Batman Eternal #18

The issue begins with some kid in Brazil upset about his job making Batman action figures. He's got such a piss poor attitude that his manager doesn't know what to do with him anymore. The only way to get the kid to work is to threaten him with violence which I'm sure the manager doesn't want to do but what are his other choices? He's paying good money to this kid to be an important chain in the link to getting Batman action figures into the hands of collectors for $29.95 a pop. The kid should be grateful to even have a job. Job creators are the most generous, noble, honorable people on the face of the Earth, especially when they have to deal with such a lazy, ungrateful, greedy, selfish work force. If this kid doesn't want to make action figures, why doesn't he find a job that he loves? When you find a job you love, you're never really working! I think I saw that on a poster somewhere.

The boy's manager is set upon by a group of communist socialist pinko rats named Batmangirl, Batmanwoman, and Red Hood. See? "Red" Hood? Total communist. They're destroying business with lawful interference! If you know how to run a business better, you should start your own and do it your way. If this kid likes your way better, he can get a job with you! But don't come down on this job creator simply because you don't like the way he does business, fairly and equitably. Don't these communists know that the free market is the only way to ensure fairness for everyone? Instituting laws to force businesses to not use guns to threaten their employees hurts companies, destroys incentive, and cripples competition.

Actually, the Bat People are just hear hunting down Batmangirl's lead on the guy that helped frame her...I mean, Barbara Gordon's father. Helping this kid get out of work is just incidental.

Rip her weave off, Batmangirl!

I know I'm not the generally accepted King of Language but I order everybody to stop using the phrase "not so much." And don't you dare use that phrase in your response to me about not stopping using the phrase "not so much!" Oh, that'll get me so mad!

Back in Gotham City, Batmanman, a true capitalist, has a discussion with one of his top employees about his top employee's daughter. Being British, and thus completely communist, she doesn't understand Alfred's pleasure in doing all the work for a rich capitalist bastard that should be giving his money to non-working members of the lower classes instead of spending it on loose cars and looser women. Is that how the saying goes? Fuck it, I'm the King of Language. I decree that's now how the saying goes. Anyway, Alfred doesn't realize just how deep the communist tendencies run in his own daughter.

She's a downright anarchist! What are people going to do, Missy, when you've burned up all the rulebooks along with your bras? How will they know how to treat other people, or how to get along, or what to do with themselves if they don't have a guidebook explicitly telling them how to be a decent human being? You wipe the rulebooks clean, you may as well wipe away the bloody human race while you're at it! Do you think civilization exists because everybody just does as they please?

Fox has a new show starting up sometime that isn't Gotham so I won't be watching it. It's called Utopia. Essentially, the idea is to film a bunch of people that were cast because they were pushy assholes and they're going to try to force their opinions on everybody else as they begin a community of twenty or so members from different walks of life. Can you imagine if it turned out the people simply lived peacefully together without forcing their beliefs on any of the other people of the community? It would be a disaster! You can't have examples of anarchists living successfully in a community and then show it to a democratic capitalist republic! You might get them believing there's a better way to live their lives and then all hell will break loose! People will quit the jobs job creators worked so hard to create for them! They'll leave loveless marriages, thus breaking the sanctity of the most important act in civilization, not to mention destroying their one chance at happiness as they walk away from their one soul mate! Children might realize that learning doesn't equate to government sanctioned education and start picking and choosing things they want to learn down at the library, a haven for the most communist-minded people in our great country.

Fox, you are treading dangerous ground with this show, Utopia. Although I'm sure the executives have seen enough Big Brother to know that people just can't live in close proximity without instantly judging every other person as lazy, shiftless, and self-indulgent, backstabbing liars. It's what makes capitalism so great! You don't look on the other people of a community and see yourself! That would make you want to take care of the people in your community (see "communist")! What makes capitalism so great is that you look on everybody else as an "other" that's trying to get away with working as little as possible while you bear your cross of hardworking steadfastness. And, of course, nobody wants to do all the work for a bunch of lazy dicks, so you invariably have to work down to the lowest common denominator. Unless you're an entrepreneur! And then you find a way to manipulate the system, thereby getting everybody to work for you while you collect all the cash!

Come on, Croc. There are laws against living in the sewers. Perhaps you can find an honest job at McDonalds, get set up with a small apartment in The Narrows, follow the rules. Have you ever even tried to just fit in?

Batmanman and Jason Bard have just found a man with his face bitten off and lying in the sewers. It was obviously Killer Croc but Killer Croc tries to deny it. Look, Croc. The evidence says this man's face was bitten off. You have a mouth capable of biting a guy's face off. You live in the sewers. This man was found in the sewers. A cop has a gut feeling that you're behind it. You're behind it. It's just the way the system works and, because the system works, you've just been nailed, you cannibal!

I just walked you through the steps of good police work, Croc! Do we need to go over it again? You're obviously guilty!

Luckily for Killer Croc, Batmanman finds evidence that somebody else was behind the face eating. Although that doesn't exonerate Waylon Jones completely! The police are still watching you, buddy boy!

Meanwhile in prison, Jim Gordon finds out the most dangerous thing about being in prison: the flow of ideas. People have an awful long time to think while in prison. And sometimes you wind up in a cell with a guy that's thought it all through so that he can convince scared, lonely newbies of some really dangerous ideas.

Communist talk! It's all a bunch of socialist hogwash! Too bad Gordon didn't get Rex Calabrese as a cellmate. Now that's an upstanding capitalist citizen with his belief in survival of the fittest! As opposed to this namby-pamby "we're all equal brothers and sisters under the same sun" bullshit.

Batman and Jason Bard stop fighting with Killer Croc and accept him as their guide through the sewers. Batman seems to know who or what he's looking for as they try to find the kidnapped "Jade." That's all they know about the person that went missing: a name. But somebody had their face bitten off and that's something Batmanman won't stand for.

Well they must not care about themselves if they're not helping themselves. So why should anybody care about them? Apparently if you help people in need, you're actually hurting them by taking away their individuality and their self-reliance. A true hero of capitalism once said something like that! I think she wrote hundreds of pages saying basically just this: "charity is harmful." TO THE POCKETBOOK! Ay-yo! That was a capitalist joke. If you didn't find it funny, you might be a communist.

I should begin an entire stand-up career where the punch line of every joke is "you might be a communist." Except I'd probably get sued by that redneck guy. And rightly so! Everything has a monetary value associated with it and if somebody can prove that they thought up an idea or coined a phrase or put three or four words together in an order that nobody else has before (or other people have many, many, many times but failed to see the monetary potential behind the words in that order so they didn't trademark them), they deserve to be compensated when somebody else uses their intellectual property. So if I ever hear anybody that doesn't like to swear so they generally spell out their swears say, "Eat S-H-I-T!", I'm suing their fucking asses off!

Meanwhile in Brazil Batmangirl, Batmanwoman, and Red Hood infiltrate the toy factory. Red Hood hates capitalism so he wants to put a few bullets in a few job creators' heads. He seems to think "work" equals "enslavement." These kids have a choice in any number of sweat shops in Brazil. The owner of this one can't be blamed if his employees don't like the pay or the conditions. They always have the choice of leaving and finding work better suited to them. Just like Red Hood did! He didn't like working for Batmanman because there were too many non-killing related rules, so he started his own business! He should know better.

Red Hood has a pleasant little speech in which he explains to Batmanwoman why Batmangirl has always been so much better than every single Robin that ever fought at Batmanman's side. He says it's not just because she's smarter or more physically talented (although that's exactly what it is. The reason he says is the actual reason, which I'll explain after this parenthetical reference, is just bullshit) but because she's not fighting for revenge. She's fighting for her father. He points out that her mother left her and her brother's a psychopath and that she's entirely loyal to her father. In other words, he's basically giving Batmanwoman enough information to figure out Batmangirl's secret identity. Oh wait! That part wasn't the bullshit. I think Batmangirl does fight hard to help keep her father safe. But Red Hood also points out that the other Robin's were fighting for revenge.

Really, Red Hood? Jason Todd is dumber than I thought if this is what he believes. Although it does help explain his attitude toward, well, pretty much everything. Nightwing began his career as Robin to help bring his parents' murderer to justice. But the fight has never been about revenge for him at all. And Tim Drake was the same way (although he's not included here because he's not a Robin). He doesn't include Damian either but that kid is into being Robin for some really fucking sick reasons, so I can see why Jason would leave him out. The only person that might actually still be running around in a costume because of revenge is Batmanman! That's probably why Red Hood and Batmanman butt heads so much.

Anyway, that was all a bunch of stupid, trite philosophical crap that I made a complete mess of while trying to explain. It had nothing to do with capitalism or communism or living properly by following the rules, so I don't know why I mentioned it. What I should have been mentioning was how Batmangirl was mind-controlled, Spyral-style, by the owner of the factory and the man they came looking for. He forces her to turn on Red Hood and Batmanwoman, although that battle won't happen this month because the comic book is over. Although can you really mind-control somebody to do your will by giving them instructions in a language they can't understand?

Batman Eternal #18 Rating: +1 Ranking. Good comic book, yada yada blah blah blah. The owner of this toy factory is in big trouble because one of his bootleg toys is Red Hood. And even communists get a bit testy when you're making money off of their identity. Although you can't really sue a company for stealing your image when you refuse to identify your legal persona. But that only encourages Red Hood to skip the courts and reach straight for the box of ammunition.

Finally, those ads for Multiversity? The ones that say, "Do not buy this book"? Come on! You can't be serious, right, advertisement? You cannot tell me not to buy a book and then show me Captain Carrot on the cover of that book and expect me to take you seriously. You obviously secretly want me to buy that book or else you wouldn't have put Captain Carrot on the cover!