Batman and Robin #11

Jesus. What's going on here?

Terminus is pissed off at The Batman, probably for good reason. Batman probably gave him a bat concussion on top of a bat swirly with a side of bat wedgie fries. I think it's time for Batman to ask, "Am I being a jerk all of the time?"

I know Gail Simone's run on Batgirl is kind of pissing me off because it's just overloaded with the omnipotent Batgirl thought boxes (Narration Boxing!), but I have to hand it to Simone for one thing: she thinks up catchy phrases that I love to go back to. Well, she's thought up two anyway: Women in Refrigerators and "Am I being a jerk right now?" Plus, now that I've written one commentary on Batgirl in diary format, I'm looking forward to reading more Batgirl! Just like Firestorm is now one of my favorite reads since I decided it was a romance between Ronnie and Jason.

And I just picked up Batman and Robin #11 and took a closer look at the cover. I know what's going on her! It's Batman as he's seen by vast number of thugs and lowlifes he's been a complete jerk to! Good going, Batman!

Last issue, Robin declared a challenge to his sibling ex-Robins: he would defeat each and every one of them at something they believed they were experts at (Busy Prepositions! Such a stupid song! Trailing at the end of a sentence! Just where they belong! Busy Prepositions! Like Gnats and Bees and Bugs! "Don't end your sentences with them," yell all the grammar thugs!). And (ignoring my parenthetical reference to keep the proper flow), thankfully, Robin has decided to continue with the challenge. I thought he might have just issued the challenge to get even with Tim Drake but he seems to be going through with it at the beginning of this issue.

Sneaking up on The Red Hood is an excellent way to collect that bullet for your scavenger hunt.

That's fucked up. Sincerely, Damian. You definitely got your father's sense of humor. Not only does Robin want to beat Jason Todd at something, he's also going to taunt him by leaving a crowbar in his bed? Did I also leave a little clown grease paint on the handle? Why not also leave the telephone number DC provided all of the "fans" which was really the instrument used to kill Jason Todd. Wow, DC fans in the eighties really, really, really hated Robin. What a bunch of jerks.

So, Jason Todd and Damian have a nice long talk.

This is like a page out of Grendel.

Damian is going to win a fight with all of these ex-Robins because they can't help but go easy on him seeing him as a ten year old boy! And they're all going to lose their shit to this little bastard!

Have I said this enough yet: Best Robin ever.

Even though Damian has bested Tim Drake and Jason Todd, I have a feeling Dick Grayson has a lesson to teach this kid. Maybe he'll even get him to cry! I don't even care about the Terminus part of this story! I just want to read more about the Robins beating each other up!

Meanwhile, speaking of the Terminus half of the story, a rash of Bat-brandings is happening across Gotham City. The Beat'em Up Club (which is more of an army than a club) have taken to the streets with red hot Bat Symbol branding irons and they're burning the bat symbol onto the chests of anyone they encounter. So that's what's happening on the cover! All the victims of the Gotham City Bat Branding!

It must be tough for a ten year old to know where to draw the line when his father is right next to him maiming a whole army of brand-wielding maniacs who are now next in line to join Terminus' Beat'em Up Club.

Batman and Robin take out or scare off all of the underlings and then manage to get the wounded to the hospital. Now everybody in Gotham has matching Bat Symbol brands! Along with all of the other comic book nerds who have had the Bat Symbol tattooed to their chest!

Searching for "bat symbol chest tattoos" reveals many, many, horrible tattoos. "Dude, each horrible tattoo tells a fuckin' story, man!" Yeah, so do words.

I like how I talked to myself in that last caption as if it were some kind of real interaction with a real person who might have said something like that but didn't. The make believe world is so much better than the real one. I'm going to get a tattoo that reminds me of that! Actually, instead of getting a tattoo or a branding or a piercing or whatever, I'm going to have a live gerbil implanted under my scalp.

Commissioner Gordon tells Batman at one point that it's almost dawn. Really? There are a lot of fucking people out on the streets of Gotham during the early morning hours. Is it Bat Mardi Gras?

It's Gotham City after dark. Isn't that where they should be anyway?

Batman ends up downtown somewhere with the sun coming up and explosions creating bat symbols on a bunch of highrises. Between the Night of the Owls and this, Gotham is just getting bitch slapped left and right. But finally, Terminus shows up to sucker punch Batman. He's in some kind of suit that's probably holding him together since he's been jellifying rapidly. I think he only has about an hour left before he's dead. So next issue should contain an hour long fight with Terminus and then Damian getting schooled by Nightwing! That'll be fun!

Batman and Robin #11 Rating: Just for the confrontation between Jason Todd and Damian Wayne, I'll give this one a +1 Ranking. The rest of the story is a little blunt for my tastes, but what more can you expect from a bunch of people who have been treated so bluntly by The Batman himself. Plus, Terminus doesn't have much time left to be subtle.

P.S. I just looked up Damian Wayne to find out who his creator was. I knew Grant Morrison brought about the Damian Wayne story that sets up this version of Batman and Robin, but I didn't know for sure if Morrison created him. He didn't. Batman's infant son was first created in a comic called "Son of the Demon." And here's a quote by Grant that I think sums up The New 52 fairly well: ""For a long time, [DC] said [Son of the Demon] was out of continuity. Now it's just kind of out of continuity. I didn't actually read it before I started writing this. I messed up a lot of details, like Batman wasn't drugged when he was having sex with Talia and it didn't take place in the desert. I was relying on shaky memories. But now we have this new "Superboy punch" continuity [after Superboy Prime attacked the fabric of the universe during Infinite Crisis]. People still don't realize how important that single punch was to cover everyone's ass." Of course, now The New 52 is a continuity once removed from the Superboy Punch continuity, so even more asses have been saved! Although J.T. Krul is one ass I wish hadn't been.