for some reason? the hell? I get payphones not taking pennies once they went up to a quarter but come the fuck on 1940's payed telephones. he's foiled.. and sentenced to death.

Yes folks that's the cannoical till some lucky fellow brings him back fate of the penny plunderer: PUT TO DEATH.

This story is as you can tell nonsense that's only gotten more hilarious with the passage of time and I loved every page on it and on getting the panels for this review, I only found MORE hilaroius nonsense to laugh at. We have a story where a guy with a penny gimmick smacks batman with a roll of pennies, trips robin with more, kills a man without pennies, is foiled by pennies yet somehow dosen't actually use the giant penny that's the only reason people know he exists. It's beautiful bollocks and worth your time.

(From Batman #35)

As I hope you are, this issue had me hooked from the first panel: Batman vs dinosaurs being forced to fashion a bow and arrow for some reason. Yes... fuck. Yes. Also nice of bruce to eat Ollie's lunch.

Okay so this story starts, as many real life stories do, with a billionare having a zany idea; Mr. Hart is a man who puts on shows: ice follies, aqua carnival, 40's razzle dazzle type stuff. For his latest idea though he's going above and beyond: a DINOSAUR ISLAND. With mechancail dinosaurs and cavemen who throw giant sponges at you. Thankfully spongebob wasn't born yet but his great great grandpappys quarepants did the honors. Honorable old fool.

To ramp up the insanity, Mr Hart is inviting a club of big game hunters to eat mammoth steak with batman.

If that weren't enough, and in any other golden age story it might be... our heroes get CHALLENGED at dinner by one of the rich assholes. Yeah turns out rich assholes who hunt innocent animals for sport and eat reheated mammoth aren't the most stable indviduals and Mr. Breech scoofs at the fact Mr. Hart says Man is the most dangerous game. He's hunted man, they went down like cowards. COWARDS. He feels Batman couldn't hut a dinosaur without his gadgets, and certainly not his bare hands... even though as this issue with prove and has already shown early man had tools.

To prove his point he challenges batman to a fucking challenge: survive on Dinosaur Island: no utility belt, no vehicles. If the dinosaurs touch him he looses. Mr Breech will man the controls. Honestly i'm convinced Breech knew hart well enough to know he'd both agree to this for the publiclity and why he'd invite batman and robin and just wants to play iwth giant mechanical dinosaurs and also batman. Which granted if I were invited to this sort of thing i'd also want to chase batman with mechanical dinosaurs for fun, who wouldn't, so I totally get it and respect the game.

Hart is on board, offering 5000 to the winner's charity and Batman is like "Why the bat-fuck not. Let's go".

Now you might suspect Breech's real motive is trying to kill batman. I mean you have a setup where batman will be without his weapons, the plausable deniablity of a machine malfunction and a secluded island with 24 hours to kill the batman. And you'd shockingly be wrong. Breech really just wants to prove dinosaurs are the most dangerous game so when that Jurassic Park he's working on opens no one will object to him hunting them for sport.

But his plans are foiled by Chase, anothe rich knob who wants to kill batman and robin to, as he says later form a "crime combine". So he wants a bunch of middle aged guys drinking beers to yell at him for not training the joker on tackling well enough. I see.. well played.

So the game is afoot and our heroes take a bit to catch up, first brushing off a real rock among the sponge rocks as a mistake. Theis ends when a Triceratops to trismash them into a tree. Batman calls for a war council on a nearbye island but naturally THAT'S NO ISLAND

Batman fought a mechanical fucking seamonster. That.. that's cannon. To almost every batman timeline. God bless you Golden Age, god, bless, youuuu. Also i'd be stupid if I didn't say that Tally Ho, Batman! is one of the greatest phrases in batman history up there with "I Am the night" , "I'm batman" and "Something something joker's boner".

So now the games for their lives, Batman and Robin don't have to play fair and start fashioning bows, arrows and knives out of mechanical dinosaur bones. You know.. sometimes this job can be draining: 2-3 reviews a week, many a plan having to be delayed due to a review taking longer than expected.. but then you get a review where Batman and robin have to outrun a manical billinoare who hyjacked dinosaurs from a diffrnet billionare who was having a charity dinosaur hunt with batman and robin using a third billionare's dinosaur, while fashoining weapons from mechanical dinosaur corpses and fashion a kite from a mechanical ptreadon and remember why you love reviewing stuff so mucH: sharinng a good story with the world and finding a good one or two yourself while your at it. And thanks to Kev i've found three truly wonderful, truly bonkers batman stories, with this one being the easy winner. It's both a decent enough concept for the time and hilariously insane.

And I ddin't make up the kite thing: when, after a night of survivial, Robin brings up the batplane, Batman has an idea: since the flying dinosaurs are on a programmed pattren rather than directly controled, they can use them to make themselves a kite yor style.

So to win the day Batman has a plan: he uses himself as bait since Robin's the more agile of the two, and has robin CATAPULT HIMSELF into the air after chase, who is riding on t-rex back with an army of dinosaurs.. and how does he defeat chase' smighty dino army?

It's both genuinely clever and wonderfully bonkers: Robin defeats an evil billionare RIDING a mechanical t-rex.. with water balloons.

Also props to this story: in the previous two the trophy was impressive.. but it was taken from what felt like a minor point in the story: the card flip game was fun as was batman slammin ga door on a guy, but it's sandwitched between far more elaborate death traps, while the penny, again awesome, wasn't even something the penny plunderer used. Batman just bought it off some offscreen character to relive fond memoreies of crushign some crimianls alive with it. Here the main villian ROAD IN on the thing. Granted he still had to likely buy it off his actual owner, but this time at least a criminal actually used it as a murder weapon. I can see Batman wanting this thing for his cave.

Batman chases chase over the now still dinosaurs and punches the guy out. With this Batman's saved the day AND won the bet. 5000 for batmobiles for kids, donate your batmobile today!

As for chase...

With that our story and this trilogy comes to an end.. and as I said, it's great. check out all three of these issues their a lot of fun. Next time dc puts some up for sale I may have to get some 40's batman, this stuff is golden.

Thanks for reading

To conclude batman month: Wait'll you get a load of this

#batman #robin #bruce wayne #dick grayson #the joker #golden age #1940s #penny plunderer #dinosaur #dinosaurs #comics #dc comics

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gonnalosemydougdimmadomedamnmind · 8 months

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It's literally impossible to read bat fanfiction because it's all based off those ridiculous fanon tropes that spread like crazy and people take as fucking biblical!!!!! Dick was never a jerk to Jason when he was Robin- they got along because Dick is mature as hell and in one retelling- Jason was a jerk to him!! And when he came back as Red Hood he had literally not a single damn reason to treat Dick like shit! Not a damn one! But he did, didn't he? Cause he's the fucking asshole! How dare you make Dick grovel towards that bastard! Dick has only ever tried to help him! Reached out during his Batman run, over and over! Also- Dick never put Jason in Arkham with Joker just a few cells down???? What the fuck! The Joker and all those other fuckers had been broken out of Arkham by Black Mask already for like the whole run??? Jason went to Arkham after losing to Dick, and Gordon put him in there because One he fucking deserved it, Two the literal circumstances?? And at that point!! Arkham was fucking rehabilitated itself!! By Dick!!! Because Bruce had him go undercover there for real, and Dick was actually tortured there before he got out!! So Dick put in the work to get that shit in order to actually help people!!

Dick never chose Damian over Tim- Tim refused to engage with him over his grief, shut him out, and left of his own devices! He never told Dick his suspicions on why Bruce was alive, never! And Tim is not the one to bring Bruce back either, there's a whole team at that point! Dick learns Bruce is alive through tossing his 'dead' body into a pit and the body comes to life as a zombie. Tim didn't tell him shit! Tim is also not a little crybaby- Damian cutting his line was a fucking blip on the page, he was momentarily shocked, that was it! He put Damian on his Hit List, which is why Damian cut his line. And his first attempt at "murder" is just pushing Tim off the dinosaur statue in the cave, he didn't go all assassin on him! Also Dick wasn't even there the first incident and wasn't told about the second incident. Alfred is the one who gave Damian Robin and Dick accepted him because he saw that Damian needed help! He needed guidance! He didn't fucking fire Tim the way Bruce fired him, and fuck all of you for thinking that Tim or Jason or fucking anyone has more right over Robin than Dick Fucking Grayson! He tried to promote Tim and Tim walked off. How dare yall make Dick fucking grovel towards that bastard!!!

Jason did try to kill all three of them!! Why does everyone just gloss over that like what the fuck??? Why does he get a pass for every shitty thing he's done??? "Bad writing" stfu this is the same dude that without hesitation kills random criminals, people who deal drugs, do you know how many random ass people deal drugs??? Jason doesn't give a single shit about being his own type of hero or saving Gotham his own way, nor do the people think of him as their savior!! Are you people fucking delusional?? I saw a post that said citizens would trust Jason over CASS and I cannot Believe the hallucinations yall are seeing???

It is literally downright impossible to find fics about Dick or Damian or Cass or fucking any of them that doesn't include these literal bullshit fanon takes!!! It's impossible!!! This fandom sucks!!!! You don't even need to go buy the comics, all these popular takes have been debunked right here on tumblr!!!! Also Dick can do literally everything!! He's hypercompetent as hell, die mad about it!! Jason doesn't like Wonder Woman???? Where the fuck did that come from??? Wayne Family Adventures is not real!!! Those people could not BE more out of character!!! Look at Bruce for crying out loud!!! Yall know that man ain't act like that!

Edit: leaving this here in case anyone wonders what my hot take is towards this question I was asked: "have you considered tho, that fanon is more fun..."

Well of course fanon is more fun if you're a fan of Jason or Tim. Fanon actively caters towards those two pasty white boys. Fanon actively shits on Dick and Damian though. And for Dick? He literally never did that shit! It is all made up! It's literal character assassination?? But by the fans?? And for Damian? He was 10!!! He grew up as an assassin! He was actively trying to grow with Dick's help! How can yall see him as the bad guy?? And not the literal bad guy, (Jason), and the 17 teen year old who literally fought him back btw, (Tim), like old boy did not act victimized the way you people portray. And Jesus for Cass? Cass is just a prop in fanon. So what exactly about this should be fun to me? Like seriously.

#dc comics #batman #batfamily #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #cassandra cain #anti jason todd #anti tim drake #anti batfamily fans #fanon bullshit #bat fans suck #i hate this place!!!#cant read anything!!!#bruce wayne #my posts

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