A fave Batman story

I have been a Batman fan since early childhood. I think it was the Adam West tv series that originally got me hooked. I can remember watching it in colour at the twins' house across the street in Chomedey, and boy did the show look even better than on our black and white set! Since I moved away from that house when I was 5 years old, Batman has been part of my life for a long time. In fact, when I was four I was hospitalized to have my tonsils removed, and my parents gave me a Corgi Batmobile, just like the one in the tv show. I still have it, and it is a prized possession.

The comics also came early. Here is the cover from what I think was my first Bat comic, "A Vow From The Grave", from Detective Comics #410, April 1971. I was five at the time it appeared, and I loved this comic so much. Sadly all my early comics were thrown out by my mother in 1975 because I did not clean my room. The version that I own is from a 1978 treasury-size reprint called "Batman's Strangest Cases" (aka Limited Collectors' Edition Vol. 7, #C-59). I pulled the cover from the Grand comics Database at www.comics.org.

"A Vow From The Grave" is a 15-pager from the great team of Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and Dick Giordano. It starts with Batman chasing a small-time criminal out in the boonies, during a rainstorm. He runs across some out-of-work carnies who live in an abandoned house nearby. A murder ensues, and Batman solves the whodunit and comes to the rescue of a little boy names Timmy who has flippers instead of arms and legs. And Bats does this in grand style, by stepping off a tower, and swinging around and grabbing Timmy when he is thrown off the tower by the bad guy. While the art is nothing particularly special, any Adams/Giordano looks great to my eye. Here's a photo of that page:

Track this one down. It's worth it!