Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #39 (November 1992)

A legend about all the previous legends?!

I am not, nor have I ever been, a nihilist. I am an atheist, an existentialist, an anarchist, and a raging cynic. And yet I've never been a nihilist. I mean, sure, the universe, and our existence within it, is meaningless. But that doesn't mean that we can't find our own meaning in our own existence. If this life is the only life we have, which I believe as an atheist, then we have to live it with the understanding that this life is also the only life every other person, animal, and creature have. To end another life is the easiest thing anybody can do and it's the ultimate wrong. If the universe exists based on our perception of it, meaning that while we observe a thing, that thing exists for the observer, then ending any observer is the destruction of an entire universe. I am flawed in that I, through laziness and denial, stopped being a vegetarian some years ago. I am flawed in that I sometimes kill bugs though I try not to because I grieve every time for their briefest of existences. I might sound weak or overly emotional or, perhaps, idiotic. But what I am not is violent or extremist or nihilistic. I used to believe most people were like me. They didn't want to hurt others. They were compassionate and kind and understood the value of living in a community and contributing to the peace and well being of that community. But now we are governed by monsters who have been deluded into thinking (or simply gleeful in deluding others) that those who understand the value of life and art and community are violent monsters who want them dead. But what we really want is to live our lives without constantly being persecuted or attacked or judged. The world we want to build would benefit even those who hate us. If they were still angry and resentful even while their lives were made better, I wouldn't care. I am not like them. They would burn the world down so that people they despise for no reason at all will be ostracized from it. They are the most unhappy of people although they believe they are kind and compassionate and humorous. But they are only those things within small, strict sets of conditions: toward family, toward friends, toward people who look like them. They hold that image of themselves deep in their heart while they hate and despise and hurt those whose lives they believe don't matter.

They're welcome to live in the Hell they've created for themselves while patting themselves on the back for being so strong and intimidating. We're all just going to continue to enjoy life and live the best we can while they seethe at their inability to scare and control us. We will dance while they grind their teeth in anger and resentment. We will thrive as they rot. We won't even need to rise for they will sink. They are decomposing as we watch, so mad at the phantoms they have created, so ready to murder anybody who will not bow to their terms. They are despicable; we are whimsical. They are a dead end; we are a starry sky. They putrefy; we flower. And they can suck my motherfucking hog!

Let's get to Batman!

Hey Bats! Your arrested development is showing!

This isn't something a grown man does without being a total authoritarian douche. And even though this reeks of the graffiti I saw earlier tonight here in Portland that read "ACAB also means Batman", I know he's way more compassionate and justice focused than authoritarians. But doing this shit? He's just a lonely but imaginative eight year old boy with a towel tied around his neck sitting on the top of the fence overlooking his family's front yard. Batman should be more of a "Gotham's our city" kind of guy, understanding that he isn't above the law-abiding citizens who just want to not be mugged on the way to and from work. Or shot in an alley after seeing a movie.

I understand Batman's a bit of a control freak with severe unprocessed trauma from his childhood, so I can't see him as an authoritarian, no matter how much Bryan Talbot wants him to look like one here. He's just got a major bat boner for Gotham and he wants the best for it. Now if a member of the Court of Owls was perched on a high stone wall thinking these thoughts, I'd be all, "Boo! Hiss! Get fucked!"

Batman's on patrol which means those thoughts he's having are probably just to entertain himself from the boredom of this night's uneventful patrol. "I am your Bat God! I see all from the heights! I rule completely!" But just as he's ready to call it a night, he finds some guy's breaking into a warehouse. He recognizes they're amateurs which gets him really excited because he won't be risking his life in a confrontation. Also, he'll get to play with them a bit as he scares them straight.

Yeesh. I take back everything I said previously. Only a right evil dick would end this encounter with "No need for excessive violence."

Aside from four issues of The Dreaming, the two issues comprising this Legends of the Dark Knight story are all the writing Bryan Talbot has done for DC (that I know of by checking the DC Wiki Fandom site. If I'm wrong it's because of them!). I mention this because I don't think Talbot has a great handle on Batman and who he is. I should blame the editors as well for allowing this scene especially since Batman runs into a cop as he takes these three victims out of the alley and tells the cop that their crime was "only an attempted break-in". Batman breaks bones and nearly paralyzes one of the guys for attempting to steal somebody's property. How is putting three guys in the hospital less of a crime than three guys failing to jimmy their past a roll-up door?

I get that this is the Batman a certain type of person wants to see. Too many people want to be Batman in this situation. They want any excuse to maim or kill somebody else. They daydream about this shit. If they didn't, you'd have far less examples of people shooting shoplifters in the back as they run from a store. When is somebody's life worth less than a stolen good? Get your minds right, you monsters! That includes you, Bryan Talbot's Batman!

Perhaps they'll think twice next time when they also have twice the reason to rob a place because now they're not just trying to feed their families but have a ton of medical debt too!

I know, I know! Random criminals don't commit crime in Gotham out of desperation. I think that's an editorial rule at DC! The only time a character's poverty causes them to commit crime in Gotham, Batman somehow realizes it and helps them out. If Batman beats the shit out of them and throws them into the system, you know they were just lazy no-goodnicks looking for a quick score.

As Batman hands off the "criminals", he hallucinates the officer's face melting. Then he feels dizzy and weak. He stumbles off into an alley and throws up. At that point, everything changes. It's time for another Batman hallucination story, I guess!

Oh! I remember this one because Buffy the Vampire Slayer did their version of it as well. Batman wakes up in a hospital as Bruce Wayne, alcoholic bum who dresses in a dime store bat costume pretending he's more than he really is. The doctors are fucking sick of him.

I've experienced a slightly less intense version of this idea once after having taken a shitload of shrooms!

I had complete ego loss one time when on shrooms. I was in the parking lot of a strip joint in San Jose. I had left the club because the DJ knew the friend I was there with and he kept referencing my friend as we sat at the back of the club. Every time he'd say something like "Punky Boy is in the house!", he'd direct people's attention to our table. I couldn't handle the paranoia of everybody randomly looking at us at the same time every now and again, especially since the sound around me was so stretched out that I didn't always catch the DJ referencing our group. Eventually I told my friend I had to leave and he was all, "Are you going to chop someone's head off?" And I just said I'll wait outside. While waiting, time stretched out to weeks, months, years. I began to believe that I was a homeless person who had only made up the life of the actual me, one where I would be traveling to Japan and China soon, one where I would be going cross country in my VW Bus before that, all so that I didn't have to live in my despair and failure. At the same time, Jupiter kept following me and some good old boys went around the parking lot watching me about 5000 times. Eventually my friends came out of the club and I was all, "Whew! I am me!" Probably the only time in my life I felt relieved by that revelation.

A psychiatrist observes and interviews Bruce while he's staying in the hospital, explaining to the lunatic exactly what he's suffering from.

Is this the same thing Christopher Robin was suffering from?

So was the beginning of the story where Batman went super fascist on some guys breaking into a store part of Batman's delusion? It's reasonable to think so, especially if you don't want to think of Batman as brutal as he appeared when the story started. Perhaps he was already drugged by whichever one of his villains drugged him (Scarecrow? Is it finally the Scarecrow? Or is all this therapy shit pointing toward Hugo Strange?) when the story began and when he began to feel dizzy and sick in the hallucination, that was when Batman was trying to fight off the drugs. So then he was drugged some more to drag him deeper into the delusion.

Also, this story could be true and all the other stories false. Which is how my cousin decided to view the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode in which Buffy's entire life as a Slayer was a delusion as she was locked in an asylum. My cousin felt that story ruined the entire series because, for some reason, she decided to believe just that one episode as the truth as opposed to it being a trick by one of Buffy's enemies. But it probably isn't true because Bill Kaplan, the editor, writes, at the end of the letters page, "We couldn't possibly print a story that undermines over fifty years of Batman stories, could we? Could we?" If he only asked once, I might suspect this is a true story. But by asking twice, I know he's kidding around. Right? RIGHT?!?

Anyway, this issue ends with Batman's nurse whispering to him to believe in himself so he does. He breaks out of the restraints in bed, gets dressed in his costume, and jumps out the window.

I hope my cousin Jasmine never read this story which completely ruins Batman forever. And killing him to boot, I guess?

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #39 Rating: A-. Was this the first time I encountered this sort of story causing doubt in the overall structure of the story presented up until this point? Maybe. Did The Muppet Babies ever have this kind of existential crisis about their identities? Wasn't there a Gamma World module that caused the players to question everything they thought was true about their apocalyptic surroundings? I never did play Paranoia or else this entire closing section would have read, "Oh wait. I played Paranoia! This is old hat to me!" Also replace Paranoia with Thomas Pynchon if I'd been a well-read teenager instead of a teenager who read fucking Xanth books. Ugh. What a despicable loser I was! Speaking of Xanth books, I should post my Xanth book reviews on my blog!