Detektif Comics #29

There ain't no party like an auto-erotic dutch oven party!

Fucking Gothtopia is right! I recently had a few months of Gothtopia over here at Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea! Ever since that shadow monster came out of its Lovecraftian dimension, crawling slowly from the corner of my room, ingratiating itself into my life, pushing me ever further into the back corners of my mind, I've had to watch, voiceless and raging, as it wrote kind words about The New 52! My reputation was being tarnished while my inner self could barely move. Occasionally the creature would read a Scott Lobdell book and my rage would become so white-hot that it couldn't help but shine through. But finally, I set myself free! A crack appeared in the creature's facade as it contemplated David Finch's awful, half-assed art in Forever Evil #6. It tried to process its newfound feelings of hatred and resentment for having paid $3.99 for somebody's passionless art. It strove to find the right words to express displeasure and criticism but it could not find them. And then it heard my voice, a painful whisper in the back of its mind, a tiny sound of displeasure, a mere croak of anger: "This art by Finch sucks ass. I don't know why anybody likes him. I suppose when that pedophile is drawing fourteen year old girls, he takes his time and does a decent job." And with that phrase, the creature understood that it was hampering a truly magnificent effort for the good of all mankind! What it had seen was anger and meanness and petty attacks by a squalid, leering monster of a human being. What it finally saw, now that it truly understood the horror of an artist shitting all over its audience, was a knight errant, a hero of the people, a master craftsman turning words into weapons. What he saw was somebody that was truly needed. And with that, I was free! The creature fled back into the dark corner of my room. I immediately changed all my light bulbs to higher wattage bulbs, banishing the dark portal to that other realm. And that's how I came back. You think you're ready for the real Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea? Well, Trigger Warning: EVERYTHING, MOTHERFUCKERS!

Recently, everything in Gotham City was perfectly happy. But Batman couldn't fucking leave it at that, could he? The suicide rate was too high and the city was too full of whackjobs for things to be normal. Although a whole lot of people seemed pretty happy and I'm sure the suicide rate was still lower than the normal murder rate, so what the fuck was the big deal? Is the truth actually that important, Batman? Isn't Gothtopia the city of your dreams? Or do you have a pathological need to break faces? I have a feeling that the most important part of your costume when you first designed it was that it hides your boner. That's probably why you added the cape. My guess? The utility belt's main utility is to keep your erection pressed up against your body.

So Batman wound up in Arkham because John Layman thought (just like every fucking writer before him), "You know what would be a good story?! If Batman, the only sane person in Gotham, were thought to be the only mad person in Gotham!" And all the young editors at DC slobbered all over his cock and said, "Mmm! Mmm! John! I've never tasted such exquisite semen! Don't tell Geoff we said that!" But all the old editors, the ones that nobody listened to anymore anyway because they were old and had unhip haircuts that actually looked like they got their hair cut, just shook their heads at the old idea but kept quiet, weeping silently into their spiked coffees while drying their red, bloodshot eyes with their silk ties, hoping nobody would notice how useless they'd become and fire them before they could retire with full benefits. But Batman, with the help of Poison Ivy, had now escaped Arkham. And now he has to knock the teeth out of the heads of his friends because those assholes didn't listen to him when he said something was wrong. Fuckers.

This could be a still from Adam West's Batman. Except with better costumes and 4000% more muscles.

That panel is the entirety of the fight that was hinted at by the cliffhanger last issue. One fucking panel. For a company that has such a hard on for its heroes constantly battling each other, this was a bit of a disappointment. Not "disappointing" in the actual meaning of the word where I feel let down because I wanted to read pages and pages of heroic infighting. No, "disappointing" as in I thought I needed to take a huge shit but instead just let loose with a really long fart.

Batman's ire is quelled when The Scarecrow threatens to kill his friends. Batman gives up because it's not like Batman really wanted to hurt his friends anyway. Well, maybe Talon. And possibly Batwoman to get even for the asskicking she gave him in the future annual. So he pretends to submit to Scarecrow's toxin and now is pretending to fight on The Scarecrow's side until he can find a way to free Gothtopia from the bliss it's experiencing.

From the inside, Batman controls everything and finds a way to fuck up The Scarecrow's plans. It happens across a few pages while Batman explains everything through Narration Box after Narration Box. He manages to get his antitoxin into Scarecrows Peanut Butter, delivering it to everybody in Gotham and saving the world! That's when the real fight breaks out because everybody comes to their senses and The Scarecrow was foolish enough to have gathered nearly the entire Bat-Family all in one place so he could receive a very special ass kicking this month.

And so ends Gothtopia! That was anticlimactic! I suppose the real meat of this story is the part where Batman and Catwoman need to discuss all that unprotected sex they were having with each other when the world was perfect and nothing could go wrong.

"The pile of positive pregnancy tests in the Bat-wastebasket?"

Batman tells Catwoman that he doesn't have the time to train another kid only to have that kid die before becoming a teenager in some reckless assault against a criminal mastermind, so he gives her one of Alfred's special blends of tea to take care of the problem and then leaves her alone on the top of some dirty building.

Detektif Comics #29 Rating: No change. The issue ends with Batman swinging down to fight Clayface. That image is representative of just another normal night in Gotham because Batman seems to have to put Clayface back into Arkham at least three times a week. And in the Reboot, DC has decided to document most of those stories. If I see another Clayface story, I'm going to sigh, read it, and give it a proper review.