Hopefully this comic takes place after the action in Batman #8!
Or maybe it won't matter! Hopefully it's just an issue with the inmates of Arkham versus the Talons!
While Jeremiah Arkham is checking in on The Black Mask (The Black Mask sort of derived his powers by being bitten by a rabid raccoon! That's almost a radioactive raccoon! His False Face Society of Gotham had a really terrible motto: "Know that he mask destroys one identity while creating another of deeper drives and greater power." Lame! This information brought to you by Who's Who, the 1990 edition), the power goes out. The Talons have arrived!
That was the worst Talon of them all! Taken down by a Doctor!
The Night of the Talons clock says 8:51 PM. I think Alfred's message to the Bat Family went out at 7:40 PM. That means it took Batman about an hour to defeat the Talons in the Batcave while wearing his Batman Suit of Armor. Will that story be told somewhere else? Probably. But now I'll know that Batman survives and it won't have any tension!
Batman stalls the Talons and tells Arkham to run to one of his various secret hidey holes. Cash, the security guard, protects Arkham long enough for Arkham to get away. But he doesn't do as great a job as I'd have liked him to.
I guess that's all guards at Arkham are known for: taking a punch.
Akrham gives The Black Mask his Black Mask so that he can become his alter ego. I don't know if that now comes with super powers or not. In the 1990 Who's Who, he really just seemed to wield a machine gun and a high charisma. Arkham (or somebody on the ward) also opens all of the cells. Arkham has another riot on its hands! But this one might be for a good cause.
Clayface emerges from the cell behind Batman and saves Batman's life. I was once in a brawl similar to this! I was at a bar in Santa Clara with a few friends. This bar was the first place I'd ever seen a whole dance floor of people doing the Macarena. We walked into the club and I saw everyone on the dance floor doing the exact same moves and I thought, "How the hell are they doing that?!" Anyway, this one time, my friend Paul noticed an ex-girlfriend of his was there with another guy. He was pissed and kept staring at them. The other guy didn't like Paul staring at them so an altercation ensued. This other guy had friends as well and when they stepped in to outnumber Paul, I stepped in to pull them off. Paul and the other guy went down and I tried to pull Paul back up. As I turned around while standing, one of the guy's friends was hauling back his fist to crack me in the face. Just then, Jimmy Arthur stepped out of the crowd and grabbed the guy's arm and pulled him back. Saved by the giant brute Jimmy Arthur! Now, Jimmy Arthur was the guy who I'd hit with my skateboard a few months before that. That story is here So this scene in Detective Comics is just like that moment in my life!
Batman, of course, represents me!
Dude! Batman! That might not have killed him but he's just a normal guy! Batman just gave him a partial lobotomy!
That's the end of the regularly scheduled feature. The backup story is about Two Face (ONE FACE!).
Oh yeah! Isn't this the second part of the previous backup story? I better look at last month's commentary to refresh my memory! Okay. Dent is supposed to meet with some other lawyer that's been a pain in his ass. They meet. The pain in the ass wants to work with Harvey. Harvey agrees. Harvey goes to find the guy blackmailing the pain in the ass. The word ugly gets thrown around a lot. Five times across two pages, I think. And then a bunch of people die and Harvey is captured by some samurais. I guess I have to read a third part to this story I don't care about but am paying an extra dollar for. What a stupid sucker I am!
Detective Comics #9 Rating: No change. I think this comic would have been worth a +1 if it were still $2.99. And then only because I have it rated so low, it doesn't have to be spectacular to move up the charts. But it costs $3.99 so fuck you, Tony Daniel and DC Comics!