A new exhibit is opening at the Gotham Metropolitan Museum. Focusing on artifacts from feudal Japan, a number of pieces including kimonos, swords and a suit of samurai armor have been donated from one of the last surviving members of the Tahara Clan. The Dark Knight suspects that members of Gotham's criminal elements will rob the exhibit and so Batman keeps vigilance over the museum.
To everyone's surprise, the exhibition isn't robbed. Instead, it's haunted by the ghost of fallen Japanese warrior, Masahiko Tahara! Now it's up to Batman and his brand-new Robin to get to the bottom of a mystery on par with something you'd expect from Scooby-Doo and the teen detectives of Mystery Inc.
'The Ghost of Masahiko Tahara' was written by Jo Duffy. Duffy has first appeared in the pages of Marvel comics in the early 70s as a frequent contributor to the letter cols of various publications. She then appeared as a cameo character in the pages of Iron Man #103 (Oct. 1977), before eventually earning her first credit as an editor for Defenders #61 (July 1978).
Duffy's first writing credits including Daredevil, Defenders and Marvel-Two-In-One before taking on her longest and perhaps most well known stint as the writer of Power Man and Iron Fist. During this time, Duffy also penned a number of issues of Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian thanks in part to her duties as Archie Goodwin's assistant.
During a time when Marvel was experimenting with a darker tone, Jo Duffy was a refreshing blast of light-hearted stories that harkened back to the days of Stan and Jack. She was also known to pepper her stories with doses of sarcastic humor that often hid a back-handed compliment or two. Maybe that's one reason why she paired brilliantly with Steve Ditko on some of the last issues of the short-lived Speedball series about a teen boy who turns hyper-kinetic whenever he experiences too much force.
Batman #413 was written during Jo Duffy's brief first stint with DC. In the early 90s, Duffy penned stories for Dark Horse and Image before returning to DC where she penned the first 14 issue's of Catwoman. In the mid-90s, Duffy was the screenwriter for the 4th and 5th movie in the Puppet Master horror franchise before returning to the House of Ideas in 2000.
Jo Duffy's last writing credits are from 2003-2006, writing English script adaptations for Viz Media's Naruto. In 2007, Duffy took a job as a receptionist for the U.S. Immigration Office in New York. The writer had for some time made announcements to create her own self-published comics under the banner of Armin Armadillo Publishers. While Duffy did incorporate a company under that name in 2008, as of press time of this review, that is as far as that vision has preceded.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
Completing this review completes Task #15 (Comic Book Written by a Female) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
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