Even Batman's mask is full of lines. And what's that pink gas?
This is how Issue #3 starts. This is the first panel of the comic.
At the end of last issue, The Batman had just walked in on The Joker heavy petting his Bunny Girlfriend. I guess that whole thing turned into a fight. But wait! Isn't that what happened between issues #1 and #2 as well? Batman confronted Two-Face in the last panel where Two-Face said the impossibly stupid "I'm One-Face!" line and then the beginning of Issue #2, Batman was already bloody and beat up.
Let me guess how Issue #3 ends! Let's see. The cover of Issue #4 has Batman tangled in vines. So the last page of Issue #3 is going to be Batman confronting muscle-bound Poison Ivy who will say, "Looks like my garden is full of vermin!" And then the first panel of Issue #4 will be Batman being hurled against a tree by a vine.
So The Joker turns out to not be The Joker at all. Another big twist! Especially considering The Joker doesn't have a face anymore. The Joker is Clayface.
Clayface bleeds? I just assumed he was all weird clay shit.
And after some really bad dialogue (presumably because Clayface is bad at writing Joker material and not that Finch & Jenkins are horrible writers), we get to the panel that David Finch couldn't wait to draw.
I want to see this panel from the other side!
The White Rabbit uses a sexy car metaphor to make it known that she wants to bang Batman and then prepares to shoot him up with her Bane Drug which I still can't remember the name of. Venom! Okay, so she has a supply of Venom and she's sticking it in every crazy person in Gotham giving them super strength and Hepatitis. But just before Batman gets a dose, The White Rabbit seems to hear The Flash running towards them. Must be her big fake ears.
Doesn't he usually vibrate through these things?
Here we see The Flash smashing into the side of a train at super speed. Of course the train is destroyed and The Flash is fine. Which means I don't want to see The Flash hurt by being punched by anyone (even Superman) because he seems to not feel forces that would splatter a normal person into paste.
So far there is no indication as to why Batman informed The Flash to back him up. Perhaps he was hoping The Flash could catch The White Rabbit whose super power seems to be not being able to be caught. Except that would mean that The Batman would have to know that from the one time he saw the White Rabbit in Arkham and she happened to slip away. I guess Batman is just a great big detective.
Oh, Batman is also a great big asshole.
Is this who Finch and Jenkins really think Batman is? Some jerk with the GCPD Internal Affairs starts hassling him and he treats the guy like this? Physical intimidation? Destruction of the guy's property by dropping Clayface on it. Is this supposed to solve the problem? Hey, Batman! Shouldn't you just continue to be stoically ignoring these moronic bureaucrats instead of acting like a royal fascist douchebag?
Yeah, the guy fires a shot at Batman! But Batman just dropped Clayface on Forbes's car while Forbes was standing right next to it. The shrapnel and glass could have injured Forbes. As well as the largely drawn KRAKOOOM which had to have made Forbes a little bit deaf.
I don't expect Batman to act this way with civilians. But this is THE DARK KNIGHT title. So I guess he's supposed to be a big jerk.
After all this happens, Batman goes on a date with Jai, the shiny woman with no lines he met at the charity dinner. And this date makes me suspect that Batman isn't the great detective I've been giving him (and the bad writing) credit for!
So what this page is basically telling the reader is that she really is the White Rabbit.
Here is the great detective at work:
Batman: "Who is this White Rabbit? She's a hot white chick with pale white skin. She's barely wearing anything but she *is* wearing a mask, so she could be anyone."
Batman: "Do I know any other hot babes in Gotham? Oh yeah! Jai! But she's all brown skinned. But she's the only other woman in this storyline! So she must be The White Rabbit!"
Batman: "I know! I'll go on a date with her and have Alfred keep an eye out for White Rabbit sightings! Because there's no way she can be in two places at once! I mean, I, BATMAN, do that all the time to trick people. But not this White Rabbit who can't be caught because her super power is not being late but not being able to be caught!"
Batman: "Why do I have to deal with so many Alice in Wonderland villains?"
Bruce Wayne aka Batman's penis: "That White Rabbit sure is hot though. Maybe now that I know Jai and the White Rabbit are two different women, I can bang them both at the same time!"
Since Finch & Jenkins have now proven that Jai is not the White Rabbit, my guess is that she really is. Even though the skin tone is completely different. And The White Rabbit has red eyes instead of green eyes. Those are obviously costume changes. Because they do look similar. But I can't tell if that's because they're the same person or Finch can only draw one female with different color skin and hair.
His men all have fish lips for some reason!
Batman continues to investigate the toxin and realizes it is 99% Virgin Star Cactus, the rarest plant on Earth! Which leads to the conclusion that...
...is behind it all! And my prediction as to how this comic ends moves one step closer to fruition! Except I didn't know that Poison Ivy is part of The Birds of Prey. But Batman says he can't trust the Birds of Prey, so that's a good sign! I imagine he can't trust them because one of their members (the one I didn't know) uses guns. Which, really, is just weird in the DC universe. Plus maybe he and Katana had a really, really bad falling out that I just don't remember. Oh wait, this is a new Universe anyway. So probably no Batman and the Outsiders.
Batman heads to Ivy's lab to investigate and finds this:
Whew. I'm glad I didn't bet $1 on this outcome! No super massive Poison Ivy to fight! The big twist in this one is that it didn't end with a musclebound villain! WHAT A TWIST! I think I need to keep referring to this comic as The Dark Knight Shyamalan.
This ending doesn't mean that the next issue won't begin with Batman being thrown through a wall though! So there's still hope for that.
No comments:
Post a Comment