Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy
I'm glad you posted that one, G-man.

DETECTIVE 455 was an issue I'd planned to list here later, I'm glad you didn't let it go without mention.

Somehow, that was one of the scarier Batman stories, and as you said, despite some stretched plot devices, it worked well and, tossed in with the supernatural element of fighting a vampire, the heart-transplant thing became plausible within the context of the story.

Grell probably didn't stick around on DETECTIVE because he was busy as GREEN LANTERN artist, and as you said, was doing WARLORD at the same time. So that probaby kept him pretty busy.

Another story that has Batman take on the supernatural is a great Werewolf story in BATMAN 255, by Len Wein and Neal Adams.


Usually bringing vampires and werewolves into the modern era comes across as cheap. But both these stories pulled it off very skillfully.


Another reason that vampire story worked, for me at least, was the fact that the vampire was mentioned as having been kicked out of Cornell University (when he was alive) for his insane experiments.

Cornell is, of course, an actual Ivy League university. It was one of the first times I'd seen a place that I had known and visited in the real world mentioned in a comic book instead of the usual fake names like Ivytown university or Gotham College.

It created a sense of verisimilitude in an otherwise wholly fantastical story.