In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

Today, based on a suggestion from reader Lefty K., we look at when Batman first actually kept a villain from dying in the comics.

In Detective Comics #911 (by James Robinson, Carmine Di Giandomenico and Ivan Plascencia), Two-Face tries to kill himself, but Batman quickly saves him (Two-Face, of course, knew Batman would save him, so "tries to kill himself" is probably a bit of a stretch)...

That's what we expect from Batman, right? He's the type of guy who won't even let supervillains off themselves.

Lefty's question, though, is based on the fact that, in the early days of superhero comics, superheroes really tended not to care if villains lived or died.

We can see that in the earliest Batman adventures in Detective Comics. Check out Batman's debut in Detective Comics #27 (by Bill Finger and Bob Kane). Dude just chucks a bad guy off of a roof....

Later, he knocks a bad guy into a vat of acid and he's like, "Yeah, he deserved that."

In the next issue, we are reminded that you don't want to be messing with Batman on a roof, as he will totally chuck you off of it...

Eventually, Jerry Robinson and George Roussos joined Bob Kane on art duties (Gardner Fox also briefly wrote the feature before Finger returned) and yet in Detective Comics #37, Batman was still totally, "Oh, that dude impaled himself on a sword? Do I care? Nope"....

In the next issue, we meet Robin for the first time and despite being just a kid, Robin gets right into the action, as well, kicking a bad guy off of a girder to his death...

We're already up to the point where Batman got his own ongoing series. So who does Batman finally save?

Amusingly enough, the first bad guy that Batman saved the life of was none other than the Joker in the first of two Joker stories in Batman #1!

The same thing happens in the second story, but Joker stabs himself by mistake and, in the original version of the story, dies. Editor Whitney Ellsworth was like, "No way are we going to kill this guy. He's way too good" and so he had new panels added that showed that Joker survived. He was back to bother Batman in the very next issue of the series.

Talk about a bad time to stop letting bad guys die, huh?

Thanks for the question, Lefty! Lefty asked this about a few different characters and I'll feature those other ones in the future.

If anyone else has a suggestion for/question about a notable comic book first, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!