Polite Dissent

The Brave and the Bold #142 was the first comic that I ever bought. I’d received comics as gifts before, but this was the first I’d ever saved up my own meager allowance to buy.

Look at the cover. How could I not buy it? Batman and Aquaman — two of my favorite super-heroes – fighting, and fighting underwater! Notice how the usual “and” in the title has been crossed out and replaced by “vs.” Now add in the mystery of a sunken ship. As an eight year old, I just had to have this.

The plot? As I recall, Batman is seeking the log book of the sunken freighter Alhambra but Aquaman wants the log book to remain hidden. Batman is seeking “Mr. Big”, a Gotham drug lord, and believes the log book will give him a clue as to the true identity of Mr. Big. At first, it’s a mystery why Aquaman is trying to stop Batman from reaching the sunken ship. In the end it all becomes clear: Aquaman is concerned that the Alhambra’s log book will show that it was negligence on the part of his adopted father, lighthouse keeper Arthur Curry, which caused the Alhambra to sink. Batman succeeds in reaching the log book and reassures Aquaman that the sinking of the ship was not his father’s fault; it was instead the fault of the notorious Mr. Big, the same Mr. Big who he now knows the identity of…

I never picked up the next issue (the cover wasn’t nearly as good and the price went up to 50 cents), so I never learned the identity of the mysterious Mr. Big.

The script to Brave and the Bold #142 was by Bob Haney and the art by Jim Aparo. The cover scan is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.