Authority Figures
I found this particular issue of Batman to be a bit convoluted. The good news is, you get some cool Jim Aparo art, an early appearance of Tim Drake (if you're a fan), and for me, rather obscurely, the first appearance of the Penguin's foxy chauffeur: Lark. The plot involves Penguin's manipulation of the mute savant Harold, who is rather nonsensically abused by random passerby at issue's start. Penguin uses Harold's skills to have a device constructed that talks to birds. While, I can see why Penguin would want to accomplish this pretty cool feat, I don't know however get what his ultimate objective is. The birds makes robberies and disable alarms and ultimately abduct a soap opera star that ol' Oswald is infatuated with, but it seems like there's no method to the madness, despite Batman describing Penguin to Tim as a militarily precise thinker. It's a pretty fun issue and Bat fans will probably want it for their collection, but in my opinion, it's not required reading and I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I want to read the rest of this arc.