February-March 1953. A recurring motif in Golden Age Batman stories is a specific type of demimonde, where the institutions of respectable society are mirrored in the world of criminals and outlaws. For example, in David Vern Reed's "Outlaw Town, U.S.A.!" (BATMAN #75, above), the old mining town of Silver Vein, "in the mountains near Death Valley," has become a haven for 2,000 gangsters and wanted men, taking advantage of an old law allowing self-governance without state interference. This libertarian environment is not only a hideout, but has developed a booming local economy, full of hotels, casinos, and shops of all kinds. As a narrative caption notes, "Yes, Silver Vein has everything--newspapers, hotels, restaurants, theatres--everything but law!"
In the 1943 story "License for Larceny" (DETECTIVE COMICS #72), by Joe Samachson, J. Spencer Larson, a respectable and seemingly legitimate investment broker, has created a complete miniature ecosystem of law, capital, civil government, taxation, and criminal justice: As "Larry the Judge," he requires other criminals to purchase licenses to commit crimes, taxes them a percentage of their loot, and hires an army of uniformed men to enforce these rules. Those accused of violating the "law" must stand trial, with Larson presiding as judge, and pay a fine — or worse.
The story explains that Larson has established this setup by using funds from his investment clients (which include Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson) to pay his men, and then using his cut of the crimes committed under his licenses to pay impressive dividends to investors — whom he promptly arranges to have robbed! It's a potent piece of satire: capital as extortion and outright theft, where the only real difference between a gangland enforcer and a cop is the uniform, and the idea of economic mobility is largely a fiction to line the pockets of those in power. Just like the real world, in other words!
While Larson demonstrates no particular remorse, it was fairly common for Golden Age Batman stories, especially in the 1940s, to present characters caught in these demimondes as conflicted or tragic figures. The most familiar (and most extreme) example is Two-Face, first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #66, who teeters between respectable society and the underworld on the flip of a coin, but there were others as well, like Matthew Thorne, the Crime Doctor (or Crime Surgeon, as he's called in his second appearance), "doctor of medicine...and doctor of crime!!" First seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #77 and probably inspired by the 1938 Warner Bros. film adaptation of Barré Lyndon's THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE, starring Edward G. Robinson, Thorne is a respectable surgeon who can't resist the thrill of crime. He establishes a "Crime Clinic" where he offers "prescriptions" to help other crooks with their rackets, occasionally making "house calls" to assist directly in exchange for half the loot — essentially a variation on Larry the Judge's racket.
In his second appearance in BATMAN #18 (above), Thorne has lost his medical license, but he can't entirely ignore his Hippocratic Oath, actually performing surgery to save Robin's life after the Boy Wonder is shot by one of Thorne's men. He's eventually killed by another of his men, whose sick wife Thorne had promised but failed to save. In these stories, the overlap between worlds is not sustainable (except for Batman and Robin), and generally must be resolved by either regeneration or death.
While fighting crime was of course the central preoccupation of the Batman strip, one can also see variations of the demimonde motif in other types of Golden Age Batman stories, in particular the various excursions into the fantastical. Neither the Mars of "Batman, Interplanetary Policeman!" nor the 31st Century of Brane Taylor is an underworld, although they do of course have crime for Batman and Robin to fight, but settings like those have certain similarities with the strip's various criminal demimondes: They are worlds complete unto themselves; they are in some way cloistered; and Batman and Robin's access to them is relatively unique within the narrative. In some cases, even the characters who facilitate that access don't share it; for example, Professor Carter Nichols is not aware of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson's secret identities, and, with a few exceptions, isn't privy to the details of the time-travel adventures he sends them on.
In this respect, the principal failing of the weird aliens and bizarre transformations of the early Silver Age Batman stories was not so much that the fantastical aspects were necessarily out of place, but that they were no longer presented as secret, miniature worlds Batman and Robin were privileged to access. Aliens and visitors from the future would just land in downtown Gotham City in broad daylight — visible to everyone, and thus no longer special, or even particularly interesting, just as an ordinary small town is far less interesting than "Outlaw Town, U.S.A.!"
