World's Finest Comics # 269 - Buried Alive ; Escape Me...Never! ; I Must Go Home Again ; All the Bits and Pieces of My Life ; Sabbac Strikes Back!

Before he spent some time on Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Gerry Conway was a pretty decent comic book writer. He co-created The Punisher, killed Gwen Stacy, created Firestorm and helped Marv Wolfman and George Perez shape the New Teen Titans. If you haven't and aren't familiar with his other credits take a look at Wikipedia. I'll wait.

Back? Okay.

It is 1981. DC Comics is still publishing a title called World's Finest. The book started with Superman and Batman & Robin. It is now a Dollar Comic with no ads and features that don't have their own titles, like Green Arrow, Hawkman & Hawkgirl, The Red Tornado and Captain (Shazam!) Marvel. Remember, this is 1981. Not just pre-Crisis. But pretty nearly pre-everything.
 
Conway's got the flagship story this issue. Batman has disappeared; and, neither Commissioner Gordon, Gotham's Finest, Superman or Robin can seem to find him. The story opens with a frustrated Superman cooling his heels in Commissioner Gordon's office. Robin shows up. Gordon gets a call that there's a man on a Metropolis bridge demanding ransom from both cities in exchange for Batman's location. Unfortunately, when confronted by Superman and Robin, he blows himself up - nearly taking Robin with him. Jimmy Olsen provides a valuable clue for Superman to find The Dark Knight. He, and Morgan Edge, add the Metropolis side to the story. Edge as always the pompous windbag.
 
Maybe, one day, DC will collect World's Finest in the Showcase format. That would be pretty cool. So far this story is collected in the The Strange Deaths of Batman. Shame the cover wasn't collected. Usually, that's a part of the enjoyment of the trade paperback, is the covers, or a cover gallery. Not really sure that this qualifies as a death or a strange death of Batman. It may be close enough to one, but most of the other stories in the collection have actually featured some form of Batman dying. The strangeness was in how it occured, or how it was undone or explained away. Right from the start, I kinda get the feeling that while Batman's life is in peril, he isn't in danger of actually dying. This story is a chance to showcase his ability as an escape artist - like Mr. Miracle. So, I'm not really sure this one fits the concept of the trade collection. It's a pretty cool story, one of the final stories of it's kind from the time - would this be from the Bronze Age of comics?

A good story that just seems to be ill-fitting the The Strange Deaths of Batman. Strange in that once again, it is not one of the main rogues that gets the drop on him, but some no-name schlub that ends up blowing himself up! The story might have been better if it were someone like The Penguin or Killer Moth or somebody that had kidnapped Batman. Now that might have been cool.