Gotham By Midnight #5

Gotham by Midnight just sounds like a late night radio show.

Good evening, Gotham. How're we all doing on this surprisingly green night? Hopefully you've got a cold glass within reach and a warm body to lean against to get you through one more Gotham night. And this one's a weird one. If you're out there all alone, huddled under an old quilt while trying to remember if you locked the front door or, if you know you did, wondering if the lock would even hold against a mad, desperate intruder, try to take a little comfort that I'm there with you, Gotham. I'll be here all night taking your calls and answering your deepest, most profound midnight questions. But before I go to the phones, let's begin our night with a little Billie Holiday and "Gloomy Sunday."

"Good evening. Welcome to Gotham By Midnight. How can I drive away the darkness, caller?" "Well, Charlie, I think I might be going mad because there's an enormous white nipple pressed up against my apartment window!"

Caller, that is a problem some of us would love to have. That's a hard one to answer though because it's an ambiguous portent. If it's a female nipple, it represents life and charity and the pure love of motherhood. If it's a male nipple, it represents whatever the opposite of that is. Like death and greed and the tainted hate of fathersocks. See, socks are the opposite of a hood because they go on the opposite end of the body!

I hated the soft, soothing voice of Charlie so I couldn't help but slip back into my own voice. Besides, I wasn't going to be able to do that stupid radio shtick for the entire commentary!

Although the whole ambiguous nipple thing does fit in to the story since The Spectre is currently trying to decide if he's going to give mother's nipple or father's nipple to Gotham. It depends on how racist the DC Universe's God is. Does he think the native people slaughtered by the founders of Gotham have a case? I mean, Gotham only named the swamps around the city Slaughter Swamp. It's not like they were even trying to hide the city's foundation on genocide! I suppose The Spectre really just has to decide if he's punishing the right people. Obviously the natives of this land have a case! But should The Spectre punish the modern day citizens for the sins of their fathers' nipples? If The Spectre were the judgment of our Christian/Jewish/Muslim God (He is the same God, so why not lump them all together, right?), he'd definitely punish them. The God of the Book really just loved dishing out punishments and he didn't fucking care at all if he was punishing the right person. Fuck, he punished all women forever with childbirth because Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge! And he punished all men forever with, um, having to watch the women endure the pain of childbirth because Adam ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge! He even punished all serpents with quadriplegia because one serpent couldn't resist a good practical joke. That Guy was a dick.

While The Spectre plays Godzilla to the Ghost of Apache Chief's Other Godzilla, Tarr and Drake break into the bar to find Corrigan leaking green crap out of his face holes and Rook lying on the floor with no heart beat.

I wonder if Scott at Polite Dissent mentioned this use of the defibrillator? Hmm, no. His last post was last Easter!

Tarr and Drake had better hope that the defibrillator was free to use or that it doesn't save Rook's life because there is no way in hell that Rook is going to have the Gotham Police Department pay for this Midnight Shift nonsense.

Corrigan doesn't become The Spectre. His body is just the container for The Spectre. But when The Spectre manifests, Jim does get to hang out inside The Spectre's head kind of like Jason Rusch hangs out in Madison Payne's head. Except less sexually exciting. I think. Maybe The Spectre spends 75% of his time thinking about judgment and 25% of his time thinking about big, fat cocks?

Sister Justine and that Weaver fellow arrive at Corrigan's drinking hole because the climax of a story is best when all the characters wind up in the same place. Especially when you only have about a dozen pages left to finish the story.

What's that other saying? No Rabbis in gloryholes? Look, I'm not saying either saying is true.

How do you find a kosher gloryhole in a sea of goy gloryholes? It's the one not covered in dickcheese.

Jokes are hard to make up! Especially when the premise doesn't even make any sense.

Drake screams like a person named Drake might scream so that Weaver doesn't shoot Corrigan in the face. That would probably just free The Spectre to find some other body to inhabit. Or maybe it would just keep inhabiting Corrigan's body because isn't Jim dead already?

And then The Jeezly Crow Batman arrives to save the Goddamned day!

Or to make things worse. One of those.

I'll never understand how The Batman is so anti-gun but he's pro-every-fucking-other-lethal-weapon in the whole entire universe. Pistols are bad. But boomerangs full of dynamite are peachy! Sniper rifle? No fucking way! Gatling guns attached to the Batmobile? Awesome! Shoulder mounted rocket propelled grenades? Hmm. I actually don't know if he'd be okay with those.

Batman fails to stop Ikkondrid the Giant Ghost Monster with his missiles because his name isn't on the cover. This is Jim's book, Bruce! You don't get to save the day when you're up against magic and religion. You should be saving citizens on the street so that nobody ever dies ever. Why can't you stop death, Bruce? You fucking failure.

Batman crashes his plane into the street and then ditches it like a drunk teenager smashing daddy's car into a tree on prom night. It's good to have a secret identity! Now when the police discover the hit and run, they'll be all, "We can't arrest anybody because this car is registered to The Batman. Dammit! Who the fuck down at the DMV keeps letting this guy register vehicles in costume?!"

Sister Justine is doing that thing Abraham did to try to save Sodom. "Hey, God? If there are like, forty righteous people, will you spare the city?" "Sure!" "How about thirty-five?" "Yeah, I guess." "So then you wouldn't mind going down as low as say...thirty?" "Why not?" "What about ten, God? Ten too little?" "Why the fuck did I choose you? Always gotta question my authority! Always fucking asking for more. You little bitch." At least Justine doesn't waste God's time and just cuts right to the chase and asks to save the city due to one pure soul.

In an earlier issue, Corrigan mentioned that Drake was some kind of creature or something. And since she screams, it makes sense that she's part Banshee. This issue after she screams, she mentions that since she screamed, somebody is going to die. And if there's one thing that Darby O'Gill and the Little People taught me before Dungeons and Dragons taught it to me, it's that when a Banshee screams, somebody fucking dies.

Everyone desperately wants to live so they're all trying to convince God or Jim or The Spectre to not judge Gotham. Because they all know what happens to Gotham if it's judged. Hoo boy, do they know. Out of all the arguments, Sister Justine hits upon one that God really loves. It's that one where an innocent person pays for everybody else's crime? Huge favorite! Taken from the Jewish loophole of the scapegoat, of course. And since Justine offers herself as a martyr in place of everybody in Gotham, God and The Spectre agree. And Ikkondrid the Monstrous Ghost Giant tentatively agrees. For now. Because it's something even if it's still only one life in exchange for thousands. Eventually, Ikky isn't going to feel satisfied and he's going to come back for an appeal.

Batman comes up to Jim and is all, "What the fuck?" And Jim is all, "I know, right?"

Gotham By Midnight #5 Rating: +1 Ranking. Thanks for listening, Gotham. Now I'm going to slip out of this robe and slip into a nice, warm tub where I'll slip out of my skin and slip into another reality. Catch you on the underside, Gotham.