How To Impress Your Parents The Gotham Way!

Brace yourself for the most disarmingly sweet story you've ever read.

Bruce is having one of the "rich men opining about shit" conversations that billionaires have...

Well, soon enough the opportunity to prove it does indeed come along.

Batman rescues a young woman from ending her own life...

Why would she do this?!?

You're right, Batman!

Well, a more cynical hero might just tell her to "suck it up, confess the truth, and your parents will still love you."

Not this Batman!!

Now, you remember that story from the myths where Balder's mother went to every object on Earth, and made it promise not to kill her some (oops, forgot the mistletoe!!)?

Well, Batman is going to go to every single person in Gotham and get them to play along with deceiving Viola's parents!!

And yes, Bruce Wayne is going to get involved, too!

Batman even goes to the media...and of course they play along!

FAKE NEWS!!

One paper, though, is less cooperative!

Now that's my Gotham--where editors of scandal sheets are packing heat and aren't afraid to draw on the Batman!!

Time for Bruce to get involved...with his checkbook!

Goddamn, Gotham is the nicest city ever!

So her parents show up:

And Gothamites are happy to play along!

But, after a boring 5-page interlude where some crooks steal her new jewels and furs...

Fortunately, amazing coincidences are par for the course in happy Gotham City!

And so...

Hurray!!

Her parents are none the wiser...

And Bruce proves his friend wrong...

The cynic in me wants to thing Jim Daly handed over a one dollar check, as Bruce did all this just to win a rich man's wager like in Trading Places.

But, nope. This is a heart-warming tale where everybody in the big city unites in a harmless deception so a young woman's parents will be proud of her. Excuse me while a wipe away a tear...

From Detective Comics #53 (1941)