Batman: Shadow of the Bat #2 (July 1992)

The Cover
Another painted cover by Brian Stelfreeze. This one depicts Batman doing squats within the walls of Arkham. At least he's not jizzing in his pants but we'll talk about those paintings in the next two reviews of this series. One of the reasons this series stuck in my head so strongly had a lot to do with the cover aesthetic. Something about how clean the cover looks when inset within a smaller rectangle under a massive logo, all highlighting the seldom seen painted cover. At least I think they're seldom seen. It's also possible that I just don't fucking notice the difference between painting and pen & ink.

The Story So Far
If I were a quote guy, I'd begin each review with a quote from a movie or television show or Penthouse Forum letter of which the comic reminds me. But I don't remember quotes specifically and what use is quoting something when I fumble the entire thing? My quote for this story would be, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." That's from Genesis when God parades all the animals in front of Adam to see which he'd choose for a helpmeet and Adam is all, "Wait. You want me to fuck one of these? Seems weird." Some Christians who don't actually know their Bibles very well might think I'm being blasphemous in that interpretation of that moment in Genesis but, I assure you, God wants Adam to fuck one of his creations. It's only Adam's understanding that he probably shouldn't be fucking other species that gets God to create Eve. The fucking perv.

But as I wasn't saying because I got derailed before I could even begin, the story so far is that Batman has been kidnapped by Jeremiah Arkham and imprisoned within his asylum. We don't know how this turn events came about which is why this story arc is longer than just the first issue. It's time to find out why Batman's a prisoner and how he's going to save all the inmates from Jeremiah's twisted treatments.

The Story
I don't want anybody upset about this so let me be straight right up front: Batman never actually does squats in the walls of Arkham. I know! I was floored too. Does being floored mean that you barely gave a shit because comic book covers are never accurate? No? Oh then I was the opposite of floored. I was ceilinged. He does do this though:

I don't know exactly what this is but I think he's having an aneurysm.

Most of this issue is flashback describing how Batman wound up in Arkham. Which is good because after reading the first issue, all I could think was, "How do you cure scabies?" I'm not suggesting I caught scabies from reading an old issue of Shadow of the Bat; it's just that when you have scabies, you can't actually think about anything else. Also I don't have scabies. I was just suddenly curious about how I would cure them if I ever wound up in an awesome situation where I caught them. Unless that "awesome" situation was just sleeping on the couch of my friend who fucks everything and my scabies were caught second-hand. It's about this time that I would post a picture of a scabie but, I mean, I wouldn't do that, would I? Am I that gross? Do you even have to ask?

Oh my god I would kill myself if these things were ever on me.

If you ever hear a news story about me self-immolating for some righteous cause in front of some country's embassy, you'll know it's because I found out I was covered in those things and I figured I might as well go out in a blaze of righteous scolding.

I don't mean to denigrate the act of self-immolation for political reasons by people who actually believe in things so strongly that they'd die for them; I just meant to say that if I were to self-immolate, I'd be thinking, "I'm better than all of you assholes not burning, especially because you don't know I'm only doing this to kill the real Lovecraftian monsters currently feeding on my blood." I wouldn't say I'm a coward, exactly, but I'm in the neighborhood.

Man, if Batman really wanted to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, he would have become Scabieman. And being that he's Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy, it was probably only random chance that a bat flew through his window just micro-seconds before he began scratching his scabie-ridden crotch and became the most vile superhero in existence.

This is how that flashback I think I was talking about earlier begins:

I have questions Alan Grant refuses to answer. Not all of them about scabies.

Batman's Arkham ordeal begins while he's trolling a cemetery for little girls playing with dolls. Unless he was just passing by when he heard her yelling at her doll and burying it alive. I don't have a map of Gotham so I don't know where the graveyard is. Is it on the way from the Bat Cave to Crime Alley? Is it smack dab in the middle of downtown because Gotham is both goth and, um, ham? Why is this little girl out in the dead of night playing dolls there? She doesn't look goth at all!

One answer Alan Grant sort of gives is why the girl is in the cemetery at this time of night. I say "sort of" because we don't really know why she chose this site to bury her doll. Oh wait! I guess we do! Never mind, I'm an idiot. Anyway, the girl has fled from her father's abuse which makes Batman super irritable. He's like, "Some of us don't even have fathers to beat us and this little girl is taking hers for granted? Well, I'll take her back and show her the error of her ways!" Then he cries a bit but you never see that because he has "Bat Tear Suction Tubes" built into the cowl so that Catwoman can't see how he weeps like a Victorian mother mourning for her fifth dead kid every time he fucks her.

By the time Batman gets the child back to her family, he discovers Mr. Zsasz has already been there.

For some reason, Batman doesn't immediately suspect the little girl.

Now, Batman doesn't know for sure that Mr. Zsasz has committed these murders but the modus operandi is spot on. He loves to slit throats and pose the dead. Seems like the kind of thing any unimaginative loser serial killer might do but Batman's insistent that this was done by Mr. Zsasz. The only problem is that Zsasz is currently locked up in basically an iron lung in Jeremiah's New and Improved Arkham Asylum. Although, as Batman discovers later, Zsasz is let out during the night to sleep in a nice comfy bed. And also to go murder people outside the asylum, I guess. But Batman won't know that for sure for another issue or two. We, the readers, get to know that though because Zsasz carves marks on his body for every victim. And while he stands naked in front of Batman to show that he has no new cuts on himself for the murders that night, he never shows Batman the underside of his foot where there are *gasp* three new cuts!

His other foot must have the other two cuts on it because, as Batman finds out after leaving Arkham, two more people were killed before the little girl's family, throats slit and posed lifelike. While investigating that crime scene, one of the cops makes a joke about wondering what the little girl's family's television was playing while in their death lifelike pose and Batman loses four or five gaskets.

This asshole cop pulls a gun on The Batman?! Just because Batman's beating up on other cops? Despicable.

You'd think that the Lieutenant's irresponsibly fired bullet would have killed another cop and the police would blame that on Batman, you know, the way cops do when they kill somebody in their carelessness while they're "pursuing" a "criminal". But, no, the bullet isn't ever mentioned again. It turns out, Lieutenant "I find dead families funny" was so out of shape as to be practically sponge cake. He's killed after Batman tackles him and punches him thirty or forty times. Gordon cracks Batman across the base of his neck with his gun (instead of shooting him which is how you know Gordon is the only good cop in fiction and reality), knocking him out. He discovers the Lieutenant is dead and realizes they have to arrest Batman. But instead of taking him to book at the police station where Gordon knows some cop will kill him, Gordon just throws him into Arkham under the care of Jeremiah. I'm giving Gordon the benefit of the doubt that this idea was to keep Batman safer than taking him back to police headquarters instead of saying things like, "What the fuck is Gordon doing? Is his brain made primarily of scabies?"

Meanwhile, Nightwing convinces Robin to not worry about Batman while Nightwing swings off to investigate Arkham.

As an inveterate slacker, I've gotta respect Norm Breyfogle for drawing this, shrugging, and shipping it off to his editors as "finished work".

I wasn't surprised to see Nightwing's dick in that previous panel but I was surprised to see his tits.

Nightwing realizes Batman would never kill a cop, even on accident, because Batman doesn't kill. Even on accident. So Nightwing, leaving Robin safely behind because who wants to actually fight crime with a Robin by your side other than Batman who is crazy (he is in Arkham, after all), rushes off to save his daddy. His daddy, at the same moment, has picked the locks on his manacles with a pick he keeps in his stomach for emergencies just like this. Does he swallow a new pick every night he goes out? Or is it the same one that he regurgitates before bed each morning? Or is it more like an antimony pill which he fishes out of his turds every day?

The Ranking
At some point while reading this, I began to believe that Norm Breyfogle's work shared a lot with Jim Aparo's Batman work. But then I stopped thinking that because I was laughing about Nightwing's tits and I couldn't remember the number of times that I laughed at Jim Aparo's Batman's tits. Unless zero is a number and then, yeah, I do remember how many times. One thing I sort of found affectionately adorable about Breyfogle's Batman in the last two issues was how often the expression on his face was one of a hapless, confused old man that wasn't quite sure why he was doing what he was doing.

Case in point.

As for Alan Grant's story, I'm thoroughly enjoying the professionalism he's put into constructing the tale. The first issue did just about everything right setting up the story and beginning in the middle without immediately giving us the answers. Sure, it's a comic book, so those answers had to come as straightforwardly as possible in this, the issue immediately following the set up. But that's okay because it's well told, revealing things that Grant had us wondering about in the first issue which brings up more questions that will be answered next issue. This is how I think comic book plots should drive interest! You always answer questions as you raise more. I can't stand the comics that specifically introduce things at the end of a story which they then do not completely reveal to lure people to the next book. That's hack work, man! This is the good stuff! How did Batman wind up in Arkham? Has Jeremiah actually improved and solved all of Arkham's problems? Then in this issue, we find out why Batman is in Arkham but now we wonder how that happened. How did the cop actually die? Did he actually die? Was it a set-up by Batman, the Lieutenant, and Gordon to get Batman in Arkham to better investigate Zsasz? How is Zsasz getting out if Jeremiah's security is so much better? Why doesn't anybody want Robin to help? Does Nightwing actually have tits or am I being intentionally dimwitted and ignoring that they were his ribcage? We'll find out next issue!