Batman and Robin Eternal #25

I hope when I bleed out on the street someday, my blood will spill out in the shape of a dick and balls.

Rating: Rank 11 of 51 DC Comics. I guess. I can't wait for rebirth so I can change this whole system of ranking DC's comic books against each other. Mostly I can't tell anymore what books are better than others because so many of them are bland and mediocre. I should just have three categories without rankings. They can be comic books worth reading because they're written well, comic books pretty much only worth reading if you're into the title character, and comic books worth reading if you love train wrecks. This one probably falls slightly in-between written well and reading if you're into the Bat-kids. It's hard to really judge a weekly comic book on its writing merits because the writers change so often.

• I just reread my bullet points on Batman and Robin Eternal #24 to get caught up before reading this issue and found about a dozen typos. So you should probably expect the same kind of quality writing this time too!

• At the end of the last issue, Harper was thinking over Mother's offer to kill Cassandra and I was rolling my eyes so hard that I could hear a clicking sound in my head.

• The battle to bring down the towers receiving Mother's Icthys Virus has been going on for way too long because this comic book has to go 26 issues. So, you know, it's still happening.

• Dick and Azrael don't so much fight as philosophize. It's the same old bullshit about whether or not killing the person destroying the world is right or wrong. Is a country's arbitrary justice system a better way to go than just putting the person threatening the world in the ground? It seems like a shaky argument to make but since comic book heroes have to measure up to some kind of code, the "no killing" thing seems to be a decent measuring stick. It's just that it's so Jesusy! The only reason not to kill somebody like, say, The Joker is because by killing them, you're killing their chance at redemption. But what if The Joker has never shown any sign of redemption? Ever? How many times do you allow him to return to killing innocent people? When does Batman become responsible for all of the people The Joker kills because Batman keeps insisting that The Joker not be killed? I realize that Batman will never, ultimately, be responsible for The Joker's victims. The Joker makes the decision to kill and Batman makes the decision not to kill. There's a scene in the new season of Daredevil where The Punisher gives Daredevil a gun. Then The Punisher points a gun at some scuzzball hitman and tells Daredevil that if Daredevil doesn't kill The Punisher before The Punisher kills the hitman then Daredevil is responsible for the hitman's death. That's obviously bullshit because everybody is ultimately the choices they make. Daredevil choosing not to kill even if somebody else is going to be killed doesn't make Daredevil responsible for the person who gets killed. But let's say The Pnnisher has lined up hundreds of people and is killing them one after the other while Daredevil has a chance to kill The Punisher. At what point does Daredevil become complicit in the murders of the hundreds of people? After the first killing? The second? The thirty-first? At some point, a person has to realize that their ability to say "I have never killed anybody" is the only thing they're really protecting. The argument should never be so black and white that Batman or Daredevil or Dick Grayson can say they will never kill. You've got to allow for extreme situations that arise where killing somebody will absolutely make for the greater good. Although in Batman's case, I think if he ever kills anybody, he's going to get a taste for it! So he should probably just keep Red Hood's phone number close at hand and let him do any killing that needs to be done.

• Let's not be so hasty! Why should Azrael choose Batman's terms, hunh? And what if the terms he thinks through and chooses just happen to be similar to Mother's? Is that truly wrong?

• Mother continues to badger Harper about killing Cassandra. I'm not sure why she thinks her arguments will sway Harper since they're all really arguments for Harper to save Cassandra! I guess maybe Mother's arrogance is blinding her to reality. It's like when somebody on Facebook tells a story that's meant to show how big of a jerk somebody they dealt with that day was but it actually reveals how much of an asshole they themselves are? It's like one of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues! But not as subtle.

• Cullen Row uses Midnighter's Door technology to transport to Midnighter all of the mini-orphans battling the Bat-family. You know, so Midnighter can kick their asses.

• While Mother and Harper argue inside her base and Dick and Azrael argue outside Mother's base, Mother's Icthys infected children all over the world are finally cured by the Bat-family with Midnighter and Cullen's help. Also the other heroes who aren't technically part of the Bat-family. Like Black Canary and Katana and Red Hood.

• Dick finally reaches Mother so he can stop her without killing her. I think he just likes sending criminals through the bureaucracy and humiliation of the American justice system.

• Next issue is the final issue, right? Please be right.