Brand Bartor

A small-time criminal, attested in Gotham City for wearing a Batman costume in viola­tion of a local ordinance prohibiting anyone from imitating Batman's famous uniform, who raises as his legal defense the assertion that Batman is himself imitating a Batman of ancient Babylon, as evidenced by a three-thousand-year-old wall painting, recently unearthed, which depicts a figure in a Batman costume battling a soldier.

This defense creates a serious dilemma for Batman, for he knows that the wall painting was made of him when, after having been dispatched through the time barrier by Professor Carter Nichols, he and Robin overthrew the tyrannical King Beladin and restored the good King Lanak to the throne of Babylon. Because he and Robin journeyed to and returned from ancient Babylon as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, however, they cannot reveal that Batman was the subject of the painting without betraying the secret of their dual identities.

Fortunately for Batman and Robin, however, the people of ancient Babylon revered a "hero-idol" named Zorn whose statue shows him in a costume almost identical to Batman's. Acting on this fact, the judge at Bartor's trial rejects Bartor's defense on the ground that the wall painting depicts a mythic figure and not a human being, and that therefore the Batman of Gotham City is not imitating a Batman of the ancient past.