Well, Deadman and Sgt. Rock have secured the Batman statue...but it's still been a heckuva day for Batman.

He's had his leg frakked up:

He's had his hands severely burned:

He's almost drowned:

We saw previously he was shot at by a crazed dance hall girl and fell out of a second story window onto his head.

The result...he's in the hospital, wrecked, depressed, and no closer to catching the mad bomber.

But wait, Batman has a secret ally:


Damn, now Alfred will never know how The Sign Of Four finishes! Thanks for ruining his book, ghost of Sherlock Holmes!!

Anyway, this finally leads to Batman's final confrontation with the mad bomber:




So, Lucifer's plan has failed! And boy, is he ticked at his minions (who, it turns out, did absolutely nothing the entire issue after their big roll call scene, they weren't even in a single panel again until the end--that's right, Bob Haney wasted the ghosts of Hitler, Jack The Ripper, etc!):

Ah, but Lucifer gets his now, as Rama Kushna shows up to settle his hash!!

Why didn't she just step in earlier, and fix the whole mess before it happened? DON'T QUESTION BOB HANEY!!

And so our story ends. The Queen is thrilled with her gift...

...and Alfred helps the weary Caped Crusader home, as Haney quotes the Beatles:

So endeth the crazy, crazy, Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a DC Special Series #8) (1978), where Batman was never even on the same continent as his team-up partners; where the devil has his minions blow up ghetto thee-ay-ters; where the only way to get Sgt. Rock to follow obvious clues is to have his buddy talk like a "limey;" where Batman fails 7 or 8 times, but it's OK, because it was all because of a magic voodoo statue that was stolen from the Queen of England by Satan-worshiping Scottish nationalists; where the ghost of Sherlock Holmes re-writes portions of the Doyle novels to send secret messages to butlers.

It was The. Greatest. Comic. Ever.

OK, no it wasn't. But it was damn sure worth the quarter I paid for it...

Warning: this next section makes less than zero sense. It may hurt your brain unless lubricated by generous amounts of alcohol. You have been warned.

So, Batman, unaware of all the shenanigans across the pond, has actually found a vital clue in his hunt for the mad bomber:

See, the mad bomber calls himself Lucifer, after his master...

Anyway, Batman uses his extensive knowledge of Gotham to track down the Kiki in the picture, and:

A dance hall? Really? What is this, the 1930s??

It's a good thing Bruce Wayne is rich, huh? Sadly, it's not money well-spent, because Kiki is not terribly helpful...

Then again, Batman's not very nice, even if he did just waste $10.

Meanwhile,back in England...remember how the Batman statue acts like a giant, crazy voodoo doll? Well, that's about to come into play again, because Sgt. Rock has located the statue, hidden in plain sight amongst the rotating statues in a Scottish clock tower:

But in the ensuing gun battle, the clock tower is struck, and the statue starts spinning out of control.

Which means, of course:


Now, why Kiki pulls a gun and starts blasting away like a lunatic is something that a) makes little sense and b) never explained by Bob Haney. But it is a delightfully daffy scene...

Anyway, Kiki must be an awful shot, and the whirling dervish Batman crashes out the window:

So, of course, the same thing happens to the Bat-statue:

And together they go "boom".

Ouch.

I warned you none of that was going to make sense...

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Specials Series #8) (1978)

So, Deadman has been getting clues from the ghost of Sherlock Holmes on the location of the stolen Batman statue (Yes, I really just typed that sentence, and it is 100% true!).

And he has to pass that information on to Sgt. Rock so Easy Company can track it down before Lucifer uses it to torture Batman.

And how, exactly, does Deadman decide to do this?


Deadman decides to talk like "one of those English jokers."

At least, sort of, kind of. "Hark"?? Really?

Now, there is absolutely no indication in the comic of why, exactly, Boston Brand decides to have Bulldozer speak like some Saturday morning cartoon's idea of how an Englishman would speak. I mean, he could have just said "Look at that suspicious cart over there, Sarge," in his regular Bulldozer voice. But no, Deadman opts for "British" for some reason.

I'm sure, somewhere in the recesses of the Haney-verse, it made perfect sense. But we'll never know.

And later, Deadman deliberately goes into his "Limey lingo" again!

"Dash it all"??? "Yon canal"?!?!?!

No, I don't understand, either...

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Specials Series #8) (1978)

Of course, when Rock and Easy Company pull an Apocalypse Now, taking a slow boat across Loch Ness hunting for the stolen Batman statue, you know whom they're going to meet:

Sgt. Rock meets the Loch Ness Monster, and a thousand fan slash/fics suddenly come true.

Disappointingly, this is the ONLY panel Nessie appears in...after he (she?) sinks the Batman statue, he (she?) "disappears." Lucifer's doing? Or is Nessie just fast and sneaky?? Bob Haney isn't interested in details--just keep moving!!

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Specials Series #8) (1978)

You need to be careful when you're trying to track down and capture a group on Scottish nationalists. Because even if you're armed with automatic weaponry, and they just have sticks and swords...





...they make it clear that the "easy" in Easy Company stands for "easily beaten."

Of course, in fairness, these are Scottish nationalists who are working for the devil, so maybe it's understandable that Rock and crew got wiped out...

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Specials Series #8) (1978)

So...what exactly is Lucifer's plan to bring down Batman??


Uhh...what?

Seriously? Yes, seriously. Lucifer's plan is to voodoo Batman, to steal the statue and subject it to "excruciating tortures."

If this theory of the devil's were actually true, you'd think that he'd just make a really good likeliness of Superman, and Wonder Woman, and every hero, and smack them around a little.

Well, despite my skepticism, this scheme actually works. Observe that when the statue is hit by a truck...

...an abandoned truck mysteriously slips its brakes and bashes into the real Batman!!

And when Batman falls into wet cement, it's because the statue fell into a bog!!

And when the bog catches on fire...

It works the other way, too. When Batman manages to rescue himself with a rope...

...the statue follows!!

And when the statue sinks into Loch Ness, Batman suddenly can't swim!!

Fortunately, the statue is sent to the surface by friendly monster hunters, and...

So, there you have it. Batman's life made hell by satanic voodoo!!

How can he survive this, and capture the mad bomber?!?

To be continued...

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Specials Series #8) (1978).

So, our good guys are Batman, Deadman, Sgt. Rock, and Sherlock Holmes. Who could possibly be evil enough to stand against them??

How about the ghosts of Guy Fawkes, Nero, Benedict Arnold, Bluebeard, Jack The Ripper, and Hitler?!?

And who could be frightening enough, evil enough, to be master of these sinister shades???

Yep, Lucifer, the fallen Angel himself (and, it must be said, he's rocking that Grell-tastic outfit!! Well played, Ric Estrada and Dick Giordano!)!!

So what is the well-dressed Lucifer's heinous plot? How does all of this tie together? To be continued...

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Specials Series #8) (1978)

Meanwhile, in Niagara Falls:



So, Deadman is possessing people just to make them perform stunts--not to save anybody, but for showmanship? And then ditching them, and hoping they hit the safety nets? Not terribly heroic, Boston Brand...

Anyway, Vashnu sends Deadman to England to receive an important message (why not just give him the message yourself? Haney, that's why!):


Who was that mysterious figure? How could he see Deadman in his spirit form??

When Boston returns later for some follow-up advice:



Lay it on thick, Bob.

Obviously, either Haney just enjoyed being mondo mysterioso, or some rights hold-up was preventing them from mentioning Sherlock Holmes (he's not named anywhere in the story).

So, now the heroes are all on the board...but what about--the villains???

To be continued...

From The Brave And The Bold Special (a.k.a. DC Special Series #8) (1978)