Batman '62: Oh God, We're Really Doing This
Batman #147 is the one where Batman Becomes Bat-Baby. There's got to be a universe out there where Grant Morrison incorporated this story into their writing instead of the Batman of Zurr-En-Arhh, and whenever he gets mentally compromised he just hypnotizes himself into becoming a baby. Welcome to the Gutters!
When I started this project, I didn't want to become the Angry Video Game Nerd. I'm always saying how I didn't want to become the Angry Video Game Nerd. Other people are always saying how I'm always saying that I don't want to be the Angry Video Game Nerd. But that is not out of any disrespect for the AVGN. James Rolfe, as a filmmaker, is absolutely legit, and I have nothing but respect for his work. As a critic, I want to do different things, but philosophically, I find his wisdom undeniable. Sometimes, when you take yourself back to the past, you find the shitty comics that suck ass, and all you can do is button up your white dress shirt, straighten your wire-frame glasses, stare right down the barrel of your Panasonic AG-DVX100 Camcorder and ask "What were they thinking?"
The story is a brisk ten pages, and it wastes none of them, although I can't say that it makes good use of any of them either. Batman breaks into the hideout of some mobsters and their mad scientist, Garth. Garth zaps Batman with the Baby-Rayby, and Batman just stays in it for long enough for him to turn fully back into a child. Who is Garth? Why does he have a baby gun? How does it work? What made him turn to evil? These questions and more will go completely unanswered by the narrative, bravely telling a story in which we learn absolutely nothing about any of the characters involved.
I'm not normally one to pick on a fictional child, but Batman is a fictional adult in the body of a fictional toddler, so my consistence is fictionally clear. Bat-Baby looks grotesque. Not once in any of these comic panels does he look anything like a real human child. Mostly that's just due to the uncanny valley, but these first panels where he's wearing the floppy batsuit and we can see his massive chubby baby cheeks will never fail to induce a visceral reaction in me. He looks like somebody made a racist caricature of a cabbage patch doll.
This premise raises a lot of interesting questions about Batman as a person. Famously, Batman lost his parents at a young age, and has been in a state of arrested development ever since, so how does he react to suddenly being a child again? What negative effects does having a child's body have on Batman's ability to fight crime? The answers to these questions is "Shut up and stop asking questions." Batman has all of his maturity and intelligence as an adult, and is only moderately bothered by having to sit on phone books to reach the table. Furthermore, despite having the body of a toddler, Batman is every bit as strong as an adult man, but he is all too willing to put on short pants and little dress shoes to fight crime.
The art has absolutely not improved in these next few pages. Outside of his costume, Batman looks like he has a young man's head on a child's body, and his arms and legs are disturbingly muscular. When he's in his Bitty Baby Batsuit, Batman's still got those gross sausage limbs but he's also got those weird puffy cheeks and, for some reason, full, pouty lips. He looks like he's been Weinerized. Why does he... why is that a thing? Why is any of this happening? Why do I do this to myself? I just cannot fathom the artist looking at this at any stage of the production and deciding that it looked like it was good enough to print.
Anyway, gotta move on. Batman next has to deal with the arrival of Katy Kane, who in this issue has decided that she's in love with Bruce Wayne. Bruce could do the sensible thing and have Alfred say that he's out sick with Rubella or some other pre-vaccination disease, but instead they do this convoluted scheme where they invite Katy into Wayne Manor, and then let her see the shadow of Bruce kissing some other woman, trusting that she, like the emotionally fragile lady woman-girl that she is, will turn around and run away, crying big feminine tears. Later, Bruce will explain that he wasn't seeing another woman, he was just making out licky-style with his cousin, a normal thing everyone does.
This scene is absurd on its own, but it's really just the nadir of a phenomenon endemic to Silver Age comics. The protagonist seems to be able to predict the actions of other characters as if they had nigh-omniscient prescience. Here we see Batman knowing that Kathy Kane would turn and walk away instead of angrily confronting Bruce and his lover, or indeed paying attention enough to notice that these shadows aren't moving or even making any noise because they're just a cardboard cut-out. Batman may be the world's greatest detective, but this story is treating him like the Kwisatz Haderach.
If you're in any way invested in this story, and why the hell would you be, you probably can't wait to see how Bat-Baby gets himself back to normal. So the hell would I, because this story doesn't even show us. We see Bat-Baby go off-panel, Robin mops up the thugs by himself, and then Batman pops back up, fully adultified. We don't even get to see him as a muscle-bound adult wearing tiny little baby pants. This should be the climax of the story and they don't even whiff it, because they don't even take a swing. It just soars clean through the strike zone unchallenged like Casey at the Bat.
I can't say that this is the worst moment in the history of Batman. Not in a world where Frank Miller didn't retire after 9/11 broke his brain. But this is without a doubt the single dumbest moment in the history of Batman. Comics like these were almost enough for DC Comics to cancel Batman outright, but against all odds, they rallied. In a few years, Batman would have a new art style, more dramatic writing, and a hot TV show putting him in the public eye, and Batman's fortunes would keep rising to the present day. When you hit rock bottom, sometimes you can climb out of that hole. Until next time!
