Scans_Daily

I'm 90% sure that, before the 1989 movie, Batman did not use a launching device for his silken cord. Either he tied it to a batarang or threw a noose like a cowboy around any handy protrusion on a building. Then.. and here's the tricky part.. he often would swing up off the ground. What? How? Don't ask me. It never made any sense to me how someone standing on the street and holding a cord could swing up off the ground. The first Tim Burton movie introduced the idea that Batman would fire a line from a little pistol thingy which had a motor to reel him up like a hooked fish. And this has been featured prominently ever since.Yet Batman need not have waited fifty years to get hold of such a useful gizmo. His fellow Justice Society member the Sandman had been using a wirepoon since the early 1940s and it's exactly the same sort of device. Above is a panel from WORLD'S FINEST COMICS# 7, Fall 1942. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby helpfully provide a diagram of the wirepoon gun and (who knows?) if you were good in metal shop class, maybe you could make one for yourself.