Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Detective Comics #43


"The Ghost in the Machine." Thank you, half-Spanish brain which totally allows me to understand Spanish completely and infallibly.

Has anybody noticed how easily the Honey Bunny Bat Armor keeps getting taken out in every single comic book Commissioner Batman appears in? Over in Batgirl, it was shorted out and completely locked up. Earlier in this series, the knee joints were shot out and it locked up. I think over in Batman, somebody looked at it funny and it locked up. I'm beginning to think this entire Robot Batman Program is a huge boondoggle.

Oh yeah! And at the end of the last issue, the Honey Bunny Bat Armor? Completely locked up. So Commissioner Batman had to manually eject himself from the armor to beat up the bad guys with his old man fists. Probably not a great idea but then that's why it was a cliffhanger last month! See, ending an issue where Batman has the upper hand and he's about to kick the bad guy's ass doesn't constitute a cliffhanger. That's just a poor place to end the comic book. No, the main character's life must be threatened! Then the stupid, Pavlovian readers (meaning readers who torture dogs) flip out waiting to find out how Batman survives what is obviously a completely hopeless situation.

This issue begins with Bullock being more worried than the readers because we know there's no such thing as a completely hopeless situation! Even when Batman died in Issue #40, we all scoffed our cynical little scoffs and went back to our daily routine without a worried thought about Batman's eventual well being. Bullock, Montoya, and Yip rush in to rescue Commissioner Batman only to find that he's beaten up all the bad guys without any help from the Honey Bunny Bat Armor. He is a little bit out of breath though or else it wouldn't be very realistic. I mean, sure, realistic would be Commissioner Gordon's skull caved in and him trying to stutter out the name of his daughter as he seizes, strokes, and dies. But this is comic book realism! That means us morons who read it are willing to believe anything the writers write because we paid four fucking dollars to read it.

The detectives find that while Commissioner Batman was beating up a few of the Day of the Dead Fanatics, some others were stealing the power core out of the Honey Bunny Bat Armor.


Montoya is having an affair with this robot.

While everybody discusses what a dirty, dirty slut and/or cop Yip is, the Day of the Dead Fanatic turns the power core over to The Joker's Daughter. What does a fifteen year old psychopath need with a fusion reactor? Also how did the Gotham Police Department get their hands on a fusion reactor?

I apologize for calling The Joker's Daughter a psychopath. It's more like she's a whiny fucking teenaged brat who thought her parents were abusive assholes when they were simply trying to feed her and provide shelter for her. Also, I hate The Joker's Daughter because she has mostly been written by Ann Nocenti since The New 52 began. I'm not one to bash people for just trying to do their jobs so I won't remind everybody about how poorly Ann Nocenti has done hers. Suffice to say, The Joker's Daughter's characterization has been abysmal.

The Joker's Daughter and her scary faced friends are holding some guy hostage. I bet it's somebody close to Yip which is why she's selling out the Gotham Police! It's why Bullock, Montoya, and Commissioner Batman will have to fake Yip's death. Which would probably just get this guy killed but since this is comic book realism, he'll be okay.

Bullock confronts Yip about being dirty but she doesn't give him any reasons why she turned on them. Of course not! That would be too much information! Readers of comic books can't handle much information before they get so confused about the story from month to month that they stop caring about the comic book. Just look at Catwoman! There are like sixteen different relationships going on between sixteen different people. I have no idea who can trust who! Oh! Maybe that's the idea! The reader is supposed to be experiencing the same sense of uncertainty that Selina is feeling.


Here's a scene with the two most boring cops in Gotham City with some plot stuff I didn't bother to discuss.

After Bullock realizes everybody knows Yip is dirty, he asks Gordon if Gordon will help him kill Yip. He obviously means "help me make it look like Yip was killed so that Montoya, Alvarez, and Keyes get off my big fat ass about her." But he can't say that where the readers will read it or else the story loses all of its tension. But anybody reading this who thinks James Gordon is actually going to help kill a cop, dirty or otherwise, must be a Marvel fan and they're only reading this comic book to make fun of it.

Gordon goes home to take one Advil instead of eighteen of the other leading brands of pain relief while the Cirque de Sowhat drill commences without him. I bet the assassination attempt is going to happen during the drill, right?! Am I right? You'd tell me if I was right, right? The suspense is killing me! Maybe I'll skip ahead a few pages and see if I'm right!

No, no! If I skip too far, I might catch a glimpse of Brenden Fletcher's goofy mug and my whole night will be ruined.

The Day of the Dead Fanatics are being transported at the same time as the Circus Drill which really seems like poor timing considering how all of this stuff is kind of tied together. The transport is hit and the Day of the Dead guys escape so that they can go make their Falcone hit on somebody at the Circus. Meanwhile Commissioner Batman is forced to suit up again and investigate the prisoner's escape only to run into his lost power core. It's currently being used by a massive Honey Bunny Joker Bot. Surprise!

I suppose the Jokerbot is being controlled by The Joker's Daughter since she paid to have the core stolen. The real question is this: "Where did The Joker's Daughter get enough money to fund this massive robot project and to pay some of the best mercenaries in the business to steal the battery for the robot?" Maybe all of her followers busk eighteen hours a day to fund The Joker's Daughter's Giant Jokerbot Project?

Detective Comics #43 Rating: -1 Ranking. I don't really know what to think about this comic book right now. I want to see more of Harvey Dent in action but the story here is moving at the slowest pace of any comic book I've ever read in my life! I think the appearance of the Jokerbot was supposed to make everybody reading forget how long it took to get to it. We're now three issues past the Sneak Peek comic in Convergence: Justice League #2 and the story still hasn't caught up to the story where Yip is killed by her teammates. It's definitely closer but I think I've completely lost interest in it. How about we all just forget it ever happened and pretend that only this Jokerbot plot matters from here on out. Deal?

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