How Batman Celebrated the Bicentennial (Part 1)

The Bicentennial crept its way into several Batman comics in 1976, the earliest of which (as far as I can tell so far) appears to have been Batman # 273. Cover-dated March 1976, it probably shipped in January or so.

Of course, you'd never know it has any Bicentennial elements based on the cover art:

Ouch. He's going to feel that in the morning.

 

 

Okay, the cover may not show it, but look inside and the Bicentennial gets prominent mention in the very first panel.

Yup, Gotham is preparing to celebrate the Bicentennial with a Revolutionary War reenactment. Of course, this being Gotham, things go awry. In this case, an evil organization called the Underworld Olympics shows up on the scene. Here's the rather inspired logo of these criminal masterminds:

Skull and Ring-bones

These no-gooders quickly (and secretly) disrupt the rehearsal. In the process, several of the actors playing "rebels" are wounded, causing the British to win the war!

Nobody likes you, overzealous Redcoat actor.

After this shocking turn of events, the Underworld Olympics use the furor over the British victory as a smokescreen to commit a much bigger crime. The Bicentennial theme fades pretty quickly after this initial setup, but the rest of the plot contains some nice action and effective one-liners. The story itself isn't quite satisfying, but that's really just because this was the second part of a longer story that ran in the Batman comic for several months, so this issue doesn't contain much of a resolution.

Still, I just love this issue. Not only does it have a Bicentennial but it also combines the 1976 Olympics into a neat, timely story that took advantage of current events to craft a pretty good Batman tale.

The art's great -- of course it is, it's by Ernie Chan -- and David Vern Reed scripted the issue. Reed was an interesting guy, although I hadn't heard of him before reading this issue. A former pulp writer, he played a pretty major role in the Batman creative team for decades and co-created the character Deadshot. I'll have to track down more of his work. I wonder if his name will show up in the credits of any other Bicentennial issues? Probably not, this appears to be one of the last comic books that he scripted.

Other than the main story, there's only one other Bicentennial element in this issue, an ad for one of the era's ubiquitous sets of plastic soldiers, this time with a timely twist:

Play war!

Well, that's it for another look at the Bicentennial comics of 1976. Next up, something else from the checklist. I haven't decided what it will be yet, so come back next Wednesday for another slice of comic-book history!