Detective Comics, No. 28 (June 1939)
The Bat-Man. He's a mysterious costumed vigilante in the mold of The Shadow, down to his black cape and alter-ego as a handsome rich do-nothing. Still limited to six pages, Bat-Man tracks down a gang of jewel thieves led by a nefarious criminal (Frenchy Blake) in a smoking jacket and monocle, beats them all to a pulp, then hands the ringleader over to the police. We get Bat-Man's second kill in the first page of this story, when he sends one of the jewel thieves plummeting from a skyscraper. Bat-Man also pulls of the first of many gambits—convincing the police he's one of the thieves to give a real criminals a false sense of security. Overall, a more action-packed tale than his debut, but nothing special. The main attraction of this issue is the debut of the Batrope, with plenty of panels of Bat-Man swinging through the city to escape the police or get the drop on this criminal gang. He even shows off what becomes a classic Bat-Man technique: dangling the villain out the wi
