Alfred's Clumsy Debut!

The Beagle Who Became Pennyworth!

Alfred Pennyworth, known mononymously as Alfred to the Waynes and to the vast majority of Batman comic readers, is an iconic aspect of the Batman mythos. This is an inarguable fact, an inextricable aspect of the Batman story on equal footing with a Batcave, the murder of his parents, and more. The butler who had to raise Bruce, when his parents were no longer able to. 

So how come it takes him so long to show up?

Alfred Beagle, the original version of the character who would become Alfred Pennyworth, is first introduced in Batman (1940) #16, where he arrives from Europe and happens upon a criminal being caught by Batman and Robin in his first moments on the docks. Next, we see him arriving at Wayne manor, and introducing himself for the first time to both Bruce and Dick, in a thick British accent illustrated textually by turning words like “master” into “mawster”! 

In this original version of canon, Alfred is the son of Jarvis Beagle, the deceased ex-butler of Thomas and Martha Wayne. He’d been intended to take up the mantle as Bruce’s butler when Jarvis passed, but had been deep in a theater career in Britain at the time, so he put it off. However, eventually he relented, but managed to show up two whole years late, to the point Bruce had no idea he was ever supposed to be coming! They’d never met before their on-panel meeting in this issue. 

The detective enthusiast nature of the character was frequent fodder for his earliest stories, with his first appearance showing him discovering Batman and Robin’s identity purely by accident, and then for many stories in the following year he would be depicted as either a foil for Bruce to explain his detective work on certain cases or comic relief as he butted in on a case or two. 

Originally a fairly portly man, portrayed as constantly comically clumsy, Alfred would retain his appearance and comic relief nature throughout the majority of his stories during the war, before a story in Detective Comics (1937) #83 in which Bruce sends him on a vacation where he loses all the weight and begins looking like the image of him we now know far better. A proud butler before and after his weight loss, the character’s sense of proper etiquette and proper buttling would become his main source of comic relief. A one-page story of Alfred saving paper for the war effort became a main feature of comics during the height of that portion of the war, a notable feat considering he was the only named or known character in the story (Batman and Robin did not appear). His misadventures as a butler even became a frequent-flying aspect of the Batman ongoings, taking up the shortest of the four story slots in each Batman issue for several years. 

The transition from Beagle to Pennyworth is still a long way away, until we firmly leave the Golden Age behind in favor of the deep Silver Age. For now, Alfred Beagle’s charm and comedic value help turn Batman and Detective Comics firmly into the humor-filled, quippy stories they became for decades.