THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 103 (1972)
by Bob Haney & Bob Brown
cover by Nick Cardy
This begins a surprisingly long stretch of team-ups between Batman and the Metal Men: the next five stories are going to involve the Caped Crusader.
In this period the main Metal Men series was just publishing reprints, so Batman basically kept them alive.
We begin, strangely enough, with Batman attending a meeting at the Pentagon to discuss a super-computer gone rogue: the awkwardly named John Doe.
John Doe is not just any supercomputer: it’s a “robot-computer” in charge of the US nuclear defense.
Am I the only one thinking about Wargames now?
In addition to having a weird name, John Doe also LOOKS weird.
The robot’s creator has gone missing, and John Doe went all robo-supremacist.
You might be wondering why the Pentagon called Batman and not Superman. While I’m not 100% convinced Superman wasn’t the better choice, there’s actually a reason for it: they need someone to track down the robot’s creator.
So… this is good detective work and all, but couldn’t the government just wiretap the phone?
It doesn’t take long for Batman to discover that the creator committed suicide.
That has to be the fastest confession ever!!!
You might be wondering where the Metal Men are in all this. Now we switch to their part of the story, and the first thing we learn is that the team has disbanded.
The second thing is that Mercury is now part of “robots’ lib”. His words, not mine!
The continuity with the main series is a bit wonky. Apparently the team disbanded after Metal Men #41; we’re never shown any sing of that in the series itself, and by the time the series restarts with Metal Men #45 they united again. I guess there’s nothing directly contradicting this, but it’s still weird.
And just what HAVE been the Metal Men doing? Like it’s happened before, Iron and Lead went straight into the workforce.
Tin and Nameless apparently bought a house together!!!
Enjoy this one-panel cameo: Nameless completely disappeared without explanation after Metal Men #32, and won’t be seen again until her very last story (which will be the next-to-last review of the retrospective).
Platinum has been working as a go-go girl in a “smoky discotheque”.
And without Doc Magnus, it doesn’t take much to convince the Metal Men to join “robots’ lib”.
Who are all these robots attending robots’ lib!? There certainly isn’t a shortage from the main series, but most of those were destroyed. So I guess these are actually the various robots from Brave and the bold #74 ?
Tina’s gonna fall for the psycho robot, isn’t she?
Well luckily she’s still in love with Doc enough to hear Batman read his last will (although Doc is not dead).
This is rather interesting. What DOES Doc Magnus want his robots to know in case he dies?
Basically it’s “please don’t start the robot apocalypse”.
I love the fact that the Metal Men’s reaction isn’t technically “I guess it’s wrong to kill humans”, but it’s just “Let’s not kill humans RIGHT NOW”.
So the Metal Men agree to enter John Doe’s base to reason with it, since it’s completely inaccessible to humans.
I still think they should’ve called Superman.
Aaaaaand the Metal Men side with the robo-supremacist.
Oh so NOW you figure out the butler was a robot!?
There might be another way into John Doe’s base, as Batman discovers by exploring the cave created by a nuclear explosion.
Aaaaand this is where he gets cancer.
But then Batman is rescued by the Metal Men, who have not betrayed humanity after all.
Yeah I’m with Mercury: why DIDN’T Batman notice Tin was missing!?
Don’t be fooled by the fact that this is actually a decent story: the Metal Men still suck at the whole superhero thing.
I wonder if we can really trust John Doe: DID the scientist really threaten to destroy his creation?
Time’s running out: if Batman and the Metal Men don’t return to the surface, the Army is going to drop a nuke inside the base.
I’m okay with it if it means we’re never going to see Iron take this form ever again.
To defeat John Doe, the team is going to destroy its memory bank.
Well someone’s watched 2001: A Space Odyssey !!!
Turns out John Doe has a programmed backup of his own creator (!!!)…
… who ends up killing himself, thus ending the story.
So I guess having a supercomputer in charge of the US nuclear arsenal wasn’t such a smart move after all. Who would’ve thought?
And just in case you were wondering: no, Mercury being a robo-supremacist was NOT part of the ruse. He really is a jackass.
Metal Men significance: 0/10
Utterly ignored by the main series.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
John Doe has a very Silver Age design, even when the rest of the character is relatively more grounded.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
Almost everything holds up rather well. The fact that Batman is the only hero involved, and especially the idea that the government wasn’t wiretapping the scientist’s phone after he disappeared, REALLY strain credulity. But other than that… the mystery is good, the characterization is good, and John Doe is surprisingly more complex than his looks suggest. I especially liked seeing the Metal Men adapt to civilian life, as well as the fact that they’re not exactly enthusiastically renouncing robo-supremacy.
Should this have been part of the main series?
Absolutely! Not only it’s a no brainer because they were only doing reprints at the time, this is a very solid story that shows you CAN write the Metal Men seriously.
Issues when not a single Metal Man dies: 24