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BATMAN No. 15 Provenance: DC Universe Collection Publisher: DC [Indicia: Detective Comics, Inc.] Date Published: February-March, 1943 Description: CGC certified: Poor (0.5). Purple Label: Restored (A-3). Off-white to white pages pages. Grader notes: "Missing interior part/page/wrap page(s) 24 & 25 affects story; color touch on spine; cover reinforced; pieces added spine & cover A-3; tear seals page 1 Conserved; tear seals right center front cover Conserved." Provenance: The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION. CGC Census: 226 graded copies (183 Universal, 8 Qualified, 35 Restored). GPAnalysis: No reported sales in this grade. A restored 1.0 (C-3, cover trimmed) sold for $1200 in 12/21. For comparison purposes, here are recent Universal sales: A 1.5 sold for $1236 in 8/23; a 1.8 sold for $1750 in 6/23. Credits: Cover: Jack Burnley. Scripts: Jack Schiff, Bob Naylor, Don C Cameron, Bill Finger. Art: Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson (inks), George Roussos (backgrounds), Bob Naylor, Jack Burnley. Overstreet: "New costume Catwoman." Bat-cyclopedia: "In February-March 1943 Batman and Robin match wits with the CATWOMAN; apprehend 'KNUCKLES' CONGER; and battle the DIRK DAGNER gang." — Michael L. Fleisher, The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes Vol. 1: Batman. Macmillan: 1976, p. 117. Details: Catwoman, switching up her modus operandi, alters her voice and appearance in order to mimic wealthy Gotham City society ladies and bilk them out of their bread. In the course of her scheme, Catwoman disguises herself as a beautician named Elva Barr and meets Bruce Wayne at a society affair. Not knowing that he's Batman, she falls for him. Bruce Wayne realizes who she really is, but pretends to woo her, hoping his sterling example can guide her out of her life of crime. But when Catwoman realizes that Wayne is stringing her along, she blames Batman and angrily rededicates herself to a life of larceny: "This is the BATMAN'S fault! He wanted to reform me! Well, I'll show him!" Batman's Kill Count: Robin feeds bullets to Batman's hungry machine gun on Jack Burnley's classic WWII cover, a striking image that belies the claim that editor Whitney Ellsworth forbade artists from depicting Batman using a gun in 1940. Inside, Batman throws a bayonet at a carload of Japanese soldiers, puncturing the tire and causing it to crash ("A bursting tire... a screech of brakes... shrill cries of terror..."). Later in the same story, Batman crashes a plane into a Japanese warship, killing everyone aboard in a fiery holocaust. As far as we can tell, this seems to have sated Batman's bloodlust for a while, as his next killing doesn't occur until 1969 (in The Brave and the Bold #84, when he destroys a plane with a grenade and dynamites a convoy of enemy soldiers as they're crossing a bridge). Curiously, Batman's fiery death-dive into a Japanese warship in this ish seems to anticipate the Japanese kamikaze attacks that claimed the lives of over 7000 American naval personnel in the closing stages of WWII, starting in October 1944. The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION comprises over 40,000 comic books, including a copy of every single DC comic published for retail sale from 1934 to 2014. The collection was amassed by British music producer Ian Levine over the course of several decades, and it's been hailed as the single greatest collecting accomplishment in comic book history. This collection served as the basis for former DC Comics president Paul Levitz's monumental book 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, published by Taschen in 2017. PBA is proud to present this epic collection in a series of themed sales over the next two years. To join the DC Universe Collection notifications list, contact pba@pbagalleries.com. Enjoying PBA's Batman sale? A very small number of softcover and limited edition hardcover auction catalogues are available for purchase. The catalogues are fully illustrated, thoroughly researched, and make excellent reference works for Batman fans. To order a copy, or to in