BATMAN: “THE RING OF WAX” (1966)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

Though the third Riddler-episode doesn’t show him mucking around in sewers any more, he does show an unusual preoccupation with wax. This suggests that the original idea behind the episode—whether from credited scripters Paritz and Rodgers, or from someone else-- might have been built around some wax-themed malefactor, and that the already popular Riddler was drafted to assume the duties of guest villain.

Once more high society is victimized by a villain’s depredations. Madame Soleil intends to introduce a statue of Batman to her wax museum, but the Prince of Puzzlers substitutes a statue of himself, which for good measure revolves on a pedestal and sprays the onlookers with red gunk. However, that’s Riddler’s last assault on the social elite. His main target is a rare old book in the Gotham Library, which he obtains thanks to his acquisition of a universal solvent (though he never mentions what he keeps it in). Clued in by the villain’s usual riddles, Batman and Robin show up and fight Riddler’s hoods, but get their boots stuck to the floor by stickum from Riddler’s spray-can.

Later, as per the usual deathtrap requirements, Riddler ambushes the crimefighters while posing as a wax statue, and then threatens to dip both heroes in a vat of boiling wax. Perhaps having learned from his bad experience in “A Riddle a Day,” this time the master villain and his henchpeople elect to watch the good guys get turned into human candles. However, the writers come up with a decent reason as to why Riddler and his gang choose to watch from a better vantage-point, and the heroes’ escape is, given the limitations of the genre, one of the better conceptions. Still, Riddler is a little too quick to believe both crusaders dead when he doesn’t actually see any bodies—and as usual, this makes it easy for Batman and Robin to follow the villain’s gang as Riddler tries to lay his paws on the Lost Treasure of the Incas. The episode concludes with Robin getting captured, so that Batman has to battle Riddler and his two thugs alone, in a room full of medieval torture-devices.

Though this is just a fair episode, it does build logically upon Riddler’s narcissistic personality. In one scene, he adores the statue of himself, remarking that, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In another scene, he recites a mangled version of a speech from HAMLET for the benefit of his dimwitted moll Moth, and then has the gall to tell her, “I wrote it myself.”