Detective Comics #17

Batman versus a baker, faker, and balloon animal maker? This shouldn't last long.

On this special day (You know what day! Valentine's Day! Or as my friend Doom Bunny mysteriously likes to call it: Hal Mark Day! Who is Hal Mark? I wonder if it's Doom Bunny's long lost romantic love interest! I bet he was an elderly neighbor Doom Bunny had while growing up. He probably brought Doom Bunny chocolate hearts filled with rum! And then he'd drag Doom Bunny's tiny, unconscious ass into his garage for a romantic encounter that may or may not have been against the law and not actually very romantic at all! Unless you were Hal Mark and then it was probably really romantic! Everybody has their own ideas about what is romantic, right? So far today I had a super duper romantic Valentine's Day! I woke up and had sex and a cookie! It doesn't get much better than that!), I forget where this sentence was going because that parenthetical reference took too long. Anyway, it's Valentine's Day and Batman has a really romantic story in store for everyone! Yay Batman!

The story begins in a beautiful pink and red mansion with a lovely garden of roses surrounding it. That day, that very special day of special days, the air was filled with the scent of freshly cut grass and the twisted screams of the insane patients inside. One doctor on duty was oblivious to the romance in the air because he had yet to learn the truth about love. Not real love which is mostly boring but Disney love where two people are made for each other and if one of them dies, the other person might as well die as well since the only person they could ever truly love is gone and what else is left except growing old and alone with cats? This doctor didn't know any of this because his heart had withered while his brain had flourished. And everybody knows that thinkers and smart people are unfeeling and cynical jerks full of cold and rational logic. Only people who let their hearts rule them could know true love and murderous passion.

I think someone's heart is going to grow a half dozen sizes some day!

But that day was a long time ago and now this next day I'm going to write about is not so long ago as to not be relevant to our interests but not so close to today that you would think it was happening right now as you read this and mistake the main character for somebody who could sue me for stealing their story. But it was still Valentine's Day or else this story couldn't be about love and redemption and doing it to people.

This cold and logical doctor pretended to be killed by his crazy patients so that he could become one of those crazy patients because this doctor figured out why people in Gotham went crazy and began acting like The Joker! It was because they were all in love with Batman! Dr. Byron Lovemonkey wanted to feel love too! He was tired of always being the nerd who knew everything without having to pull out his phone to Google it like all the other brain-dead assholes in the room. He wanted to love Batman as well! But he also wanted to hate being smart so he pretended to die in a fake Joker related fire!

See? He's dead! He isn't the Merrymaker at all!

And since that happened yesterday (in terms of the story and not really yesterday!), today (remember! Not really today but a different Valentine's Day!) the Merrymaker is sending his League of Smiles out to invite Batman to his special Valentine's Day party which will end in Merrymaker kissing Batman right on the mouth!

But Batman doesn't know a romantic evening is in his future! So he's out fighting a guy who must be known as Everyfreak.

I think this thing loves Batman too!

Batman meets and defeats Everyfreak while prowling about Dr. Lovemonkey's psychiatric offices. He finds a hard drive off Byron's computer and takes it back to the Batcave hoping to find evidence to the leader of The League of Smiles. After wading through dozens of files that scream motivation for faking one's own death and describing patients like Everyfreak as "too willful" and "too difficult to control", Batman decides he can't find any evidence as to the identity of The Merrymaker. I'm beginning to suspect that Batman is the World's Worst Detective.

Batman did, however, find files on the other three lunatic members of the League of Smiles!

Oh look! One of them is an insane dentist! Probably could pull out someone's teeth to shove on a corpse for a good death faking!

As Batman obstinately refused to acknowledge Dr. Lovemonkey's flirtatious advances (you know, the clues!), The Merrymaker and the League of Smiles are busy killing mob members. These are just more love notes to Batman! They're Valentine's Day gifts! You're always supposed to get people things that they can't get themselves, so giving Batman murdered bad guys is perfect! Except Batman figures out that this was perpetrated by someone else which means they were killed by Emperor Penguin. How come Batman figures this out immediately but he doesn't know The Merrymaker is actually Dr. Byron Lovemonkey?

Finally! Sheesh!

Now Batman's detective work kicks in because he also suddenly knows where the League of Smiles will attack next! I haven't even figured that one out yet! He is amazing. I mean, he's amazing once he figures out who the bad guy actually is. Batman decides to surprise his Valentine's date by telling him he's not interested in front of his date's henchmen. That's pretty embarrassing.

"It was easy to see what you were up to. Trying to win my love and affection and butt sex."

So while Batman can't figure out Dr. Lovemonkey is The Merrymaker from some pretty obvious clues on the hard drive he searches through, he does put all the information from the hard drive together once he realizes Dr. Lovemonkey faked his own death. He allows The League of Smiles to beat The Merrymaker nearly to death simply so he can taser the whole batch of them. Batman is the biggest sadist of them all with the smallest heart! He doesn't learn anything about love on this day. He will remain sad and alone forever. Unless The Joker can teach him about love in Batman #17!

The back-up story shows Dr. Lovemonkey being evaluated by another insane psychiatrist and being sent to Arkham Asylum. Looks like the Merrymaker is going to truly go insane once "treated" at Arkham and become a regular member of the Bat Villain club.

Detective Comics #17 Rating: No change. It was a decent comic book with just the one flaw: Batman sucks at detective work until he doesn't and then he's a fucking psychic intuitive genius. I actually hope The Merrymaker becomes a staple of future Batman comics once he loses his fixation on people fixated on the Joker and just gets his own brand of crazy from being institutionalized at Arkham.