This is in regards to Betty Kane's debut as "Bat-Girl". She figures out Aunt Kathy's identity, makes her cute party dress Bat-Girl costume, and "follows" Batwoman to the Scientific Equipment Exibition where she surprises the Dynamic Trio. My question is this: How did Betty get to downtown Gotham City from "Stately Kane Manor", which must have been out in the suburbs? I think she put on her costume (sans mask), called a cab, and told him to cruise around Gotham City till he spotted the Batmobile. What do you think?
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We're told in one story that she has a colorful Bat-scooter, but oddly enough, we never actually got to see it--I'm sure it was fabulous!
How old is Betty (and Robin) supposed to be in these stories? Are they 14?
Robin's, at least Dick Grayson's age was always pretty vague, being somewhere in "high school age" until he left for college, at which point, he mentioned his draft card, which is as close as he ever came to admitting he'd turned 18. Nor has he ever confirmed any specific age since then, as near as I can tell. Betty is/was probably the same age as Dick, give or take a year.
As for how Betty managed to get to Gotham from Stately Kane Manor, I admit that traveling by scooter was a long shot, it's just always bugged me that they'd mention such a goofy thing and not actually show it to us. Since Kathy's Bat-Cavern was an abandoned mine shaft, rather than a mostly natural cave, like the one under Wayne Manor, I suppose it's possible that there's a tunnel off of it that opens closer to Gotham proper, and Betty used one of those hand-powered cart things to get to town without a driver's license. Of course, for all we know, Kathy had a chauffeur on hand (we never saw them, but what's the point of living in a mansion if you don't have help?) who Betty had take her into town in the Kane limo.
Wouldn't she need to be 16 to drive a motor vehicle?
Something I noticed about her, at least when drawn by her original artist, was she looked very cute with her mask on, but somehow looked kind of weird without it. Possibly because of the lines drawn on her cheeks when she's not wearing it? I have a Patsy Walker annual and several stories have what look like whiskers on her face, which might be the reason why she eventually became a cat character.
Gotham City (and/or "Gotham State") has enough strange laws that there's no telling what the driving age might be. Which I guess is only fair, since there's also no telling how old Dick or Betty were.
There were probably any number of laws a young-teen Betty was breaking. Of course, all of them would have had licenses in their real names, not as their costumed identities, so any cop could've discovered who Batman was by pulling him over for speeding or having a broken tail-light. The Commish probably had the force working on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy on those kinds of things.
-- MSA
Since the Batmobile had special license plates, they wouldn't even have to pull it over to see to whom it was legally registered. My personal favorite "strange comic book laws" are those that make it illegal for any man to wear a Batman costume in Gotham City (referenced in Batwoman's debut, but then ignored in pretty much every other story that hinged on someone else dressing like Batman, whether for good or for evil) and the one that makes it illegal to unmask a member of the JSA in the event that they are arrested for a crime--wouldn't every super-villain start pulling their crimes in JSA suits? Not only would it confuse the authorities and buy them some time (since their real IDs wouldn't be revealed until after they were actually convicted) to either use their real gimmicks or gangs to break out of jail, but it would smear the reputation of whichever hero they posed as.
Also when Spider-Man was arrested in the 60s, Captain Stacy said they couldn't unmask him until he'd spoken to an attorney or they might be opening themselves up to a lawsuit. This suggests he had already figured out who Spider-Man was and was covering for him. The scene appeared in the first animated series, which for some reason gave him black hair and made Mary Jane his ditzy blonde niece when they adapted the go-go dancing hypnotise Captain Stacy story. Interesting they used the captain but turned Gwen into MJ. Stan might have wanted Peter to marry Gwen, but the animation studio apparently disagreed with him.