BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE : A BIG HAND FOR BATMAN

Batman vol.1 No.130 (March 1960)

Surely there must be some sort of congenial prohibition among super-heroes, preventing them from idly snatching up their allies’ assorted nemesis without at least first-right refusal of a potential team-up, don’t you think? Well, if there is, Batman and Robin get themselves put on the Union’s shitlist for tackling the secret menace behind a giant green hand, and I don’t mean General Mills.

Ho ho ho.

In March of 1960, aliens in pink tunics whose faces resemble a cross between the Wicked Witch of the West and a placemat show up along the outskirts of Gotham, stealing precious and semi-precious industrial metals from mining and processing sites using the dimension-crossing extremity of a GNARL, evidently a giant green man-monster from a dimension sidling up against our own. Yes, some sort of cosmic gloryhole is opened between realities and – thank god – the giant GNARL chooses only to shove his mitt through. This could have been a specialist video and a half – the world’s biggest gangbang indeed!

Anyway, the GNARL and the GNARL-wranglers (that’s how they’re listed in the credits) strike at a number of sites around Gotham, attracting Batman’s attention and earning an opportunity to just shove the Dynamic Duo around like dumb fat babies. The GNARL’s biscuit-pincher is a powerful appendage indeed, and easily slaps the Batplane out of the sky and generally scrambles Batman’s and Robin’s individual eggs for breakfast. In fact, what with the aliens letting the pet GNARL happyslap the Caped Crusader in between grabbing mineral goodies with the universe’s longest boardinghouse reach, and their ability to vanish back into their home dimension in a blinding glare of light, it appears they’re downright undefeatable.

Batman doesn’t know the meaning of “undefeatable”, although he does know the Eskimo language, the canny use of which allows him to discern that the aliens are fakes and find their post-“Dimensional Disappearance” hideout with no problem – and there he finds LEX LUTHOR, Superman’s eternal nemesis, slumming it up with some hoodlum chums and a couple of fright masks so as to steal a couple mil in platinum.

Naturally, just clocking Luthor on the noggin wouldn’t contain sufficient ironic comeuppance, so Batman hijacks the GNARLy green monster hand that had been causing so much trouble in Gotham and uses it to frankly humiliate Luthor before arresting him. Justice is served – HANDILY. Haha. Awesome.

Is that a Smiths lyric? It sounds like a Smiths lyric.