The Dark Detective and The Great Detective

I haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises, but I've always been something of a Batfan.

When I was originally reading Batman in the early 1960s, he was primarily a detective -- as were many of the superheroes. After all, the Caped Crusader first appeared in Detective Comics. He could just as easily be called The Dark Detective as The Dark Knight.

Since I've been reading Sherlock Holmes even longer than I've been reading Batman, I was thrilled in 1989 when the Golden Anniversary edition of Detective Comics appeared. The cover featured Batman and Holmes together looking at Detective #27, which contained the first Batman story. This was highly appropriate, for Holmes was celebrating his centennary that year.

Inside that cover was a great story scripted by Mike W. Barr, in which Batman and Robin, accompanied by the Elongated Man, eventually meet a still-living Sherlock Holmes in a surprise ending!.I loved it. In fact I had a framed copy of the issue on the walls of my library for years. Then I took it down and put it in a safe place.

I'm sure that some day I'll find it again.