Batman's Silliest Fight Proved the Dark Knight Could Be Serious AND Goofy
Although Batman is regarded mostly as a serious figure with a tragic past, he has found himself in funny situations even during his more grim periods of fighting crime. Even in the 1970s, a period in which the comedic trappings of Silver Age Batman were being shed for something darker, there were still laughs to go around. An iconic example: in the midst of tracking down one of the most dangerous supervillains in Gotham, Batman ends up in a fistfight on top of a giant typewriter. It may sound like the setup to a bad joke, but it happened at the height of one of the most widely-beloved runs in Batman's history.
The Batman comics of the 1970s were practically defined by revolution and invention. Serious writers like Dennis O'Neil, Len Wein and Gerry Conway began adding an appropriately hard edge to the cases Batman solved, while virtuoso artists like Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, and Mike Grell gave the characters and settings a more realistic appearance and darker stylization. It was a time that brought readers many acclaimed and now-legendary Batman stories. One of the most iconic creative teams to work on Batman was that of writer Steve Englehart, penciller Marshall Rogers, and inker Terry Austin.
Related: Batman's Greatest Flaw Has Tragic Consequences In The Multiverse
Englehart, Rogers and Austin would work together on Detective Comics from issue #471 to #476, August 1977 to March 1978. All six issues were also colored by Rogers—no small feat considering the high quality of the pencils he turned in simultaneously. This run was characterized by a strong sense of continuity, the introduction of iconic characters like Silver St. Cloud and Rupert Thorne, storylines like «The Laughing Fish!» (#475-476,) and a heightened sense
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