Batman #31 - Story 4

June 13, 1945

"Trade Marks of Crime"

One night, Batman and Robin interrupt a robbery where the guard dog was rendered unconscious by a gravy covered envelope that was drugged. Consulting their files on microfiche, they are able to determine it's Silver John Staddon. It's in this story where we get Batman talking about criminals being creatures of habit, which explains why so many of the Rogue's Gallery follow the same method of operations.

They quickly collect Staddon and then discover a series of crimes done by criminals with trademark methods to their ways. It seems simple enough until the capture one who was in jail when the crime they suspect him of occurred.

With this in mind, Commissioner Gordon realizes that the names of the suspected crooks are all from a specific file cabinet. Batman quickly rules out any police officers as Gordon's men are trustworthy. (Shades of Batman 66, kids!). So they turn their attention to the cleaning lady who claims she was not at the station for a week because of illness. Batman discovers though that fibers under her table match those found on the bag the fake Staddon used when he was discovered by Batman at the start of the story.

Upon confronting her, the two are surrounded by her men and thrown in the basement. They quickly escape and stop the next robbery, out on a boat, from happening. Gordon arrests the woman and finds that all the men, save the one who was in jail, did actually help her in committing the crime. In fact, she was counting on the fact that they could be proven innocent as simply saying the trademarks of the crime were no enough to convict them

Overall this is a good one and I could see it as a Batman 66 episode. You'd have to throw in a cliffhanger as their isn't a real one here, but overall, it's got some solid story telling and good detective work.

Stay tuned, Citizens, as we're back to Detective Comics for our next entry.