Batman #5 - DC Comics [Part One]

BATMAN (FACSIMILE EDITION) No. 5, February 2024

Pitching the Dark Knight against arguably his greatest adversary, the Joker, Issue Five of “Batman” certainly must have started well for its audience way back in March 1941. Indeed, Bill Finger’s plot for “The Riddle Of The Missing Card?” is arguably fairly intriguing as the Clown Prince of Crime surprisingly teams up with Queenie, Diamond Jack Deegan and the oafish Clubsy, so as to commit a series of burglaries against Gotham City’s wealthiest gamblers; “My – My… Look at all the people anxious to lose their money.”

Of course, the fact the titular character's co-creator rather boldly announces early on in the tale that Bruce Wayne’s shaving cut will inadvertently later save the cowled crime-fighter’s life, does debatably ruin the shocking notion that “one person other than Robin [now] knows the true identity of Batman.” But this premature revelation doesn’t detract too much from an adrenalin-packed narrative which requires Bob Kane to sketch both “the first appearance of Batmobile with a bat-shaped ornament and also the first boat owned by Batman”, simply so the reader can visually keep up with the comic’s fast paced chase sequences.

Unhappily, "Book of Enchantment" is debatably far from as entertaining, largely due to it relying upon the Dynamic Duo facing off against an increasingly silly line-up of personalities taken from various nursery rhymes and folk tales. Furthermore, the preposterous suggestion that the masked vigilantes just happen to have thwarted a crime on the doorstop of a scientist who can somehow physically whisk them away to a dragon-infested Land of Fantasy is surely a step too far for even the most imaginatively willing of Bat-fans to reconcile with.

Kane’s layouts are also something of a mess with this story, requiring any perusing bibliophile to follow the odd pointed panel arrow and numerous corner numbers so as to actually understand which disappointingly pencilled picture is next. The artist’s firedrake does admittedly look pretty good. However, its appearance is disconcertingly brief, so simply gets swallowed up by Bob’s seemingly never-ending merry-go-round featuring a one-eyed Cyclops, Jack’s long-bearded giant, Humpty Dumpty, Simple Simon, and numerous other man-eating minions locked within the Wicked Witch’s bizarrely populated “torture dungeon”.

Writer: Bill Finger, Penciler: Bob Kane, and Inkers: Jerry Robinson & George Roussos