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"The Only Crime in Town!": When Batman fights a late-night battle against a gang of safecrackers, all the bandits stop fighting back at 1 A.M. sharp and give themselves up. From comments made during the fight, Batman reasons that they feared dying like Augie, a gangst

Batman #280 is an issue of the series Batman (Volume 1) with a cover date of October, 1976. It was published on July 5, 1976.

Synopsis for "The Only Crime in Town!"

When Batman fights a late-night battle against a gang of safecrackers, all the bandits stop fighting back at 1 A.M. sharp and give themselves up. From comments made during the fight, Batman reasons that they feared dying like Augie, a gangster who was shot for pulling a job at 1:24 in the morning. For the past week, no crimes have been committed in Gotham City between 1 and 2 A.M.

Batman traces the killing to Big Jake Hackett, another mobster, and attacks some of his gang when they enter a warehouse. He finds out abruptly that Hackett owns the warehouse and the men were not pulling a robbery. Batman finds that he has been decoyed away from the robbery of Amos Goodwin, a coin dealer who is in town for a convention. Later, Batman is told by one of Hackett's gang, who turns stool pigeon, that Hackett was offered a deal to pull two guaranteed thefts between 1 and 2 A.M. if he enforced a curfew on other crimes during that time, so that the thefts would gain extra publicity. The gang member tips off Batman that the other job will be stealing from the Daniel Fletcher company at the coin convention.

Eventually, Batman learns that the thefts were put-up jobs in which Goodwin and Fletcher willingly sacrificed part of their collection but, between them, retained 14 of 25 specially minted coins, components of a set worth $1,000,000. Their cover set, Fletcher and Goodwin attempt to rob George Whitfleet, who owns the rest of the coins in the set, but Batman captures them both.

Appearing in "The Only Crime in Town!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Amos Goodwin (Single appearance)
  • Daniel Fletcher (Single appearance)
  • Torch (Single appearance)

Other Characters:

  • Andy Novak
  • George Whitfleet
  • Nola Roberts

Locations:

Items:

Vehicles:


Trivia

  • Issue includes an advertisement for Hostess Twinkies featuring Aquaman titled "Twinkies and Kelp" with Curt Swan artwork.
  • This issue includes a one-page Superman public service announcement titled, Justice for All Includes Children, 7 featuring Neal Adams artwork.


See Also

Recommended Reading

Links and References

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