Friday, August 29, 2008

Detective Comics #380

Detective Comics #380 (On Sale: August 29, 1968) has a cover by Irv Novick.

"Marital-Bliss Miss" is by Frank Robbins, Bob Brown and Joe Giella. Virginia "Ginny" Jenkins barges in to Wayne Manor and claims to be married to Bruce Wayne. Bruce plays along with her so that he can learn the reason for her actions. Ginny fears that her brother Jim wants to kill Bruce, so she pretends to be married to him to save his life.

Batman begins investigating Jim Jenkins to learn his reasons for wanting Bruce dead. He finds that Jenkins was turned down for a Wayne Foundation grant several times by bank president and Foundation treasurer Eugene Driscoll. When Batman visits Jenkins's office, he is attacked and Jim is killed by a third party.
Batman exposes Driscoll as the killer after proving that the two men had once attempted a bank robbery together. Jenkins wanted to kill Bruce, so that Driscoll would gain full control of the Foundation funds, and he could blackmail his former partner for millions. Driscoll is caught, and Bruce's marriage hoax is ended.

The Elongated Man stars in "Fortune in a Flower Pot" by Gardner Fox and Sid Greene.
Ralph and Sue Dibny witness two men planting gold coins in a flower pot. While Ralph ponders their motives, the two men are attacked by hoods. The Elongated Man stops the crooks. He then learns that the owner of the coins Elwin Trent was planting them to analyze the soil in an attempt to find more coins buried on his dead brother's estate.

Once the mystery of the planted coins is solved, Ralph believes the hoods were hired by a coin dealer who was the only other person to know about the coins. The Elongated Man tries to prove his suspicions, but his deductions were wrong.

Edited by Julius Schwartz.

No comments: