Having combined the effects of the stolen remote control and neutralizing devices to render himself invisible in Chapter 13 of Columbia's 15-part Batman and Robin (1949) serial, the villainous Wizard gains entry to a government research plant in Chapter 14, "Batman vs. The Wizard," to steal plans for a super-jet plane. When the cloaking devices secreted within his subterranean lair begin to overheat, the Wizard's henchmen shut them off - leaving their masked master visible and vulnerable to arrest from the plant's armed guards, Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot), and Batman (Robert Lowery) and Robin (Douglas Croft). Fired upon by the combined forces of the local authorities, the Wizard is able to escape with only a hand wound, leaving behind a bloody glove as evidence. While Batman runs a fingerprint scan on the glove, Commissioner Gordon questions the prime suspects - the reclusive Professor Hammil (William Fawcett), suspiciously up-to-date radio commentator Barry Brown (Rick Vallin), and disreputable private detective Dunne (Michael Whalen, star of the 1944 Broadway adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians) - each of whom is suffering from a recent hand wound. No sooner has Batman determined that the fingerprints inside the lost glove belong to Hammil's valet Carter (Leonard Penn) than the butler is shot dead by persons unknown, while Brown is strangled by unseen hands while in the middle of a radio broadcast by which he had vowed to name the Wizard's true identity.

By Richard Harland Smith