Batman #222

Batman #222 (On Sale: April 21, 1970) has a classic cover by Neal Adams, sometimes incorrectly flagged as inked by Dick Giordano. Obviously this is not so. I remember the day I came home from school and my brother says to me, "The guy on the radio just said that Paul McCartney is dead." It was a real thing, the clues on the album covers and in the songs and for a while it consumed us.

The cover story is "Dead... Till Proven Alive!" by Frank Robbins, Irv Novick and Dick Giordano and it is based on the rumors that flew in 1969 that Paul McCartney was dead and had been replaced in the Beatles by the winner of a \Beatles look-alike contest. One interesting aspect of this story is that it features both Batman and Robin, just months after they had split them up, and begins with Dick Grayson listening to the radio with some friends where they are being told how to find the next clue to the death of Oliver Twists' member Saul Cartwright. When they hear that the Twists are going on tour and hitting Gotham, this leads to his friends asking Dick to ask Bruce if he could swing for the Twists to come to Hudson University for a concert.

Since both Dick and Bruce would like to get to the bottom of the whole "Saul is Dead: schtick, Bruce invites the Twists to stay in the now unmothballed Wayne Manor. What then transpires is a series of thwarted attempts by Bruce and Dick to find out if Saul is the real Saul, some ending up with gunplay. Finally Batman and Robin confront the band, accusing Saul of not being the real Saul. He breaks down and says he is tired of this nonsense and he will tell the truth when band member Glennan pulls a gun on the group saying he has spent enough time trying to keep them from finding out the truth and will just kill them instead.

Saul knocks the gun out of Glennan's hand and Robin takes him out. Saul confesses that he is not the phony, the other three are and that the rest of the band was killed in the Himalayas when they went looking for enlightenment and he hires the look-alikes to keep the band going and dreamed up his own death to keep people off the track. With Glennan in jail, the rest of the band come clean with what happened and form a new group called Wings! Just kidding, they are called The Phoenix.

The back-up Batman story is "Case of No Consequence!" by Mike Friedrich, Irv Novick and Dick Giordano. After an exhausting night of patrol, Batman finds a deaf-mute photographer who has mugged and his camera stolen. Batman tracks the mugger down to a local pool hall, but in his exhausted state finds the mugger a bigger problem than normal. The mugger escapes but Batman tracks him down and eventually retrieves the camera and the man's wallet. Batman fixes the camera which has been damaged and returns it to the photographer who takes Batman's picture.

I really enjoyed the artwork by Novick and Giordano in this issue, which was reprinted in Showcase Presents Batman #5 TPB. 

Edited by Julie Schwartz.