Detective Comics #42

This cover is too artsy for me. And by "artsy," I mean "incomprehensible." And by "me," I mean stupid dumb idiot moron.

If Harvey Bullock is now the main character of Detective Comics, shouldn't Harvey Bullock be on the cover? Does DC Comics have an issue with putting fat slobs on the cover? Oh, don't get your twisters in a knick! I mean Harvey is both fat and a slob not that all fat people are slobs. I suppose if Harvey were on the cover, some people might pick this comic book up thinking it's the new issue of Section Eight.

Last issue ended with Montoya, Yip, and Bullock rushing off to save Commissioner Batman's ass. Only one of those three officers to the rescue do not currently have cum dripping down the inside of their leg.

Commissioner Batman is having trouble battling bad guys in skeleton costumes with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades. Such an amateur. He's going to have a new found respect for Batman when Batman comes back. Maybe that's Batman's plan! The Gotham Police will see firsthand just how super duper expensive it can be to battle the real threats to Gotham City. When he finally returns, they'll be all, "Oh yeah, buddy! You can go back to being a vigilante as long as you pick up the tab. Mad respect for however you please Bruce Wayne on a regular basis to convince him to pay for all the battle gear you blow up each week and all the explosives (non-lethal, of course!) you use! You must be real nice to him, right? Wink wink! Nudge nudge. Coughhomocough." I imagine Gotham Cops aren't very subtle and spend most of their time either calling another cop gay or protesting that they're not gay after another cop called them gay.

The skeleton gang fail to kill Commissioner Batman (which it seems was the whole point of the attack) but they do put the Honey Bunny Bat Armor out of commission by shooting out its knee joints. So for the cost of two bullets, Commissioner Batman's armor needs to go back to the shop for what will probably be millions of dollars in repairs. I think the Skeleton Gang wins this round.

Since returning to the Gotham Police Department, Renee Montoya has noticed that there are an awful lot of dirty cops.

I wonder what impressed Yip the most about Bullock? His gruff, no-nonsense attitude, or the smell of the litter box in the middle of his studio apartment?

Later that night, Jim Gordon stops by to pout. "Nobody likes me," he says. "They all think I'm stupid," he says. "They're all laughing at me," he says. "If Batman comes back, he's going to kick my ass for turning him into a laughingstock," he says. All of those things are true, especially the last one. Bullock just listens and drinks his beers and says, "You know I'm fucking Yip, right? A real woman?"

The backup Batman team of Yip, Montoya, and Bullock stand around waiting for Commissioner Batman to fuck up so they can swoop in and delay the bad guys until Alvarez and Keyes show up. Yip goes off to get some coffee and hops immediately on the phone. Bullock says to Renee, "You know I'm fucking Yip, right? A real woman? And I never get to do that so could you check on this number that keeps calling her cell phone because I don't want somebody else fucking Yip because then she might stop letting me fuck her." And Renee is all, "You realize how Yip is always the object of the sentence when you talk about the two of you fucking, right? You know she's also fucking you, right? The only difference is she'd probably never tell anybody about it." So now Renee is going to find out that Yip is in contact with cop killers!

The Skeleton Crew ambush Commissioner Batman and short circuit his suit. So he gets out of his suit to fight them hand to hand. It's a good thing the armor release mechanism is manually activated! Or a bad thing because Jim is probably going to get his ass kicked next issue.

Detective Comics #42 Rating: -1 Ranking. I like the interactions between Montoya and Bullock but they're too short and not often enough. Like last issue, it didn't feel like there was really a lot going on. The "Yip is a Dirty Rat Cop" plot continues to slowly slouch toward the story that was already told in the Sneak Peek. I have a feeling the whole point of the Sneak Peek was to make the reader think the other cops discover Yip's dirty secret and are forced to kill her on duty to make it look like an accident. But it has to be misdirection or else it means almost nothing except to make these current issues of Detective Comics without tension. So the Backup Batcrew will probably discover Yip is betraying the Gotham Police but they'll find out that she's being extorted or blackmailed. Whatever the case, it'll be against her will. And the only way to get the bad guys off of her case is to fake her own death. Aside from the Sneak Peek kind of ruining the pacing of Detective Comics if what it portrayed was true (and even if it is a fake death scene, Detective Comics is currently a kind of boring slog (except for Harvey and Renee!)), it's also impossible to believe that Harvey, Renee, and Jim would murder a fellow cop. And that being the case, there's just no tension in this whole "Yip is Dirty" plot. And I don't mean she's dirty because she's banging Harvey! Oh!