This is "Look Back," a feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2020 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

Today (a day late), we go back to September 1970 for Detective Comics #105's "The Batman Goes Broke" by Don Cameron and Win Mortimer.

As you may or may not know, one of the major plots of the current Joker War crossover event in the Batman titles was the Joker seizing all of Bruce Wayne's assets, depriving Batman from his one major advantage (over the years, some people have even suggested that being super rich basically IS Batman's superpower, since he can throw money at almost every problem, building crazy gadgets and weapons and vehicles in the process).

However, this was not the first time that Batman had to deal with being broke. No, this plot first came up all the way back in September 1945, when the issue opens up in media res as Batman and Robin are chasing some bad guys on foot when they try to convince some Gotham City cops to help them out. The cops believe that they are just impostors, so Batman uses his special Batman license, but the cops won't believe him because Batman's special license is platinum with a bunch of diamonds on it and the one Batman has has no diamonds on it (why Batman's special license is platinum with a bunch of diamonds on it is a whole other question that is worth asking). We then learn that Bruce Wayne had just started up his own motor vehicle company and he heavily leveraged himself and his company to form this new business and then his company's treasurer absconded with all of the company's capital, leading Bruce Wayne penniless.

After acknowledging that they likely cannot keep going as a team past their current case, Batman and Robin vow to at least resolve this one case before calling it quits (why they don't just use those same skills to, oh, I don't know, CATCH THE GUY who stole the money, is beyond me). While on the case, though, the Batmobile is damaged and Batman and Robin cannot afford to pay to fix it...

Already, they had been using Robin's money he made selling newspapers and Alfred's money mowing lawns (he is such a great employee that he remains to work for free) in the neighborhood to pay for the gas for the Batmobile, but now they need a quick $20 to repair the Batmobile and so the Dynamic Duo turn to the only logical place for them to make some quick cash - the circus!

Batman and Robin strut their stuff as he new aerialists of the circus (oddly enough, the comic never addresses the fact that that was literally what Dick Grayson was doing as a job before he met Batman). They are given the $20 that they need as well as a standing offer to continue to work for the circus...

Batman and Robin, though, just need the money to fix their wheels and they head out and capture the bad guys (Robin notes that this victory is especially important, considering that they pulled it off without any direct financial support from the Wayne fortune).

Soon after this, they learn that the guy who stole the money was captured and so Bcuce Wayne is back to being rich again.

It really is fascinating how this whole major plot of Bruce Wayne getting robbed out of his own company is just dropped in there at the end. It seems as though Cameron wanted the hook of Batman being poor and didn't want to actually get into the hows and the whys of the situation. Still, it is fair to note that his idea was a good one. It's a good hook, especially the Jack Burnley and Charles Paris cover. It makes you wonder whether it is a possibility that the cover was designed before the story for the issue was.

Another interesting aspect of the story is that, while the lose of his fortune certainly made Batman and Robin's life more difficult, it really isn't something that would haven nearly the same effects if it were today, when it feels like every other issue involves some expensive new weapon.

If you folks have any suggestions for October (or any other later months) 2010, 1995, 1970 and 1945 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.