Batman #237

NIGHT OF THE REAPER!

On Halloween, the annual Vermont parade is taking place and Dick Grayson has decided to attend with some of his college friends. While in the parade, Dick and his friends notice some crooks attacking a man dressed as Robin and they try to help the young man without success. When the crooks have dispersed, Dick decides to follow them as Robin and he follows their trail to a barren space where he finds a the corpse of a man in a Batman costume. At that moment, Robin is attacked by the dark figure of the Reaper and he is forced to flee until he falls down to a nearby river and remains unconscious.  Batman, who has been tracking fugitive Nazi war criminal Kurt Schloss to the annual Halloween parade, finds Robin and takes him to the house of Tom Fagan, the organizer of the Vermont parade. In Fagan's place, Robin is checked by Batman's friend, Doctor Benjamin Gruener, a Jewish German survivor of the Nazi holocaust.  Meanwhile, Dick's friends are looking for him when they come across the Reaper again and when Batman learns of this second attack, he starts investigating the case more closely. His clues lead him to find that other ex-Nazis have been searching for Kurt Schloss because he had claimed some hidden Nazi treasure that they believed belonged to all of them. Those Nazis had killed the man in the Batman costume and tried to kill the Robin, thinking they may be the real things. Batman stops them for good, but not before they are able to kill Schloss.  Afterwards, Robin believes that the case is solved, but Batman reminds him that the Reaper is still on the loose and Batman starts looking for the killer by himself. When they finally meet, Batman has deduced the Reaper's identity as Dr. Gruener, who sought revenge on Schloss. Unfortunately, Gruener has lost himself in his Reaper's personality and he attacks Batman before fleeing the scene. The Reaper tries to make his escape through a nearby dam, but he is stopped by the presence of Dick Grayson's friend Alan. When Reaper gets ready to strike and kill the youngster, he sees Alan's Star of David amulet and Gruener becomes horrified with his actions. Unaware that he was walking on the edge of the dam, Gruener stumbles with his robe and falls downwards to his ultimate death and Batman is unable to save the man.

THE SCREAMING HOUSE

While driving around near Gotham City, Batman hears screams coming from an old abandoned house and decides to go take a look. Inside the house, a man named Joey is being tortured by thugs. Batman knocks out some thugs but then Joey betrays him and knocks out Batman, and then kills the rest of the thugs.  When Batman awakes, he follows Joey to man called Turg, and confronts him along with his gang. Batman discovers that Turg and his gang are planning to destroy an incoming vessel, as they are spies for another country and Joey was a U.S. espionage agent. After a good deal of waterfront chasing and fighting, Batman prevents the thugs from destroying the ship and defeats the gang. Batman then finds clues that lead him to the leader of the gang, Count Grutt, who is actually Elias Turg. Batman battles Turg once more, with swords, and the criminal ends up fatally impaled on his own blade.