No Bat-Belts and Bat-Boats, and fighting as a tool, not a purpose: Unique aspects of Denny O'Neil's re-defining take on The Batman.

1. In a distinct shift away from the campy 1960s Batman, which was how I chiefly knew the character as a boy, featured Batman mostly as an athlete and martial artist and detective, but rarely depicted him using any of his special devices from his utility belt. Gone are the various gadgets and gimmicks that Batman might have with him on his person, to solve his various dilemmas.

Now along with this point, we do see Batman with a cool old Roadster Batmobile a couple of times. But the bat helicopter for example and any of the variety of equipment and transportation vehicles that he was known to keep in his Batcave I have vanished. It's worth noting, along with the move in Batman #217 to finally move Dick Grayson (Robin) off to college, where he was featured in his own solo adventures in a backup story in most issues of Batman, the Batcave with also closed off, so that Batman and Alfred instead move in the center of Gotham City.

So while this move was probably mostly dictated by editor Julius Schwartz, you will note in Denny's stories, Batman does not use his huge variety of bat - equipment.
4) Batman is also not wracked with doubt or personal life troubles in the same manner as Marvel of that era. I think tI can see how the Bat-Cave is more cool, but there's something about the realistic focus that comes of putting aside the Bat-accessories. I think it helped Denny write better stories. He then exchanges that loss for another aspect of Bruce's fortune and makes him a jet-setter. In those international settings, it would make less sense for him to carry all of his armaments and vehicles.
2) because he's working at DC in these days, we don't have continued stories as the norm. Over at Marvel, we will often find Denny in the 1980s Working on continued stories, and of course, those series such as Daredevil and Iron Man and Amazing Spider-Man rely on an ongoing continuity. When Denny works on the question comic series in the late 80s, we didn't see a use of continued stories and ongoing series continuity, where each Adventure builds upon the previous incidents in some way.

During these classic Batman stories in 1970 through 1972 with Neal Adams, Irv Novick and others such as Bob Brown, Denny is mostly focused on short stories. His adventures such as Batman number 237 "Night of the Reaper, " as he does in Batman 251, quotation marks the Joker's five-way Revenge, " and in the return of Two-Face - who had been banned by the comics code AS too violent in a previous era- in Batman #234.
Boom! I've restored my podcast, with expanded quotes from Neal Adams about the origins of John Stewart, DC's first major black superhero, though his day was still yet to come.

His encounters with Ra's al Ghul begin as short one off stories too, until Batman issue 240. Then we finally get a continued story Epic with individual chapters, where Batman builds a team of supporting characters who gradually join him in his all-out effort to track down and subdue a man he considers possibly the most dangerous terrorist in the world.

3) now one more point that sticks out to me, which I did not make in the podcast, it's the way that Batman does not attack his opponents merely as a violent psychopath, despite the physicality of his approach. On the contrary Batman points out the futility of attacking him. In the hands of this Batman, he is not nearly so unbalanced and psychotic as the enemies that he faces a point which is drug through the mud again and again later on in later iterations of the character. In the hands of this version of Batman, violence and technique are but another tool - a weapon that cannot be taken away and used against him- in the service of a logical mind, on a compassionate mission to stop ruthless criminals.
his version was perfectly suited to attract fans lured away to Marvel, too. There's a tightness to the short story format that makes every page of these comics, count.
I have just completed a podcast of it took me most of the night, last night. Of course I couldn't possibly remember every single point unless I had everything detailed in an outline and I did not plus more ideas came to me afterwards. This is why an artist work is never truly finished.



You can find more about O'Neill's themes, characters, and insights about the man himself and his life, on my podcast. I tried renaming it Creating Wonders - a reference to the creators and creations- but it remains listed as Creating Marvels on Podbean. It is intended not as a Marvel content site, but rather as a celebration of all creative Endeavors and also the Wonders we discover in life which Inspire creativity. It does include interviews with creators about DC Comics characters, too, which fall within this timeline - they are easy to look up and find.