This is "How Can I Explain?", which is a feature spotlighting inexplicable comic book plots.

Today, in honor of Batman Day, we'll look at one of Batman's most ill-considered contingency plans (and that dude has a lot of contingency plans)!

Edmond Hamilton was a wonderful writer who excelled at coming up with inventive plots. That was the case in Detective Comics #165 (with art by Dick Sprang and Charles Paris), which was based on Batman's various specialty costumes...

The story, though, sets up with a bit at the beginning where there is one special costume that they never want to use...

Later, after Batman uses one of his scuba diving costumes, he is at the mercy of the bad guys....

and they SHOOT HIM!

So now they have to use the special costume!

And here is Batman, seemingly back with a special costume!

But nope, it is not BATMAN, but ROBIN in the costume!

We all get how that doesn't make any sense, right? The whole concept of the costume is that Robin is meant to wear it when they need to convince people that Batman is in commission when he is actually OUT of commission, so why in the world would you create this special costume (which IS a good idea) that specifically has a ROBIN on the chest instead of a bat! It directly calls attention to the very thing that they are trying to hide! They are trying to pretend that everything is the same as normal and yet they wear a weird costume that suggests otherwise!

Great idea for a story by Hamilton, but the end bit really did not make sense.

Happy Batman Day, everyone!

If anyone else can think of a good inexplicable comic book plot, write me at brianc@cbr.com!