Terror in the Sky | Almost Got ‘Im

This week, Clay and Sean discuss “Terror in the Sky” and “Almost Got ‘Im”!



In “Terror in the Sky“, a giant-sized bat ransacks Gotham harbor and Batman suspects that Dr. Kirk Langstrom is up to his old tricks, taking the Man-Bat formula again. Batman isn’t the only one. Kirk’s wife, Francine, is so distrustful of her husband that she decides to leave him. After further investigation, Batman discovers that this Man-Bat is not Kirk, but someone else, and thus he shames Francine’s father into permanently destroying the formula.



This episode is loosely based on “Man-Bat Over Vegas”, originally presented in Detective Comics #429, by Frank Robbins. The setting has been shifted from Las Vegas to Gotham Harbor, and in keeping with the family-friendly rating of the television show, She-Bat is not a vampire in the adaptation. The final line of the episode, “the nightmare’s finally over”, is similar to one of the final lines from the original comic, “Now Fran’s vampire nightmare is about over”.







In “Almost Got ‘Im“, The Joker, Killer Croc, the Penguin, Two-Face, and Poison Ivy all meet at a poker table, each telling a tale of times when they almost defeated Batman. At the same time, Harley Quinn is about to kill Catwoman after she rescued Batman from the Joker’s electric chair, and Batman must save her.



This episode was influenced by a four-issue story arc in Batman (1977) #291–294, entitled “Where Were You on the Night Batman Was Killed?”. In each of the four issues, one of Catwoman, Riddler, and The Joker all recount their claims to have killed the Batman. However, the plot for “Almost Got ‘Im” is quite different (six stories in the show, and four completely different ones in the comic book), with only the Joker as an overlapping antagonist.



Two-Face’s strategy in “Almost Got ‘Im” (strapping down Batman to a giant coin and flipping the coin in the air) was taken from the comic; World’s Finest Comics #30, September 1947. In a back-up tale both Batman and Robin were tied to a giant penny that was catapulted onto spikes by a lesser known villain, the Penny Plunderer.







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