When you read the two stories side-by-side, it is obvious how writer Bill Finger took the Shadow novel and distilled it down to six, tight pages. The comic book opens with "young socialite" Bruce Wayne talking with Commissioner Gordon at the policeman's house. Gordon receives a call informing him that Lambert “the chemical king” has been stabbed to death and his son is being held as the prime suspect. Feigning boredom, Bruce tags along with Gordon to the Lambert house where he hears the young man's story of how he found his father, dead, with the knife stuck in his back, and his father's last dying word, "contract." When questioned about his father's business contacts, young Lambert names three men. And, with the speed of a 1939-era comic, one of those men – Stephen Crane – telephones the house. Crane, too, has received death threats, and Gordon urges Crane to stay put until police protection can arrive. It is at this point that Bruce Wayne, exhibiting disinterest, empties his pipe and exits.
The action cuts to Crane's house where he is brutally shot by some thug. As the thug escapes out the window onto the roof, he and his partner are met with the first image the world ever saw of Batman, or “The Bat-Man,” as Finger styles it. The hero quickly dispatches both thugs and snatches the paper recently stolen from Crane's house. Upon reading the purloined document, he speeds away in a red sedan. Yeah, just some random car. Can you image driving along a road and seeing Bat-Man behind the wheel?
Paul Rogers, the second of the business partners, visits Alfred Stryker, the last of the business associates of the murdered chemical king. Stryker's assistant, Jennings, wallops Rogers on the back of the head, ties him up, and informs the injured man that he is going to kill him with nerve gas used to experiment on guinea pigs. As the glass dome comes down, Bat-Man enters the scene. He throws himself into the dome, seals the incoming gas with a handkerchief (would that even help?), then breaks the glass dome, freeing both him and Rogers. With little effort, Bat-Man takes out Jennings right before Stryker himself arrives.
And the villain is revealed to be Stryker. As explained by Bat-Man, Stryker had agreed to pay his three former associates an annual fee, but with the three of them dead, not only would Stryker own the entire company, but he could keep all the money. With his plan revealed, Stryker draws a gun to kill the hero, but Bat-Man wallops him over a railing and down into the vat of acid. "A fitting end for his kind," mutters Bat-Man in a vein likely normal in Depression-era pulp stories but seems rather cavalier from here in the 21st Century.
The story wraps up with Bruce Wayne and Gordon again chatting until the last frame when it is revealed Bruce Wayne is secretly...The Bat-Man.
As a debut, it’s got all the ingredients necessary to whet the reading appetites of kids and adults in 1939, especially the tag ending. It would have been something if the modern convention of splash pages were in effect back then because the reveal could have been the last page. As it was, it was merely the last frame on the page. It also makes you glad that Bill Finger re-worked Bob Kane's original idea for the character--primarily a red suit--into the dark image of The Bat-Man. Still, this kind of character begs for a second and third adventure and we’ve gotten a monthly installment of Batman ever since. Stop and ponder that for a moment: For something like 950 months in a row, we have had at least one Batman story each month, with many months—especially in the 1990s when four Bat-titles were published—more than one. That’s a seriously incredible feat.
The one question I’d love to have ask Bill Finger was why this particular story from The Shadow was used? For debuts, it’s best to put out the best possible story. Did Finger think this was the best? Did he not yet have a handle on the character? Only a reading of the new few issues will reveal the answer, something I’m doing in these next few weeks.
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