- The Batcave, Batman's iconic base of operations,
ever changing in design and function, housing a countless
number of bat themed vehicles, computery science stuff,
and of course trophies from past victories,
like a giant animatronic dinosaur and a very large penny.
But where did these items come from?
Well let's find out.
(rock music)
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions, a show that takes
you into detail about the things you think
you know about comics.
I'm your host, Scott Niswander.
And the TV show of Gotham premiered this week,
so we thought we would do a week of videos
and podcasts that show our love for Batman
because we do that, we love him.
One of the things that's piqued my interest about
the character over the past couple of years has been
the Batcave, specifically what's up with the dinosaur
and the giant penny.
And believe me, we will get into those.
But first, a quick history of the origin of the Batcave.
The Batcave made its debut not in a comic book,
but in the 1943 Batman serial.
But it actually wasn't called the Batcave.
In fact, back then it was called.
- You're going with us to the Bat's cave.
- Yep, back then it was actually called the Bat's cave.
And it was a pretty stripped down version of what
we know the Batcave to be in the comics.
Just a desk, a few chairs, and some of Batman's bats.
- Just some of my bats.
- [Scott] The Batman serial also introduced the concept
of the secret entrance to the Batcave through a
grandfather clock, a gimmick that's been used
frequently through the comics.
Although in many renditions the clock has to be set
to the time when Bruce's parents were killed at
10:48 to gain entrance.
The Batcave made its comic debut a couple months later
in October of 1943 in the daily newspaper of
Batman and Robin's comic strip where the name
was changed to Bat Cave, two words.
A couple more months later and the Batcave
made its official debut in Detective Comics #83.
And if that issue sounds familiar, it's because we
talked about it right here in this episode where Alfred
went from looking like this to like this.
Why? Because that's how he looked in the Batman serial.
So basically Detective Comics #83 was the issue where
they started to implement things from the successful TV
serials, which is still a trend that I think we see today.
You may recall a scene in Batman Begins where a young
Bruce Wayne falls through some wooden planks in
his garden into a cave full of bats.
Years later he returns to his childhood home and uses
that cave as a headquarters of sorts for fighting crime.
This is actually not too far off from the comic books.
We see a very similar scene happen in Secret Origins
of the World's Greatest Superheroes.
So good job, movies.
But if we wanted to talk about Pre-Crisis Batman,
then that's a whole different story.
In Detective Comics #205, the origin of the Batcave
is revealed for the first time.
Wayne Manor wasn't a family estate that was passed
down from generation to generation, but just a house
that Bruce bought when he came back to Gotham.
He planned on using an old barn on the property
as his base of operations and while testing the floors
he fell through and discovered what would soon
become the Batcave.
As for the iconic Batcave trophies like the penny
and the dinosaur, at one point these could all
be found in a separate area of the Batcave known
as the Hall of Trophies or the Trophy Room that
made its debut in Batman #12 of 1942.
Nowadays the trophies just seem to be scattered
throughout the Batcave as just random decoration.
But hold on Scott, you say, if the Hall of Trophies made
its debut in 1942, doesn't that predate the Batman serials,
making the first appearance of the Batcave to actually
be in comic books?
I'm personally not very convinced.
The main reason being that the Hall of Trophies in that
issue is shown to have a giant window, which makes
me think it's not underground like a cave.
It could just be aesthetic, because why would you
have a room full of objects that link you to Batman
with a big old window for outsiders to look into?
But it was never explicitly stated as the Batcave or
the Bat's Cave, for that matter, so I guess that one's
left up to your interpretation.
It wasn't until Batman #48 that we see for the first time
the Batcave and trophy room combined into one area.
And again, here we see the penny and the dinosaur
are almost like permanent fixtures of the Batcave
there from basically the very beginning.
So where did these objects come from?
The dinosaur first appeared in Batman #35.
In this story, Batman and Robin are invited to the
opening of a dinosaur themed island amusement park.
Btu probably not the one that you are thinking of,
because these dinosaurs are animatronic.
They're challenged by the creator of Dinosaur Island,
Murray Wilson Hunt, to a friendly game where Batman and
Robin must survive 36 hours on this island without
the use of their gadgets while robotic dinosaurs
and cavemen are trying to kill them.
But the remote was stolen by a bad guy named
Stephen Chase who wants to really kill Batman
on behalf of the criminal underworld.
They MacGyver their way to victory, and Batman takes
the animatronic T-rex that Chase rode as a trophy
for that battle.
Depending on the comic book, the dinosaur trophy
could be something other than a T-rex, but it remains
for the most part fairly consistent.
This story was updated in 1997 with Batman Chronicles #8.
This time around Heart was an old family friend
of the Waynes who wanted to make Dinosaur Island
into an educational park for kids to learn while
being entertained.
His partner, Chase, wanted to just turn it into a
horror attraction.
There's a ton of great parallels from this story
to the original and I encourage you to read them.
Everything I talk about always in the link
in the description below if you want to go check it out.
The story ends with Bruce feeling down that half the
criminals he put away in his early career of Batman
so far are already out of prison.
Alfred suggests that he invest in a reminder of all
the good he's done in his victories instead of
dwelling on the failures.
Thus the T-rex found its home in the Batcave.
The giant penny also has a fascinating history.
It originally comes from the World's Finest #30
with a guy named Joe Coyne, who gets arrested
for attempting to rob a store of all its pennies.
When he gets out of prison, he becomes
the Penny Plunderer and vows to always commit
penny related crimes to get back at the coppers
who put him away.
Get it? Coppers, pennies?
You know.
One of his crimes involved stealing a priceless penny
from a coin and stamp exhibit, the same exhibit
featuring the famous giant penny.
Batman uses it to beat up some thugs, but also
this story features not one, but two times when Batman
is knocked unconscious by nothing but an ordinary
roll of pennies.
During his third encounter with the dynamic duo,
the Penny Plunderer sets up a plan with his crew
to send a signal through a payphone so that they can
all counter Batman and Robin on his command.
The only problem is that he only has pennies
in his possession and he needed a nickel
to use the payphone.
Betrayed by pennies.
This story was also updated in Batman Chronicles #19
when the Penny Plunderer used the giant penny
as a Trojan horse to get into the exhibit.
And this time it was Robin who was knocked out
by a roll of pennies.
Batman throws coins at Coyne, which sets off
this Rube Goldberg type sequence of things hitting
each other until the giant penny loses balance
and just straight up kills the Penny Plunderer.
Thus is the end of probably Batman's greatest villain, the
Penny Plunderer, but it's not the end of the giant penny.
I guess Batman wanted to remember that horrible
murder that he kind of committed, so he brought the
penny to the Batcave where he presumably had
Alfred wash all of the, let's just say, justice off.
And to those of you who are fans of Batman the
Animated Series, you might recognize a different
origin of the giant penny involving Two-Face
strapping Bats to it and sending it flying
through the air.
If it lands on heads, Batman dies.
If it lands on tails, he'll live but suffer
many broken bones.
After Batman uses Two-Face's coin to free himself
and take care of business like a boss, we see the fate
of the penny.
- So Harvey, what became of the giant penny?
- They actually let him keep it.
- So that's just been a brief history of the Batcave
and a couple trophies inside of it.
But let me know what you guys think is your favorite
rendition of the Batcave from the comic books
and the movies and the TV shows and more.
And if you had your own secret underground lair,
what kind of cool stuff would you put inside of it?
Let me know in the comments.
And just a quick reminder, we did start a Patreon page
where we're going to be going a little more in depth
about this topic and touching on things that I did
not have time for in this episode.
So like the Joker playing card that you see in a lot
of comic books and TV shows.
That we're going to talk about over there.
There's a link in the description if you want to
know more about that.
And if this if your first time hanging out with us here
at NerdSync, we do weekly comic book videos just
like this one every Wednesday and we don't want you
to miss out on any of it.
So please subscribe.
Once again, I'm Scott.
You can find me on Twitter and Instagram
and we'll see you right here next week
with more things that you thought you know about comics.
See you.
You heard me right.
At this point in time, DC was distributing Marvel comics.
For fear that DC would shut down the Fantastic Four
comic books, seeing it as a rival to their own superhero
comics, Marvel could have chosen to disguise their
covers as regular old monster books.
Pretty sneaky, sis.