At last, Maxwell House brings you a coffee so rich, so flavorful, that it's evolved into a sentient organism with the capacity for speech. Disclaimer: brace yourself for its shrill, screaming "WHYYYYYYYY?!!!" as you pee it back out. (It's a bit of a diva.)
So, who is this lovely woman, and why does the Mole have it in for her? Let's ask the Mole
What th'--?! He's takin' a dump! Aw, HELL no. Damn it, Mole--! You can't just treat the sewer like your own personal... toilet... okay, I guess you can. But couldn't you rig up some kind of partition out of a cardboard box, or... hey! What about a nice Japanese screen? Certainly, somebody must have thrown an exquisitely-painted Japanese screen down there. Or maybe you could just cover yourself with a blanket.
Wait a minute...! Chemical plant in Gotham... grotesque villain... hackneyed writing...! I think I can see where this is headed. Although why Gene Colan decided to dedicate the foreground of that second panel to two rats about to "get it on" is still a mystery.
But yeah, the Mole started out as a guy who habitually tunneled into banks and out of jails, until he wound up in the wrong sewer pipe at the wrong time.
"Somehow" it changed him -- near-instantaneously, mind you -- into a monster that resembled the animal he was already nicknamed after. This is a convenience for the Mole's friends, who won't have to update their greeting card lists.
The Mole resolves to tunnel into Wayne Manor from below. But wait! That's where-- oh, I smell a wacky complication!
This is when Batman still had his headquarters under that skyscraper with the big tree inside, and hadn't moved all his tacky, Vegas-y crap back into the gaping hole beneath his mansion. But the Old School Batcave still had a smooth, level floor, and scads of pendant lights, and even some big, expensive looking (for 1981) computer equipment. And yet, the Mole seems terribly blasé about the whole thing. Y'see, he's been around. After a guy's tunneled into Hef's Grotto on Funnel Cake Night (don't ask) it takes more than a mysterious cavern to grab his attention.
That night, the Mole sneaks back in, and cuts the electricity.
Are you troubled by Restless Bosom Syndrome? Poor gal... her left breast is afraid of the dark, but she's the one who has to get out of bed and do something about it. Oh, and Sandra? Haley Mills called. She wants her hair back.
By the way, I sleep in a similar fashion (albeit on a huge slab of granite): nude, except for a lightning beast hide arranged over my lower body so that it almost completely conceals my junk, and moaning suggestively. I figure, if some loser (okay, Storm Boy) is peeping at me, I might as well give him a little thrill. Because I firmly believe that charity begins at my junk.
How does the Mole's scheme turn out? Not so great...
And then Batman floods the Batcave -- because he can do that, apparently -- and the Mole is literally flushed out of the story. Congratulations, Batman! You stopped the Mole after he only killed two people! That's actually a fantastic improvement over your dealings with the Joker! ...Except you never took the Mole into custody and you have no idea if he's still out there. Which doesn't stop you from kicking Sandra's ass out of your mansion. Huh. Never mind, then.
Still to come: a werewolf; a tree monster; a paper monster -- which, I'm sad to report, is not a processed version of the tree monster; and The Perfect Fighting Machine (in a pink muscle shirt, yet)!