Detective 89 – Batman exposes the Cavalier, Air Wave gets a cat, and the Crimson Avenger ends
The Cavalier makes his third appearance in Detective 89, with Dick Sprang art.
The story begins as we discover that the Cavalier is really Mortimer Drake, a wealthy Gothamite, who is a member of the same exclusive club as Bruce Wayne. One of the club’s other members, Professor Hellstrom, talks about a new typewriter he has invented. That night, the Cavalier attempts to steal it, though others do as well, and the Batman and Cavalier briefly work together to defeat the other thieves.
Batman realizes that the Cavalier must be a member of the club. Drake unwittingly confirms this by writing up a glowing bio of the Cavalier in the club’s “who’s who.”
Scoping out the members, Bruce spots a chemical dye on Mortimer Drake’s hand, and then, as they fight, exposes his identity. The Cavalier manages to escape again, and returns to the pages of Batman in a couple of months.
The notion of having one of Batman’s villains come from the same background, or belong to the same social circle, will be used again with a number of Batman villains over the years: Cat-Man, Black Mask and Hush, among others.
Air Wave’s sidekick parrot Static had appeared in a number of stories, but was never an “always there” sidekick, like Robin or Sandy. This story ignores his existence completely, as Larry Jordan winds up with a cat as his sidekick. This guy loves animals.
Air Wave is pursuing a crew of thieves, who seem to follow a mysterious man, Mickey. Air Wave does some clever broadcasting with his equipment, sending the thieves voices through all sorts of metal objects to scare and disorient them.
Mickey turns out to be a trained cat the hoods use in their thefts, but Air Wave first transfers his voice through the cat’s collar, confusing the thieves, and then sends electricity into the cat, which surprisingly does not kill the animal, but does take down the bad guys.
At the end of the story, Air Wave continues to send his voice through the cat’s collar, pretending they are having a conversation. Larry needs a human friend.
The Crimson Avenger’s series comes to an end with this issue. he and Wing take on the Ghost Gang, who put pictures of empty interiors of banks in the windows of the banks they are robbing, to divert attention. They make the mistake of sending challenging letters, bragging of their crimes to come, to the newspaper, which puts Lee on their trail.
Although his series ends at this point, the Crimson Avenger and Wing continue to appear as members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory in Leading Comics.