"The Case of the Chemical Syndicate"

Introducing The "Bat-Man"'

​It's the title of the very first Batman story, published 80 years ago this month in Detective Comics No. 27, making this year Detective Comics and Batman’s 90th anniversary.  Detective Comics No. 1000 will be released on Wednesday, March 27 (natch!).

​“The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” has been adapted and retold five times since then, to celebrate the story's anniversary or folded into The Batman’s origin story. Wikipedia conveniently listed all the books containing those stories and I discovered, being a comic book collector cum hoarder, I own either those books or books containing reprints of those stories.

​On this sleepy Saturday morning, I reread them all one after the other, and afterwards, decided to choose one word to describe each iteration.

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Detective Comics No. 27

MOODY

​Written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane
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Published in 1939, featuring The Batman’s first appearance.

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Detective Comics No. 387

​HIP

Written by Mike Friedrich and drawn by Bob Brown & Joe Giella,
titled in this issue “The Cry of Night is – Sudden Death!”
then later retitled for a 1991 reprint “The Cry of Night is – Kill!”

Published in 1969, on the 30th anniversary of Detective Comics and The Batman.
It's the only version of the story to include Robin.

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Secret Origins Vol. 2 No. 6

COMPREHENSIVE

​Written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin
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Published in 1986 and adapting both “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” and
Batman’s original 2-page origin story, "The Batman and How He Came to Be,"
from Detective Comics No. 33 (1939) into one single origin story.

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Detective Comics No. 627

EXTREME for the first story, CELEBRATORY for the second

First new story written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Jim Aparo
Second new story written by Alan Grant and drawn by Norm Breyfogle

Published in 1991, it includes two new stories celebrating
the 600th anniversary of Detective Comics No. 27 and The Batman.
“The Cry of Night is – Kill!”, the 1969 30th anniversary story, is reprinted in this issue
as well as the original 1939 Finger & Kane story.

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Detective Comics Vol. 2 No 27

SELF-ABSORBED

Written by Brad Meltzer and drawn by Bryan Hitch
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Published in 2014, kicking off the 75th anniversary year of Detective Comics and The Batman

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The actual books from my collection that I re-read this morning.