Cool Moments in Comic Book History: The Girl Has Eyes, Dummy

A cool moment brought to you by Detective Comics #472 (December 1977):

Batman was attacked by the villain Deadshot, and their fight spills into a busy convention hall loaded with giant props. In the convention crowd was Silver St. Cloud,* main squeeze of Bruce Wayne for the last couple of issues.

As we expect, Batman kicks the poo out of Deadshot and makes ready his exit. Same ol’, same ol’.

But then something out of the ordinary happens.

Silver sees the tall dude in the Batsuit for the first time and instantly recognizes him. As she pointed out later, she spent a lot of time with Bruce and knew his face well.

So obvious, yet it had never been done before. I think.**

Shortly thereafter, she broke up with Bruce, saying she couldn’t handle loving a man who courted death constantly. She then disappeared into the comicbook ether, never to return.***

For just a moment, The Designated Girlfriend acted like a real human being instead of a plot device, and jarred the very core of the superhero idea by simply using her damn eyes.

That was way cool.

Yes, I’m easily impressed.

--------------------
*I can’t even type the name without snickering. Even by comic standards, that's a funny name.

**The only other time I can recall it happening afterwards was in Peter Cannon-Thunderbolt, where the primary villain (who was also the femme fatale and Peter’s love interest) recognized Cannon as T-bolt right away. Anybody out there in internet-land know of other cases? There have to be a few others.

***Okay, mostly never. She came back in 2005 in a miniseries. But man, a twenty-seven year absence is a long-ass time.