I don't know. What is the goo?
Page 1: This is the page where they stick the credits but nothing else when DC publishes an extra long issue. So now the issue really only has 79 pages because no fan would actually count this as one of the pages. This is a page for Roman Numeraling! It informs me that there will be five stories and some pinup art. Oh boy! Bombshell shots of Batman in one pieces! Woo hoo!
Page 2: A splash page showing an indeterminate number of Men-bat (well, indeterminate if you're too lazy to count them) flying down from the moon with Kirk Langstrom, the inventor of Man-bat Flavored Gator Water, declaring, "I did this." Luckily the Men-bat are wearing pants so Gotham isn't going to be covered in Man-bat Guano come morning.
Page 3: Gordon and some nobody fire up the Bat Signal to inform Batman that Gotham has a Man-bat problem. Has someone already written a story where Killer Moth is captured by firing up the Bat Signal and waiting for him to start flopping and flapping around the light?
Page 4: Citizens of Gotham are running about the streets helter-skelter getting Men-bat caught in their hair. Kirk Langstrom holds his serum the way he usually holds his penis. His girlfriend begins fucking him from behind. That's a thing, right? I can't wait to see what women have in their panties some day! I hope it looks like the thing in my panties because that thing is E-ROTIC.
Kirk's girlfriend is fugging uckly. She should lose the glasses and lower the hair. Then she might be presentable. Or super duper hot!
I'm pretty sure fecal accidents are fairly common in Batman's line of business. Alfred definitely knows his way around sewer pants.
Page 6: One of the goo shop owners lets a woman and her baby into his shop after closing and pays the price when they turn into a Man-bat and Batboy. If he were being interviewed after the case on Judge Judy, the lesson he would have learned would have been "Never help anybody."
Page 7 & 8: This is the staple of The New 52 Detective Comics: the double page splash title page with Batman flying across both pages. In this one, he's surrounded by about 800 Men-bat.
The goo must refer to the Gotham suburb and the Man-bat Serum!
Page 10: Batman takes a sample of blood from a Man-bat that he fell out of the sky with. Batman is okay though because he landed on the Man-bat. I guess the Man-bat is okay because Batman would be sad if he inadvertently killed one. I hope Batman doesn't discover that he has to douse Gotham in his semen to cure everyone. No wait! I DO hope that!
Page 11: A large shot of half one-quarter of the Batcave.
Page 12: Another quarter shot of the Batcave! Batman is spouting cliches at Alfred who is just telling Batman that he can't speed up the Bat Computers! If Batman wanted the blood screening faster, maybe he should upgrade his 486 PC to something modern. Also the dinosaur in the Batcave is in this shot. I think it should have feathers and be peacock colored. Unless it's a female dinosaur. Then it's probably the right color.
Page 13: Alfred is also running a program on Batman's computer to try and identify a recent John Doe that appears to be a victim of Victor Zsasz. But the thing that's taking up most of the 486's memory is Alfred playing Pools of Darkness on it.
"But Batman! I'm in the middle of a huge battle with dozens of Bits 'o Moander! I can't shut it down until I get an opportunity to save!" "Alfred. Shut it. The fuck. Down."
Page 15: Batman lies to the readers.
You would never be able to tell the Bat Family was angry at Batman in any book written by Lobdell! They were all hanging out like nothing happened in Red Hood's Death of the Family aftermath!
Page 17: Alfred figures out where Patient Zero lived so that Batman can investigate the cause of the outbreak. At the apartment, he finds a body with a Talon dagger embedded in it.
Page 18: Batman discovers the source of the infection and the goo and Zsasz-bat all at the same time.
I bet Victor Zsasz has 900 scars on his body.
Page 20 and 21: Batman ties up Zsasz-bat and tackles him out of a window. Batman is getting a lot of mileage out of the "fall out of the sky and land on top of a man-bat to survive" move during this adventure.
Page 22: This story is still going on? Batwoman arrives with Kirk Langstrom and Francine in tow. Kirk mentions how this is all his fault but he knows how to fix the problem! All he needs is a hot air balloon, a really powerful fan, and some hot man on bat pornography. Luckily Batman has two out of three of those. And he knows of a place to rent balloons.
Page 23: Kirk Langstrom begins priming the pump so he'll be ready to spurt his cure into the fan once they're high over Gotham.
"Kirk, NO! Let me do that!"
Gotham is the grossest city in the DC Universe.
Page 26: The Man-bat infestation has ended and Zsasz has been caught and returned to Arkham. Zsasz mutters something about the bird giving him the goo but nobody listens because Zsasz is a crazy bastard. Well, nobody listens on THIS page! You have to wait until Page 27 to see that Batman is listening.
Page 27: For the first time, Batman is hearing about Emperor Penguin. That can't be good for Ogilvy. Meanewhile, Ogilvy is harassing Poison Ivy so that she'll do a favor for him. See, he buried her alive for Penguin but then helped dig her up again, so she owes him her life. I know he actually just made things even by saving her after trying to kill her but she doesn't know that! And that's the end of the first story. Just four more to go!
Page 28: Story #2 is called "Birth of a Family" and it stars Man-bat.
Page 29: Francine, Man-bat's ex-girlfriend, is Narration Boxing about how much Kirk loved bats. He knew all the bat facts there were to know. Which is why when he wanted to create some way to help people in the world, he decided to use Bat-Genes to inject into people and make them more like bats. He was trying to help deaf people by giving them the bat DNA goo shot so that they could use echolocation to help them hear. Except they can't hear so how the fuck is echolocation supposed to help them?! Stupid Kirk Langstrom.
Page 30: Man-bat screams at a puddle.
Page 31: Francine reminisces about her life before Kirk Langstrom turned into a giant bat. He told her he's going to find a cure for deafness and says it's a shameful, disgusting character flaw in Francine that she doesn't know sign language. I know how to say cookie! And raccoon! And goat! Oh, she also remembers that she married Kirk.
Page 32: She falls in love with Kirk because of his terrible, terrible idea.
As a person that can hardly stand most of the noises I hear now, I would hate to suddenly hear even higher frequencies! There might be a very good reason humans have evolved to hear only what they can currently hear. Perhaps those that could hear higher or lower frequencies were driven insane or their heads blew up or they just sat their unable to function. I'm okay with the restorative features of the goo, but fuck that biosonar bullshit. Can you imagine how fucking confused and dizzy you would become in a city with a bunch of people squealing away?
Page 34: Back in the present, Francine is getting super horny watching the lab bats hanging on their branches together. So she gets a really super hot and sexy idea!
Page 35: Francine drinks the goo so that she can become a Man-bat as well! Also, Page 35 is the first page of the second half of the comic book according to the staples I'm looking at. Which means the adverts also count as part of the 80 pages! What a fucking ripoff! How dare you proclaim an "80 page spectacular" when about ten of those "spectacular" pages are advertisements! Now my whole counting system is off! Jerks!
Page 36 & 37: A pinup by Alex Maleev and Nathan Fairbairn of Batman having anal sex with the Bat Signal. It looks like the Bat Signal really likes it because it's shooting its load straight into the sky.
Page 38: A pinup by Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, and Andrew Dalhouse of Batman farting in Clayface's face.
Clayface looks horrified.
Page 40: The story is called "War Council." Bane has overtaken a prison and become king shitheel. He now has some Brainstorm looking nutjob working on a prison version of venom out of the toilet.
Page 41: Malicia, Wolfspider, Brute, Bane, and the Brainy Guy are planning on taking over Gotham. So they're in the prison courtyard discussing plans on dealing with the other mob bosses and crazies of the city.
Page 42: A year previously, Bane was going to reenact The Dark Knight Rises but was stopped before he could even begin by unknown forces.
Page 43: Those unknown forces were The Court of Owls' Talons. They killed all of Bane's men. I guess all of Bane's men were on The Talons' hit list.
Page 44: Bane tears the head off a Talon or two but doesn't exactly finish the story about that night. What night was it? If there were that many Talons, it had to be The Night of the Talons, right? Because they were brought forward that night. The Talons make Bane so angry that he screws up in his next fight against The Batman.
Page 45: That next fight against The Batman, that fight that takes place after The Night of Owls, is the one that takes place in one of the worst story arcs of The New 52: David Finch's Scarecrow run in The Dark Knight. I guess The Dark Knight #1 doesn't even take place until after The Night of the Talons. Maybe that would shine some light on why the fuck Venomized Deathstroke drops out of the sky and onto the Batplane just before Batman fights Superman and Bane.
Page 46: Bane was approached by one of the Court of Owls at the base of the cliff Batman just threw him off. It's probably Sebastian Clark already setting plans in motion to destroy the Next Generation Court of Owls rising from the ashes of his failed Court. So he tells Bane the rhyme and that the Court were as much responsible as Batman for Bane failing and Bane believes this mysterious asshole because he's a gigantic pile of shit that can't accept his own failures. He's always got to blame somebody else even when that somebody else is an urban legend.
Page 47: Bane reveals to everyone his personal item he smuggled into prison up his ass.
Notice their reaction to the mask? They know exactly how Bane smuggled that thing into prison.
Page 49: This fucking comic book is way too long! I can't believe I paid $7.99 for it. I skipped dinner because of this comic book! Oh, and this page is another pinup. It's by Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn. It depicts Damian Wayne spending quality time with his mom and dad.
Page 50: Another Bat Pinup. This one by Jason Fabok and Emilio Lopez. It depicts Batman standing on a roof trying to untangle his bat grapple's rope.
Page 51: The third story begins. It is called "Birdwatching" and it stars Mr. Combustible. Hopefully this story ends with Mr. Combustible trying to smoke a cigarette and killing himself instead.
Page 52: Emperor Penguin is using the cover of the Man-bat infestation to send his minions (in this case, Mr. Combustible!) to loot the city. One of the minion's minions removes his gas mask to scratch his nose and Mr. Combustible has him killed. He's volatile!
Page 53: Mr. My Head Is A Glass Flask Full of Flammable Gas's thugs refuse to shoot Rizzo. Right up until he turns into a Man-bat.
Page 54: Rizzo is shot to death. Mr. Combustible looks at his watch. How does he tell time?! Does he have eyes somewhere inside his glass flask face? He's like Mr. Monopoly and Mr. Peanut and high school Chemistry Lab all rolled into one.
Page 55: The voice of the Narration Boxes always hint that the story is being told to a second party somewhere in the future. But that's never the case so I just grumble and rant and move on. But this time, it turns out that Mr. Combustible IS telling the story of the night of the goo while in prison on a prison phone to whoever his visitor might be. Oh wait! I just realized who is visitor is! It's him! He's the visitor and he's relating Emperor Penguin's plans of that night to The Penguin! Ha ha! In your face, Ogilvy!
Page 56: Mr. Combustible wasn't the only criminal on the street working for Emperor Penguin. Mr. Mosaic and Hypnotic and Imperceptible Man and all of the new second string Gotham Mob Bosses were out stealing shit for Emperor Penguin that night.
For somebody who once preached lying low as the key to success in Gotham, Ogilvy sure is reaching for the fucking stars.
Why does Mr. Combustible have to hold the phone up to the side of his flask?
Page 59: A Batman pinup by Andy Clarke. Batman is either skulking in an alley lit by a single streetlamp or he's delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy on stage under a spotlight.
Page 60: A pinup of a thug terrified by the bat shadow puppet that his friend just made. It's by Francesco Francavilla.
Page 61: The final story begins. It's called "Through a Blue Lens" and stars the Gotham City Police Department. I smell graft!
Page 62: The scene takes place in a hospital room where one of Gotham City's less than finest is recovering from a broken arm. He had turned into a Man-bat and got into a scrape with Batman. His fellow police officers toast to his fighting Batman.
Page 63: While the men foam at the mouth about Batman getting his comeuppance for making them all look lazy, Nancy Strode stands up for Batman. She's the police officer that had to guard The Joker's face in one of the earlier backup stories for Detective Comics. I guess she's trying to become as recognizable as Renee Montoya or Harvey Bullock.
Page 64: The most rabid officer declares that Batman first appeared in Gotham five years ago. I guess. Maybe he was just an urban legend up until he joined the Justice League. This officer's first meeting with Batman ended with him taking some shots at Batman.
Page 65: Nancy suspects this asshole was just pissed that Batman got all the credit for taking down the man he was after. Although if I were a cop and suddenly some guy in a scary Bat outfit that was created to scare people suddenly jumped out from the dark, I might shoot at him too! If I wasn't a cop, which I'm not, I wouldn't have though. I was just trying to put myself in the shoes of a police officer and I know they love to shoot off their weapons because no court on Earth will convict them even when they kill an innocent bystander as long as they keep repeating, "I thought he was armed."
Page 66: The other cops get pissed and storm out because Nancy is speaking her mind instead of towing the fraternal line. After they're gone and Nancy is leaving Hector the Ex-Man-Bat, he tells her to hold up. He lied to the others about what happened with The Batman.
Page 67: He remembers wanting to kill. And he remembers Batman breaking his arm to stop him.
Page 68: Strode and Hector become the best of friends. The end!
I think all police forces in the DC Universe should be disbanded and replaced by Super Hero teams. I think there are enough B-list super heroes to fill out the major cities' departments.
Page 70: A pinup by Dustin Nguyen. Batman and The Joker are engaged in strangulation sex play. From the looks on their faces, they're both thoroughly enjoying it.
And that's that! It was really just a 70-page spectacular with 10 pages of totally terrific advertisements! Holy fuck. What an ordeal.
Detective Comics #19 Rating: +1 Ranking. I'm giving it a positive ranking even though I think I'm completely burned out with Batmen and Men-Bats and any other combination of bats and men you can think of. But I'm not burned out on Emperor Penguin and most of this comic was about his scheming and being a generally arrogant douche.
Also, yes, I fucking know it was about the 900 and not about goo. Sheesh.
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