#comics commentary

So Arthur Brown, alias the Cluemaster, made his first appearance in Detective Comics #351, published in May 1966:

That timing is interesting, because it means this issue would've been coming out right around the time the '66 TV series was wrapping up its first season. Which means that this is the period of continuity when, following Detective Comics #328 from two years prior, Alfred had been killed off via giant falling rock (seriously) and replaced with Dick's Aunt Harriet in a slightly desperate attempt to make the living arrangement in Wayne Manor seem less gay.

This is significant because, following the era-specific splash page introducing "The Cluemaster's Topsy-Turvy Crimes!" the story proper actually begins with Harriet:

For some reason, despite being the "den mother," Aunt Harriet was always left out of the loop when it came to the Batman and Robin schitck, so this opening sequence after her two years on the job was a whole deal.

I can see how Arthur got a reputation for being a D-lister villain -slash- kinda pathetic when he's getting upstaged as a threat in his first appearance by, "Quick, we need to gaslight not-Mom." The way he gets actually introduced into the story almost feels like an afterthought -- like, "Oh yeah, this was supposed to be about the villain guy."

"We've been waiting for them all week!"

Oh. Oh, I think they're trying to make him pathetic.

That would explain so much about Arthur's terrible costume. I always thought that thing looked like it was designed to be awful. And I think it was. I think we're supposed to take him as a wannabe the heroes aren't taking seriously. At all.

Side note, I'd forgotten how many creative monikers they gave the boys back in these days. Masked Manhunter I've heard before, but Teen-age Thunderbolt is new to me.

All that said, Arthur can't be totally incompetent or they wouldn't have a story, so he does manage to slip away and leave him with his supposedly signature clue...

But even that kinda feels... off? Because then Arthur gets this whole monologue to set up that his thing is that he thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and his real plan is to try to figure out Batman and Robin's identities...

...only to be foiled by the Aunt Harriet b-plot and have the Duo just kinda give up on his clue altogether.

Like seriously, they foil a completely unrelated robbery and then stumble on Arthur's big Arabian Nights heist on accident. Only to get dropped down a hole which, admittedly, doesn't make Batman and Robin look so great in comparison either.

There's an odd tone to this story because it really doesn't feel like we're suppose to take Arthur all that seriously as a threat? Like, even for the time, he's goofy. He feels like a parody of the Riddler, who was very popular at the time. And yet, based on the logic of the story, his plan of distracting them with terrible clues while he secretly followed them to their secret headquarters would've worked, if not for Aunt Hariet's efforts to also learn their secret identities accidentally screwing him over.

Also... sure, we'll call that a "sea serpent" and not a "very obvious upside-down duck." Whatever you say, comic.

The Arabian Nights one is a little more clever, but is it racist? I genuinely don't know. Maybe. Unrelated to all that, I like how Bruce and Dick are drawn in civilian mode by this artist (Carmine Infantino, designer of Barry's OG Flash costume -- a legend). He captures their ages well without over-exaggerating anything, Dick looks like a pretty, acrobatic teenager, Bruce looks like a handsome athlete in his 30s, they're wearing clothes that suit them and fit well. IDK, they just look nice.

Also, heh. Duck marina. Tim's new home, foreshadowed 60 years in advance.

Anyway what was I talking about? Right. Arthur. Harriet's camera gave him away because his painting was radioactive.

It was the 60s, everything in this franchise was radioactive. Not sure how this plan parses with the fact that the Batmobile of this era was supposed to be nuclear-powered too but whatever. From there foiling his dastardly plot is as simple as following his henchgoon home...Dick jumps on a grenade just to squeeze in some last-minute drama...

And then Bruce and Dick successfully gaslight both him and Aunt Harriet with the power of disguise and a little movie magic.

"Someday, we'll tell Aunt Harriet! But not now. For reasons. It'd be easier, but we're just not going to."

Also, it took me until writing up the page descriptions to realize that the two goons that Bruce and Dick pose as are the same two they take out for stealing televisions, so that would be why that random moment is in there. That did not track for me, probably because it's not so obvious from the framing of the fight scene that Dick is tackling a guy who's basically the same size as him.

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In conclusion: Arthur should use more bombs. That's clearly more this thing than the clues, which it turns out where never actually a compulsion at all, but shtick to try and show off how smart he is. Like the foundational difference between Riddler and Cluemaster appears to be that Riddler has a legitimate compulsion to leave riddles behind and Cluemaster's just a know-it-all tryhard who's challenging Batman purely to prove that he's the smartest guy in the whole wide world.

It's also funny and a little sad to me that, despite this issue prominently featuring Aunt Harriet, a character who got a lot of attention in the '66 TV series, when they needed a quick Riddler expy to fill in for an episode in the second season that they couldn't use Frank Gorshin for (because he was asking for more money than the studio wanted to pay), they didn't use Cluemaster, they used the Puzzler, a Superman villain from the Golden Age.

What we really need is a solo Essence one-shot where we get more information about where she comes from and what she’s been up to...