(Smash Comics 010, 1940)
I had a little intro to this entry all mapped out in my head, something along the lines of how in a super-hero universe, super crimes are just as obvious a choice as mundane ones, like hiring a scientist to mind control your political opponents instead of merely blackmailing them, and so we shouldn't judge super-villains for over-complicating things, but as a part of actually writing it out I had to go over the details of the Bat aka Graystone's plan in my head and... he over-complicates it.
I don't think that I can lay this out properly in paragraph form, so we must once again turn to our old friend the bulleted list for aid. Here is the Bat's basic plan:
- systematically rob his neighbours
- create a fake monster bat to terrify the countryside and draw suspicion away from himself by linking its appearances to the robberies
- once everyone around him is poor and frightened enough, buy up all the local property for cheap.
Up to this point, everything is fine. It's a bit complicated but appropriately so for a comic book world in which there are people running around putting human brains into gorillas and so forth.
Graystone's downfall presumably begins when he realizes that being the only person in the area not targeted by the Bat is a bit suspicious. The obvious solution to this problem is simply to rob himself and join his neighbours in bemoaning their monster-haunted fate, but instead he:
- fakes the kidnapping of his son (in on the scheme, flies the plane that the bat monster hangs off of, is arguably also the Bat)
- calls in Scotland Yard and makes a bunch of noise
- attempts to kill Captain Cook of Scotland Yard several times as he investigates the mystery
- has the Bat demand that Cook deliver the ransom money so that Graystone can try to kill him again
It's like a list of things you shouldn't do if you want to stay under the radar - heck, killing Cook would only raise the profile of the case! Even the operation of the bat monster involves both a secret airfield and a hidden image projector (that doubles as an engine-killing ray for some reason) so that the bat image can be projected onto a sheet that is being pulled by a plane. Have these fools never considered the humble kite?
Graystone, his son and various of their servants are of course bundled off to jail to think about wot they done.
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