The True Victims of White Collar Crime

There is a certain breed of madness, I think, that makes one a certifiable genius. A willingness to put any idea onto the comic page--no matter how silly or stupid or undeveloped--that results in things no one has ever seen before.

I'm talking about Bob Haney, of course. His ability to pump out story after story filled with insanely silly ideas that were only tangentially related to anything we'd recognize as reality was a gift. The sheer bravura of presenting a sequence of something mind-alteringingly odd, and then, before we could question whether or not it made sense, pummel us with something even odder, resulted in comic stories with a breezy momentum to them. Unlike many Silver and Bronze Age DC stories, that could bore us to tears with page-long explanations of how something had occurred (and usually get the science wrong or silly or both), Haney just said "roll with it" and hurtled on to the next plot point...he didn't have time for explanations, because he was busy throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.

Which brings us to this:

Now, that cover could have appeared on any writers' comic of the era...but the splash page...oh, the splash page:

The sight of our heroes behaving like animals, the overwrought yet compelling prose, the silly acronym of the title: one reads such things, and what can one say but..."Haney."

How do our heroes get into this mess? Well, for Batman, he apparently forgot that the was already a billionaire:

So, wheelchair-bound industrialists can summon the Dark Knight for daytime conferences? Anyhoo, Belmont thinks his daughter has been kidnapped so Dimitrios--the "world's richest man"--can torture the secret of Belmont's "fabulous new solar cell" out of her. That how industrial espionage works, you see.

Uhh, Bruce...you have ten million between your sofa cushions, I'm sure. And don't you have more important things to do than go jetting a thousand miles out to sea to fight industrial espionage, like protecting Gotham from Two-Face?

And how does Wonder Woman get involved in this fiasco?

That's right--Bob Haney just equated industrial espionage with "world peace and holocaust." That's why the UN has a "Crisis Bureau"--they get too bogged down with trivial things like Darfur to deal with the important things like protecting the profits of billionaires.

So, independently, Bruce and Diana make their way onto the Argosy, Dimitrios' "super-ship." Batman sneaks in through a "water intake scoop," only to find himself:


Best panel ever? Or is it this one:

I promise you, no other blog will give you a scene of a killer whale chomping off on octopus' arm. Discovery Channel, eat your heart out.

An aside: this is hardly backed up by extensive study, but I've noticed that many Bob Haney stories feature unorthodox panel arrangements...was this something he called for in the scripts, or were his stories so nuts that they drove the artists insane??

Fortunately, Wonder Woman show up and busts up the aquarium, freeing Batman and leading to the panel I presented yesterday.

The interesting thing this is that, despite being such a perfectly DC premise, we see very little of the simian squad. They're almost always in the background, among a crowd, in shadows...maybe Aparo wasn't fond of drawing apes. We do get this, however:

Wonder Woman is also captured (by "stinging sleeping gas"), proving that one billionaire with monkeys can take out 2/7 of the JLA without even trying.

This brings us to the story-opening splash panel, and Batman deduces (?) that "we must be drugged or under some hypnotic effect." Yeah, that's why you're barking like a dog...sure...

Of course, Dimitrios can't resist boasting...

...which provides Batman the opportunity to...well...you'll see...


See, every single story, Haney gives you something you've never ever seen before. The Caped Crusader swallowing the McGuffin, and the villain threatening to pump his stomach? Priceless!

There's a long "running through corridors" interlude, in which we discover that Batman didn't really swallow the solar cell--he palmed it--and that it wasn't real, anyway, it was a fake! (PRO-TIP: Don't ask...the labyrinthine espionage plot involves betrayals and set-up and triple crosses and is best not dwelt upon). After being captured (FOR THE THIRD TIME THIS STORY!!), Dmitrios has abandoned the stomach pumping plan for something far more Haney-ish:


Well, Wonder Woman is apparently squeamish, because that forces her into action:

After much butt-kicking, we learn that it was all part of Bruce's masterplan:


Seriously, whenever Haney has Bruce and Diana team-up, Bruce comes up with the most godawful stupid plans imaginable.

Bruce and Diana mop everything up...it turns out that Belmont and his daughter were just as evil as Dimitrios, and head off to jail. Which means, I suppose, Belmont won't be making that donation to charity. Which means Bruce will pick up the slack, right, Bruce? Bruce..?

D'oh!!

So we've learned that, in Bob Haney's world, billionaires travel the high seas with packs of ape guards (including some trained to do surgery badly), while conducting white collar crime by using murder, kidnapping and a circus costume; that Batman is available by appointment during the day, and is looking for other people to do Bruce Wayne's charity work for him; that Batman gets captured an awful lot; and that Wonder Woman doesn't really go into "top gear" until a monkey is about to cut Batman open with a scalpel...the rest of the time, she's just coasting apparently.

And that's just one issue. Rock on, Bob Haney, wherever you are.

The true story of the United Nations is told in The Brave and The Bold #140, 1978