Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #38 (October 1992)

Alan Grant? Kevin O'Neill? The only thing this issue is missing is a cover by Simon Bisley!

Okay, fine. This issue is missing two things. The other one is the magical scent of Alan Moore's flatulence wafting from it as you flip through the pages. I meant magical literally there. The actual scent, I imagine, would cause the Irish to close their borders and start up The Troubles II. When I see a book jacket with a portrait of Alan Moore on it, I do not think, "There's a guy whose farts go unnoticed!"

The first page of this comic book proclaims that it is not an imaginary story. At first I thought that was as literal as the magic spell Alan Moore's ass can cast which I mentioned earlier. But it's not being said by the narrator or the creative team. It's spoken by a speed freak being interrogated by Batman.

Life is a tale told by a speed freak. Full of sound and Bat Mites, signifying you just threw away a buck seventy-five.

Batman doesn't pop pills. He gets his kicks once or twice a year by sucking down as much Scarecrow gas as humanly possible and then tripping his balls off while pretending he has a Viking best friend. My hypothesis is that Batman sets Crane free a few times a year just to get his fix of that fear gas.

Overdog, the guy telling Batman his incredible tale which hasn't been incredible yet because he hasn't gotten to the part where he took the mescaline, tells Batman an incredible tale about robbing a drug czar and stealing all of his drugs and money and also some mescaline. He and his pales Stone and Petite Pete down tons of drugs immediately. But first they have to torture the drug lord to death so that he'll tell them where the drugs are. Batman doesn't arrive on the scene until after the guy is dead because why would Batman want to save a criminal from other criminals? He's pretty much on the record in this series as approving of criminals being killed by other criminals. Don't try to explain to Batman how some of the "criminals" being killed on the streets of Gotham are just desperately poor people who have fallen on hard times and just want to provide for their family. If you try to explain that to Bruce Wayne, he'll stick his fingers in his bat ears and yell, "La la la Ayn Rand Ayn Rand la la la!"

Batman captures Petite Pete and Stone but Overdog gets away just as the mescaline kicks in. So that bit about this not being an imaginary story? Take that with a hallucinogenic grain of salt.

Are drugs the post-Crisis explanation of the fifth dimensional beings? When Supes sees Mxyzptlk, is it because Kryptonite has hallucinogenic properties?

I'm not bothering to look up the spelling of Mxy's name so I either nailed it or I didn't. Besides, aren't there two different spellings of it? Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis? Or some other vague delimiter of the DC Universe?

Overdog explains to Batman that he saw the creature we all know as Bat-Mite. Batman gives a look that means either "You've got to be fucking kidding me" or "I just sharted."

Isn't talking to a peyote button while high on mescaline the drug equivalent of a hat on a hat?

Unlike Mxyzptlk, Bat-Mite (I think?) just wants to hang around Batman and help him catch criminals. Mxy's a fucking little fucker who's into pranking, the absolute worst "fun" activity a person can be into. It might not be a hot take to blame Candid Camera for people loving pranks but I do blame it. If Candid Camera hadn't constantly done the lamest, most boring pranks, people wouldn't have gotten the idea that they were fun and good-natured. If Allen Funt had come out going full Jackass on the American public, pranks would have been shut down forever. Prankster would have become pariahs instead of assholes who somehow get to keep being assholes because they ended their terrorizing of the victim with "It was all a joke! Ha ha! Look at how much piss you made!"

Overdog runs into some friends with guns and asks them to murder Bat-Mite in exchange for some of his new stash of drugs. They pull out their guns faster than you can say, I don't know, how fast can people pull out guns? I don't want to say a phrase that doesn't ring true to people who know exactly how fast a gun can be pulled out. What I'm trying to say is they really fucking want some drugs so they all start shooting Bat-Mite. But Bat-Mite, being an imp from the fifth dimension, is basically a Looney Tunes character. So instead of being riddled full of holes, he turns into a monster.

What? Of course I'm not currently thinking about how veiny his little imp cock is.

Maybe I should limit how often I mention the cocks of the comic book characters. It'll be difficult but it might result in some new jokes.

What follows after Bat-Mite turns into a monstrous demon are several pages of absolute 2000 AD-inspired gore. Using Men-in-Black tactics, Bat-Mite lets Overdog live to take the blame for the murders. He also somehow manipulates space-time so all the people killed horrifically by him were later seen as having been shot with regular old bullets. I say "somehow" because how else am I supposed to grasp or explain the powers of an imp from the Fifth Dimension? I can't even comprehend a tesseract from one dimension lower!

Bat-Mite decides to take Overdog on a trip to Bat-Mite's world where everybody LARPs as DC heroes and villains. I don't know why he does that. Bat-Mite says it's to teach Overdog a lesson but it seems it's more just to explain away Bat-Mite as a drug-induced delusion.

Most of these Mites chose cool heroes and villains to dress up as. And then there's Aqua-Mite. Loser.

Obviously I love Etrigan-Mite and Lobo-Mite and Swamp-Mite and Creeper-Mite and Dead-Mite and Spectre-Mite. But I've got a soft spot for Captain Cold-Mite because I kind of was him when I threw a big gaming convention for my friends in 2002.

Here's the schedule for Saturday night!


And here I am as Captain Cold at the Super Hero Costume Ball hanging out with Captain Bowling!

You've probably never heard of Captain Bowling because he basically just existed in one Statistics class at Mission College in like 1991 or something. I was at Mission College to re-establish residency after having gone to Portland State University for a year. My cousin (Captain Bowling in the picture) was at Mission College trying to seriously earn credits for a degree. We did not do well in that class because we were too busy writing Captain Bowling with his sidekick 7-Pin comics.

After Bat-Mite shows Overdog all the cool stuff in his world, he gets around to showing Overdog the lesson he's supposed to learn because Bat-Mite took a shine to him, I guess.

Maybe Bat-Mite just took a shine to Overdog's headband. Isn't that his usual chest emblem?

Overdog represents and as he apologizes profusely, he comes down out of his drug-induced paranoia and sees Batman approaching. He promises to never hurt anybody ever again. Batman turns him over to the police where Overdog faces trial and winds up committed to Arkham Asylum. That's where Batman is interviewing him. But no matter how much Overdog pleads with Batman to be lenient and how much he convinces him he's repented of his ways, Batman, a true bureaucrat, shrugs his shoulders and says, "Nothin' I can do, buddy! Court decided it. You're crazy, mate!" And so Bob Overdog is left to rot in Arkham Asylum never to be heard from again. Except for when he returns in Batman: Mitefall. I don't think I own that. I'd better keep an eye out for it!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #38 Rating: A. Drugs, imps, and trying to make sense of DC's fucked up early history of printing nonsense stories? All written by Alan Grant and drawn by Kevin O'Neill? What's not to fucking love?!