BATMAN #290

COVER TAGLINE: None TITLE: Skull Dugger's Killjoy Capers! STORY ARC: None COVER DATE: August, 1977 WRITER: David V. Reed ARTIST: Mike Grell INKER: Vince Colletta COLORS: Jerry Serpe LETTERS: N/A EDITORS: Julius Schwartz COVER: Mike Grell PRICE: $.35 U.S. CHARACTERS: Ra's al Ghul; Alfred Pennyworth; Commissioner James Gordon; Cosmo "Skull" Dugger; Dr. Tzin-Tzin; Dr. Faye Somers PLOT: Bruce Wayne, as himself and as Batman, valiantly struggles against his reversed joy-pain responses, and learns from Dr. Faye Somers that "Skull" Duggers victims were killed by an intensification of their brains' electrical charge. He begins a survey of Dugger and atracks him to a will-reading in which Dugger murders the heir, but he is unable to prevent the killing or capture Dugger. Hitting on a new plan, Batman disguises himself as a prison guard, arranges to be let inside Dr. Tzin-Tzin's cell, and cons the evil genius into thinking he will free him for a million dollars. The villain mystically immunizes Batman to pain for an hour, supposedly so that he can endure the electrical shocks which guard a vault door. Instead, Batman waits for Dugger in the latter's home. The hour expires just as Dugger arrives. But Dugger hits Batman with a double-barrelled electrical device, one beam to cure his reverse-response condition, the other to kill him. Batman not only survives, but is restored to normalcy. Dugger perishes in an electrical accident. Later, Batman tells Commissioner Gordon that the "killjoy" device only worked on someone experiencing joy--the opposite of what Batman was experiencing at the time.

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