For Batman #277 (cover dated July 1976) Vern came up with an intriguingly odd title - "The Riddle of the Man who walked backwards" - as well as a location which provided a stark contrast to the usual Batman backdrop.

Trying to relax at his Florida beachfront home in the company of a dashing female, Bruce Wayne finds his vacationing severly disturbed by what locals are calling a "sea monster".

With some 17 issues of Batman and 16 issues of Detective Comics under his belt, Ernie Chan had a substantial part in shaping the visuals of Batman during the mid-1970s, and to this day his covers and interior artwork have remained fresh and dynamic and represent some of the best Bronze Age Batman - often seen on foreign language reprints, too, as his rendition of Batman often had that "classic" popular culture icon feel to it. Provided with a good script Ernie Chan could really drive home a Batman story, but even when the plot wasn't too strong (such as, one might argue, in the case of Batman #277) he would always keep it afloat with his reliably produced quality artwork.

This was revealed to be a Superman belt buckle, and in order to receive one free readers were told to look out for the special Bicentennial banners on both the July and August covers of a total of 33 different issues (and Batman #277 thus being cover #11 in this special promotion).

Readers were also told - to no doubt the absolute shock and horror of today's collectors - to cut off the banner plus title masthead of at least 25 different covers marked in that way and send in the clippings in order to get their free belt buckle. There seems to be no indication available as to how many readers mutilated their July and August 1976 copies of DC titles in such a way, but then clearly this was a different age in terms of seeing comic books as collectibles or not.

In terms of bamboozling the gullible, however, the times back in 1976 were no different from today, as this ad illustrates.

The actual identity of "David V. Reed" had been fussed about quite a bit by Bob Rozakis (Kingman, 2011) who was in charge of the Batman letters page - which was, in an unexpected flight of sobriety, called exactly that: Letters to the Batman - and readers were still speculating on this (in this issue, one reader felt sure that none other than Julie Schwartz was hiding behind that nom de plume).

David Vern by now received almost unrestricted acclaim for his writing, but this had not always been the case. Initially some readers objected to his style which had the Batman regularly greeting his adversaries with quips of dry humour (something evidently associated more with Marvel's Spider-Man than DC's Gotham vigilante). So either readers had adjusted to this rather unusual way of phrasing the Darknight Detective's adventures, or those who didn't like it had simply dropped off or stopped writing letters.

In any case, his run on Batman was widely used for foreign language reprint publications (although as mentioned Ernie Chan's artwork certainly had a lot to do with that too). "The Riddle of the Man who walked backwards" was published for German language readers in 1978 by Ehapa in Batman 8. Superband (titled "Das Rätsel vom Mann, der rückwärts ging" and missing 2 of the original pages), and in October 1979 for both the Swedish and Norwegian markets by Semic in Läderlappen #11 ("Gåtan med mannen som gick baklänges") and Lynvingen #11 ("Mannen som gikk baklengs!", shortened by 1 page) respectively. That same year, it was also published in the Netherlands by Williams Classics in Batman #114 ("Het raadsel van de man die achteruit liep"). If nothing else this is a clear indication of the accessibility of the Batman material produced in the mid-1970s by DC, and Batman #277 is - in spite of all of its possible shortcomings - a splendid example of the period.