Detective Comics #267

DETECTIVE COMICS #267 (1959)
by Bill Finger & Sheldon Moldoff
cover by Curt Swan

Bat-Mite is not exactly a villain so he shouldn’t be covered in the villain origins retrospective… but he’s going to show up on World’s Finest soon. And if I’m going to suffer an appearance from the little s##t, you’re all going to suffer with me.

We begin with Bat-Crap suddenly appearing in the Batcave, and Robin gives us a pretty good description.

And that’s already the introduction of Bat-Moron. If I have ONE good thing to say about this story, is that it’s very efficient.

Bat-Guano is blatantly inspired by Mr. Mxyzptlk, but there are two main differences: he’s trying to help Batman instead of irritating him, and he sucks.

The story is going to follow Bat-Insufferable trying various tricks to help Batman catch criminals.

One of the many, many, MANY reasons why Mr. Mxyzptlk works and Bat-Idiot doesn’t is the fact Superman is used to fighting absurd threats, Batman tends to be more grounded.
So how is he going to explain this to the public?

Sounds legit.

I mean, that’s some crazy stuff, right? Nothing weird happened in the issue before this one or the one after it.

Jokes aside, it’s a real problem with the character. The Batman stories of this era were extremely goofy but there was at least SOME attempt to keep them realistic, and an imp from another dimension really doesn’t work here.

Another issue with Bat’s-Not-Funny? While Superman typically outsmarts Mxyzptlk throughout the story, Batman tends to just tolerate Bat-Running-Gag during a case, then send him home, and then the whole thing is repeated several times in the same issue. It’s genuinely exhausting.

Just in case you were worried: yes, this Bill Finger story DOES include giant props.

And we FINALLY end the suffering with Batman sending Bat-Who-Asked-For-This back to his dimension. Again: Superman has to outsmart his foe, but Batman has to raise his voice a little.

Yes. “Fun”.

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Historical significance: WTF/10

Silver Age-ness: ಠ_ಠ/10

Does it stand the test of time? look-what-you-did-to-him/10

How close is this to the modern character? What modern character?
Bat-Mite was unceremoniously discarded in 1964 when editor Julius Schwartz overhauled the Batman series.
After that he has two appearances in 1965 and 1967 on World’s Finest (which were edited by Mort Weisinger) and one final pre-Crisis story in 1979, where he visits the offices of DC Comics. Yes, really.

It’s telling that story was the first story under Paul Levitz as editor, meaning that Schwartz never edited a story with Bat-Mite after 1964. Respect.

That story is a little prophetic for Bat-Mite, because it managed to figure out two of the two ways to use him in stories that don’t suck:
A) silly stories that make fun of the Silver Age zaniness
B) breaking the fourth wall

C) facilitate the craziest crossovers
(yes, that actually happened)

He CAN be funny if he’s used in right context!
What you DON’T want to do is put him in a real Batman story.