Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #40 (December 1992)

Sadly, this is the last issue of this series I own. And yet it lasted until March 2007. I guess I'm just a quitter.

At the end of the last issue, Batman fell out of a skyscraper window, presumably to his death. Being that these stories are legends, wouldn't it have been cool to just end Talbot's story there? Let people wonder if it was the final Batman story where we discover he's just a deluded alcoholic living in the alleys of Gotham? I would have been fine with that but it seems nobody at DC was so they forced Talbot to write a second issue. I guess we're going to find out that Batman's been drugged this entire time. Even in 1992, I'd like to believe most readers found "It was all a dream" stories bullshit.

And, of course, it was all a drug-induced delusion. But Talbot takes it a step further into hack territory (possibly because editorial demanded a three part story be turned into a two-parter? Or was it just that Talbot was more an artist so he wanted twenty pages to be Batman fighting hallucinatory monsters with little dialogue and the last few pages all exposition?): um, well, you know, like the parenthetical reference says, "The last few pages are all exposition."

Whew! I'm too stupid to comprehend what I read so I'm glad it was fully explained to me in microscopic detail.

But wait! There's more! Not only does the villain, a nameless jerk who blames his criminal father's poor choices (is murdering your wife a "poor choice" or something worse?) on Batman, reveal his entire plan to Batman, he also conveniently gets killed by the nurse whom he previously mortally wounded so that the only two strangers who know Bruce Wayne is Batman die! That saves Batman a call to Doctor Fate or Zatanna to come wipe some people's memory.

The woman playing the nurse was in on the plan for the money, being that her life was a complete wreck before the offer to torture Batman, but when she found out that the torture would end in death, and after Batman calls her "nice" exactly one time, she decides to betray her employer. She does this by discontinuing her drugging of Batman and dressing as Catwoman to mount Batman one night and not fuck him but to cry on him so he knows his delusions are real and by saying to him, "Believe in yourself." Also she kills him after he's basically killed her but that might have been more for her own sake than Batman's. If somebody murdered me, I probably would go ahead and kill them as well if I got the chance. I'm not a huge advocate of violence or the death penalty but in a situation where a person has ostensibly killed you and you have a few moments left to kill them as well, I'm pro that. If I ever killed somebody and then, with their last act of strength and will, they plunged a fork deep into my eye, my last words would be, "Ha ha! Good for you!"

Oh yeah, also, Maggie the nurse confesses that she didn't do any of it to save Batman, really. That might be my favorite part of the story!

No wait! I've got a better panel for "my favorite part of the story!"

I just found my Halloween costume for this year: mediocre hooker.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #40 Rating: C. Overall, I love the concept of this story. I just wish that the climax and denouement had been better thought through than just "Let me explain what's been going on for the last issue and a half." Arkham Asylum should have been involved although I think that story might be happening in the next story I read, if the leftover, brittle, falling-apart dregs of my memory have any useful knowledge left smeared across them. One of Batman's major villains should have been behind it! Batman should have realized the drugs were wearing off, leading him to understand the nurse was helping him, letting him leave his bed to investigate and discover what was happening through his detective skills rather than the bad guy pulling the old "Here's my plan!" trope. The story gets high marks for the concept and how it began but fails when it tries to stick the landing, shattering both shins and also setting the auditorium on fire at the same time somehow. I don't know. Do human bones spark when they snap and rub against each other? Maybe Talbot was chewing on a Wintergreen Life-Saver on his dismount and the sparks from that set the foam mats on fire? Look, I'm not a comic book writer! I'm an asshole who pretends to review comic books! Why would I be able to think up a scenario for a terribly mixed-metaphor that I pulled out of my hemorrhoid-clogged asshole?!

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!

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?!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #37 (September 1992)

This cover looks like some project Glenn Fabry would have done in Year 7.

This cover also looks like one of those '90s Personality Comics of Bon Jovi. I owned the Christina Applegate issue.

Man, I hope I still have this in one of my short boxes!

Currently on my down time, I'm reading the collected Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville and it's fucking adorable. As some of you may know, there are two things I want in my comic books: adorableness and Lobo's erect cock. I never get the latter one so I'm super happy when I get the former. One of the reasons this series is so fucking adorable and whimsical and cute and all the things that I just love in a comic book is — and maybe this is sexist — that it's written by a woman, Joanne Starer. I understand guys can also write entertaining and adorable women — just read all of my early Batgirl entries — but they often just don't feel realistic. Every woman written by a man is just a man's stupid idea of how women act and think. It's possible a guy would have written the following scene but, if he had, it just wouldn't feel as authentic and innocent but also sexy. It would seem lewd and manipulative and dirty! I should know because I'm picturing it that way and my dick is nodding its approval!

I should also exclaim loudly how much Natacha Bustos' art and Tamra Bonvillain's colors add to the cuteness of this comic book. Just superb. A+ stuff here.

As you can see by the cover, this story is called "Mercy". It begins like this: "THIS IS A STORY ABOUT MERCY." I had to put that in all caps like the lettering in the comic book otherwise I'd have to editorialize on whether or not the "M" in "MERCY" should be capitalized or not. The image that goes along with that caption is either Batman getting his tooth knocked out or just a shot of his testicles.

Blogger gonna try to censor this post now!

Look, Blogger. If it's good enough for the Comics Code Authority, it's good enough for the fucking Internet.

After turning the page, I discover the story is also about "revenge, justice, and fighting for yourself." So it's just like every other Batman story? At least from Batman's point of view. I guess the difference this time is that the point of view will be Mercy's and she won't let Batman fight for her.

Enter Mercy! She's going to fight for herself!


Exeunt Mercy. On a stretcher.

Mercy's partner was killed because Batman let a hotshot hot cop he was crushing on talk him out of saving the day. Also the Cossack got away to punch Batman in the testicles later on the first page.

Batman visits Mercy in the hospital and begins grooming her as a new Robin. I don't think he thinks that's what he's doing but then he's never seen a therapist (unless you count Hugo Strange which you really fucking shouldn't) so how would he know? I suppose you don't have to see a therapist to self-reflect. It's just that some people refuse to self-reflect even when 0 of their 357 friends on Facebook don't like or comment on a terrible Ayn Randian clip about how Democrats are the real racists because they didn't end slavery and also they did civil rights. It's like, um, read the room, buddy. The Republicans are invading US cities and you're trying to convince people that your party isn't the racist party? "Hey, guys! Our new authoritarian overlords aren't the racist ones! The party that isn't standing up to them are the racists!" Did you think your "Gotcha Video!" would make people who don't even fucking love the Democratic party stand up and applaud you while commenting, "You know what? You're right! I never thought of it this way! I'm a Republican now!" I think it's self-reflection time. Unless you think your 357 friends and family just, um, I don't know, unfollowed or blocked you long ago? Maybe he just targeted the video to me and I was his entire audience! If so, I'm glad I called him crazy to his face that one time when he was upset that Marvel was publishing a comic book about a Muslim character. Man, he was fucking raving about that. And then I was all, "So you don't think the Muslim writer should write a Muslim character?" And then he was all, "Oh, I didn't know the writer was Muslim." And I was all, "You're fucking crazy." And it kind of ruined the day. Can you imagine? I ruined the day for calling him crazy but the day was just fine while he spouted off with his paranoid bullshit about Marvel's anti-Christian agenda! This world sucks.

I think the main problem was that I felt bad for calling him crazy but he didn't feel bad for being crazy.

Batman trains Mercy to be the best fighter she can be. But then she betrays him by not becoming another Robin. Instead, she ghosts him to pursue her own brand of justice. And revenge. And fighting for herself. But probably not mercy because that's just her name.

She means she's going to kill him, Batman! Mercy ain't gonna show no gosh-danged mercy!

Let me guess: Batman convinces Mercy to show mercy by the end? Or maybe Batman is forced to kill Mercy and save the Cossack! Alternatively, maybe they just have sex. I mean Batman and Mercy, not Batman and the Cossack. Although, look, either way is fine with me. I just don't think DC in 1992 would have done it.

Eventually Mercy kills one of her opponents in the underground fights and she becomes depressed and lost and drunk. Batman tries to talk with her about it but what can a man who beats people for her? "You need to beat them softer"?

Batman loses track of her after that. Which seems weird because doesn't Batman love keeping tabs on everybody? This is a mistake, right? I mean by Batman and not by the writers. What I mean is the writers purposefully had Batman make a mistake that could cost Mercy her life because, once again, he trusted that she'd be okay. First she nearly died while her partner did die because Batman thought she could take care of herself. Then Batman trained her to be a great fighter because he thought it would help her take care of herself. But then she grew exceedingly violent and accidentally killed a man and became super depressed. So that's when Batman stops watching out for her? He puts her trust in her two times and it doesn't work out either time. So he's going to trust that she'll be all right now that she's suicidal?! I guess that's why these stories are "legends". They're times Batman had to learn something important which serves him well in his regular title.

Look at them! Look at Batman's hairy chin balls!

I know I sort of made fun of the cover and keep pointing out how Batman's chin looks like his scrotum but I'd like to make one thing clear: I'm really enjoying Colin MacNeil's interior art. It's got a sort of style that I could see being used in a long, definitive run of Batman that would have been celebrated for decades. It just feels like Batman and Gotham and darkness and desperation. Now the cover? Did not like. At all. But the interior? Very much good like. Not bad hate.

When Batman finally does catch up to Mercy, it's by accident: he sees a live feed of the 1992 version of the Dark Web where a contest known as "The Blood Pit" airs. It's like the underground bare-knuckle fights but better because it's to the death on purpose. I say "better" because this is a comic book and I like to see people die in comic books. It's fun! If this were a real Dark Web contest, I absolutely wouldn't watch it. Mostly because I don't know how to get on the Dark Web.

Batman sees Mercy is in trouble and rushes to where the Blood Pit takes place. He knows where it takes place because it's been on his radar for a while now but he didn't give a shit. If two roided out thugs wanted to beat the life out of each other, what was that to him? Other than the fact that he hates murder and non-Batman violence. But this time, he has empathy for one of the contestants. He doesn't stop to think, "Hey, if a person I like whom I know has stumbled and her life fell apart which caused her to risk her life in The Blood Pit, maybe other innocent people whose lives just spiraled out of control might be dying in this thing. Maybe I should have stopped it much earlier!" He might think that but Abnett and Lanning don't let us see those introspective thoughts because it would derail the current narrative. The narrative currently barreling down the intended rails is that Mercy is losing a death fight to the Cossack! And Batman's got to stop it from happening!

"Alternatively, Mercy's a big girl. She knows what she was doing. Maybe let her sleep in her own medicine this time," is a thing I would be saying if I were Batman right now.

Batman, not a coward like me, throws in twenty thousand dollars he stole from the guy who runs the game earlier that night to be considered an actual combatant. Mercy crawls from the arena, I guess, as the new Death Pit match takes place: Batman vs. Cossack.

A few pages later, Batman has lost. Or he's faking losing and the fight was just to give Mercy a chance to catch her breath, right? If so, it worked perfectly! Just as the Cossack is about to kill Batman, Mercy steps back into the ring.

Oh wait. It doesn't work perfectly at all because the Cossack immediately kills Mercy.

You notice how I didn't complain about Cossack's right arm in that first panel? It's because I figured Batman dislocated it.

Batman takes advantage of the interruption to his fight much better than Mercy did. He defeats Cossack but refused to kill him. As he picks up Mercy to carry her into the sewers to bury her, the GCPD crash through the wall in a tank and arrest everybody. They saw Batman's fight on the same live feed that Batman saw Mercy on after Batman reported the location to the cops earlier. Being that they're all corrupt, they don't mind when Batman takes his winnings along with Mercy's body. Or maybe he just uses his own money at the end when he discovers that Mercy had entered the Death Pit battle not to get revenge on the Cossack but to earn some cash for the widow and children of the man she killed. Batman discovers this because Mercy left a message on the Bat Answering Machine explaining why she was going to be dead soon.

Poor Mercy. If only she'd chosen to become the next Robin, she wouldn't have had to die. And maybe Tim Drake would have been forgotten and I never would have had to read any story about Tim Drake written by James Tynion IV! I mourn the loss of that world and that happier version of me!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #37 Rating: B+. This was a nice one-shot story. Competently told with all the nice little literary ball and cup tricks that keep the thematic line running clearly through the entire story. And the art was mostly really well done! Stupid Cossack and his wonky arm trying to make me look like a dumb jerk! Did he ever come back as a Batman nemesis?

I just did my own research like a true Internet moron (but better because I actually did it instead of seeking out confirmation bias videos on CrazyTube) and learned the Cossack never appeared again. In a world where Grant Morrison brings back every character or costume ever referenced in a Batman story, I am disappoint.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #36 (Late August 1992)

Oh yeah. I didn't even mention the main plot last issue!

So, like, this guy in the Viking costume comes from a village in Norway where a company called Asgard wants to dump radioactive waste. He dressed up like a Viking to bring media attention to this company intimidating the populace of this village in an effort to get them to sell. I don't know why Asgard wants this specific part of the world to dump their waste. Maybe the CEO just hates them? The Viking guy's father has refused to sell so the company's been sitting on all its radioactive waste which they're not supposed to have because I think, publicly, their company is supposed to be recycling it or something? I wasn't paying a lot of attention because I was so invested in the Batman/Viking Dude Best Friend Subplot. Anyway, that's why Batman's swinging over a barrel of toxic waste and bones with a gigantic reel of film behind him.

I'm trying a new thing, based on the reviews I did in my 2018 Newsletters, where I actually read the comic book before writing the reviews instead of doing a "Let's Read" and expressing my feelings as I go along. Mostly I figured it would allow me to do the reviews more quickly while still maintaining a place where I shit out shitty opinions and express way too much of the inside of my head. The ironic part, if I can use that word correctly or incorrectly — take your pick — (there should be a comma now but where do I put it? Directly after the em-dash?! Oh! I found the spot —>), is that deciding to do the reviews differently made me too anxious to pick up the comic and actually do the review! "What a time savings it'll be!" my brain said. "Just think how much more porn you'll be able to watch!" my dick said! "Take me outside more!" my cat screamed! And, well, sure, all those things have happened since I decided to do the reviews differently but for a different reason: I was now avoiding doing the reviews!

Last issue ended with Batman and the Viking interrupting the reading of a book that a ten century prophecy told them they should read together. Jon the Viking decided he couldn't finish the most important, prophetic, synchronous, meaningful thing to ever happen in his life to make sure his dad was okay. Answer me this, people who actually love their dads: is this something a son would do? You're halfway through a 1000 year old document telling a story that exactly mirrors your current life and you would stop before getting to the end to call your fucking dad?! I don't buy it.

Luckily Jon the Viking did buy it so he could get even more spooky evidence that his life was mirroring the life of his ancestor!

The burned up person was a neighbor so Jon isn't too upset by it. His father and sister were kidnapped by Asgard while Jon was busy with his new best friend reading an ancient comic book. Obviously Batman stole the book from the Oslo library so he and Jon finish reading it before they go kick the Asgard CEO's brains out of his butthole.

The rest of The Book of Gallund reads like a Dungeons & Dragons adventure but with more sexy butts than usual.

Well, more than the campaigns I play in have. I can't speak for all of you RPG pervs.

It's a high level campaign because The Bat Man, The Viking Prince, and Sexy Buttocks have to defeat Hel and Loki before battling the easiest opponent of them all, the Frost Giant Hrothgar. It's also possible this is a fairly low level campaign because the players don't have to physically defeat Hel and Loki. They just have to outwit them before the Gods are all, "Oh, man. You fucking got me! Good one! I'll go be immortal and all-powerful somewhere else now."

Freyja films one of those Facebook videos where a woman holds some shit up to the camera pretending to talk excitedly about it but really she just has one boob popped out behind the thing and quickly flashes the camera at some point. Unfortunately, this is a static image and we never get to see her nip pop out from behind the skull.

Don't ask me how I know about those videos! I've cultivated a unique Facebook reels experience where every video it tries to show me is of either a woman with a great ass, a woman flashing the camera in some way, a woman wearing a see-through dress so you can see her pubic area, and goats. Not that I spend much time on Facebook. I just log in to read my memories for the day and maybe watch a few women on roller coasters boobs pop out.

The story of The Bat Man and the Viking Prince and the Sexy Oracle ends when The Viking Prince and Bat Man learn to trust each other, thereby defeating Hrothgar through the power of friendship and magic stones. The Giant, poisoned by the magic stones, runs into the woods to spontaneously birth dozens of little green-eyed trolls as it dies. Is that the normal way trolls come into this world? Frost Giant Angel Lust? The book ends by telling how the medallion was given to the two champions and how it would ensure that, in the future, the same story would basically be told for some reason. Seems more like a curse than a reward for killing the giant.

After learning nothing that would be seeming important from the book other than that they should trust each other for absolutely no reason (unless being cousins dozens of times removed is a reason), Batman and The Viking make a night-time raid on Asgard to save Viking Jon's dad and sister.

See! The story was important. Or was it? Did the guys running Asgard have to be the children of a dying giant's final orgasm?

I guess the "heritage" they're keeping alive is fucking over the local villagers and making money from it.

Oh! I just answered my own question as I remembered how the issue ends. It is important for the Asgard employees to be troll men because it allows Batman to defeat them without caring if any of them die in the huge cave-in and flood he causes! He also manages to wash dozens of barrels of toxic and radioactive waste into Norway's underground water system. But he makes sure to let the reader know that he'll be calling the Norwegian Atomic Regulatory Council so they know they've got some serious clean up to do. Batman must assume that the troll men all died or drowned or else he might be more concerned about the Norwegian Atomic Regulatory Council's employees who have to enter into the tunnels and fish out the barrels. Maybe that's a story for another time because at least the lead troll, Yelson, survives by clinging to a barrel. So he's probably irradiated and more powerful now!

If you were wondering who the modern-day Freyja the Oracle is, Batman's dick has found her.

I wonder why Grant Morrison or Geoff Johns or Mike W. Barr never wrote a Batman: Son of the Oracle story? Damian could use a little blond-headed, super cool and collected Nordic brother.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #36 Rating: C+. It was fine. It would have been better if it had been a Scarecrow story since the whole Viking Bat Man story was ludicrous. I suppose some depressed Viking could have sequestered himself away from society to live in a cave and subsequently become known as Bat Man. But to wind up wearing the exact same costume? I suppose I'm being too literal in the visuals of the story. That's probably just how Jon the Viking and Bruce Wayne pictured the characters as they read the story since the story mirrored their own so closely. Do I have a problem with that huge fucking coincidence? No because it's a comic book and do you remember that panel with that terrific ass? I'll forgive a lot for a panel with a nice ass in it. Remember how much I loved The New 52's Supergirl?! Oh Mahmud Asrar! I still celebrate your abilities!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #35 (Early August 1992)

The Legend of Fat Batman

I suppose I could have called this The Legend of Barbarian Batman but that might ruin my reputation as an brutally honest and edgy reviewer who can't help saying what's on their mind! I also contemplated The Legend of Sean Bean Batman but reconsidered when I didn't want to have to explain myself to all the people. I certainly didn't even begin to think, at all, to call this The Legend of Sexy Batman Whose Fat Dick is Almost Certainly Hanging Out Behind the Battle Axe.

I have a vague memory of discussing this comic book with my friend Upright back in 1992 but I can't exactly remember why (although I'm pretty sure it wasn't about Batman's fat dick). Does this comic book surmise that a "Batman" existed in some past era? I feel like we spent an afternoon roasting this comic book, probably over a game of Cyberball. Let's find out! Let's also hope we find out about that fat dick!

Some of you might be thinking, "Why are you so obsessed with fat dicks?" Well, I mean, when you're watching pornography, you don't want to see a pencil dick getting sucked, do you? Even a dick of average girth seems like a hollow porn moment when you know what the naked woman hiding under the massage table (in which a hole has been cut out) could actually be slurping on.

Also, Batman's got a fat dick, right? That's like not even up for debate.

Batman's nemesis for this issue.

Why's this guy gotta be an anachronism? Why can't the guy dressed like a Viking just be some weird or obsessed guy? Gotham's full of them: The Mad Hatter, The Riddler, The Penguin, Batman. Just another nut in a Halloween costume committing or fighting crime. The Viking isn't killing cops when Batman witnesses him so it's possible he's the next Cavalier. It's definitely not possible that he's actually a time traveling Viking. No wait. This is a comic book. It's totally possible.

You know what else is possible but I didn't contemplate? The Viking is Batman's new best friend!

Guess which fit billionaire has the other piece of that necklace at home!

Batman's been having gooey paranormal feelings all night long and now he knows why: he's found a long lost cousin who's exactly like him! He's also got half a necklace covered in Nordic runes! He also dresses like a lunatic to strike terror in the hearts of, well, if not criminals, corporate execs! And he almost lost his father the way Bruce actually did lose his father! They're basically the same person!

Batman translates the runes on the medallion and finds, when the two halves are put together, they read: "Go together. Read The Book of Gallund." The halves of this medallion have been kept by their families for 10 centuries. Which perhaps isn't too strange on its own. But when they read The Book of Gallund and find it tells the story of a Viking Prince and a "Bat Man" working together to defeat a giant, it's maybe a little too prophetic even for a comic book. Especially considering that Bruce Wayne's version of Batman has absolutely nothing to do with his supposed ancestor who dressed like a bat because he lived in a cave and dressed in a stupid bat costume.

Come on. This is really a Scarecrow story, right? And Batman's still back in Gotham tripping his fucking fat dick off since the beginning when he was exploring the warehouse district and feeling weird. Right?

Even if this turns out not to be a hallucination, even though Batman was hallucinating wolves and ravens before he even made it to the Viking fighting thugs, I'm going to remember it as a hallucination and a Scarecrow story. To believe this is canon to Batman's history is to climb under the massage table and suck Madness's fat dick. And I am not doing that even if it's all I can picture in my head right now and I'm starting to drool.

Here's how the story begins:

That's got to be Scarecrow gas, right? Please say I'm right. Please?

Viking Batman gets his ass kicked by the Giant. As payment for his trouble, the Giant not only steals all the town's valuables but kidnaps a girl as well.

"Whee! I'm free of your stench and mediocrity!"

For some reason, the town's pissed that Batman's resistance caused the Giant to kidnap this girl. She strikes me as the Belle of this town. Wouldn't they be glad to be rid of her? Waking up every morning and walking around the town being condescending and above it all. "This town! Full of little people! Living little lives! I dream of so much better than they're even capable! Fucking losers!"

Norse Batman retreats to his cave to pout until a young Viking Prince hears about him and comes to fetch him. They make a pact to defeat the Giant together the next time he comes to the village. "Best Friends Forever!" yells Batman while the Viking Prince says, "Whoa, hold up there, Charlie. We're just business partners." To prepare for their battle against the Giant, the besties climb a mountain to speak to the horniest oracle in the world.

If I didn't know from the credits that a man had written this comic book, I'd have known after reading that male gaze inspired Pablum.

If she was tempted to throw away her entire life because of the "heavy burden" carried by the Batman, imagine how wet she'd have been at Jesus Christ's crucifixion! Disgusting!

Sorry! I'm so sorry! Not for the blasphemy, of course. For the kink shaming! If downtrodden losers covered in bat guano lube her mechanism, why should I care? It's probably because my first reaction in every situation is a cynical one so my brain was all, "She's not into his heavy burden! She can just see the outline of his fat dick in his leather pants!"

Freyja the Oracle reads the bones and determines that the Giant can only be killed by being forced to swallow a "stone of the Loge". If I try to interpret any of that, Blogger will censor my post so I'll just take it as literal. The Oracle can't give the Besties directions though. She decides she'll have to go with them. Exactly the kind of thing an oracle trying to get up on Batman's fat dick would suggest.

On their journey to find the Loge Stone, the group discover the Hel, the Goddess of the Netherworld. They believe Hel can direct them on their quest but Hel tells them "Your fates have played a joke on you." What she means will have to wait until the conclusion of the story in the next issue though because Batman's current Viking best friend decides they need to take a break from reading The Book of Gallund so that he can call his father and make sure he's okay. Seems like a weird moment to want to make that call. They're right in the middle of the culmination of a thousand year prophecy and he's all, "You know what? This has waited a thousand years. It can wait a few more minutes for us to finish even though we could finish in a few more minutes and then I could suddenly worry about my dad." But Batman is all, "No! You must call your dad immediately! If I could call mine, I would! Go! Make sure he's safe! And pass me that box of Kleenex before you leave!"

But when Eriksson (that's Batman's best friend's name) makes the call, nobody answers! But they should answer! He claims they should be there and since they're not there after one try, something must be wrong! "My father always takes the phone in with him when he's crapping so he should answer! He's never been known to sleep through several rings! There's no time to try a second call! We must travel to Norway to save him!" And Batman, having lost his father because nobody acted in time, agrees! Forget whatever Hel was going to warn the previous Best Friends about! Surely it wouldn't have any bearing on the present day Besties even though this whole prophecy seemed set up in such a way that they would learn exactly what they needed to learn at this exact moment!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #35 Rating: C. It's a Scarecrow story, right?! If it's a Scarecrow story, I'll rate the next issue higher. But for now, if I'm to take this story at face value, it's fucking ridiculous. A Norse Batman that dresses just like modern Batman? Okay, sure, The Book of Gallund probably wasn't illustrated and the images of Norse Batman were just imaginative interpretations of what the present day Besties were picturing. But it's still pretty crazy, even for a fucking comic book, to have Batman and some Norwegian guy randomly meet up and discover they both have halves of a thousand-year-old medallion from their ancestors who both just happened to represent them exactly. This doesn't have to be a Scarecrow story exactly but it can't be literal. At the very least, it's got to be Barbara Gordon at a slumber party telling her friends "The Legend of Batman's Fat Dick."

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #34 (Late July 1992)

The Batrapier needs a little more branding work.

This one time, the Non-Certified Spouse and I were out for a walk. We passed by some kid's toys strewn across the sidewalk. They looked like some kind of investigative kit but with Disney branding. The Non-Certified Spouse suggested it was a Disney branded rape kit. I pointed that a Disney-branded rape kit would just be a picture of Prince Charming. That's the end of the story. It fit here because i mentioned branding in the caption and the word "rape" in "Batrapier". Thank you very much!

I suppose Batman will catch Mr. Lime by the end of this issue but, for the moment, that's finally not the main thing on Batman's mind. Right now, he wants to destroy The Cavalier for being a big lying liar. Sure, he has made the streets of Gotham safe from violent criminals for the past month or two. But he was also stealing from rich people! So, you know, that means he needs to be stopped. It also maybe means Batman wants to fuck him because the last time somebody was into burglary and being an ethical person, Batman fell in love with her and married her and had a child with her. Sure, it was on a different Earth. But the Batman of this Earth still loves fucking Catwoman even if he's not editorially allowed to marry her. Also he can't have a kid with her even if he's allowed to have a kid with some hot assassin who's probably killed way more jewels than Catwoman has stolen.

I don't expect intelligent commentary from local news reporters but it sounds like she's saying The Cavalier's double life was because he was a burglar versus his jewel thievery.

The issue also begins with The Cavalier revealing that Ellen, the pale, suicidal woman he has fallen in love with, is a murderer. He says murderess because this was written in 1992, I guess? Or is The Cavalier such an old fashioned stuntman who worships all the super gay action stars of the mid-twentieth century that he thinks murderess is the Chicago Style Guide's recommendation for a woman who murders?

You know what? Forget I wrote that last paragraph. It was absolute shit. Let's pretend I wrote this one instead: The Cavalier calls Ellen a murderess because his thin mustache apparently has roots all the way into his frontal lobe.

Robinson and Sale spend the first three pages explaining why The Cavalier began stealing jewels. The most evil evil person in the world, Randolph Salt (such an old timey name that, along with the whole murderess bit, I'm beginning to think this Batman story took place in the '50s), was a guest of Ellen's husband. One night, while Salt was slinking around the shadows of their house, Ellen's husband raised his hand to her one time too many. She fought back. She grabbed a knife in self-defense and her husband was impaled as he charged her. Salt saw the whole thing. Instead of acting as witness to the husband's abuse and her defense, he convinced her to cover up the crime with his help. But he kept the knife with her prints and her husband's blood so he could blackmail her. When he had drained her of all her money, she became so filled with despair that she was driven to suicide. That's when The Cavalier saved her. And to save her even further, he approached Salt to get the weapon back. But Salt would only return it if The Cavalier stole a bunch of jewels for him. Which is what led to his confrontation with Batman on his final job and the end of The Cavalier's good reputation in Gotham.

Mr. Lime wasn't mentioned once during the Mr. Salt revelation. And we haven't seen hide nor hair of Mr. Tequila yet.

Back at Wayne Manor, Alfred sees a chance to be free of his lifetime servitude to an obvious madman!

"Yes, yes. Only sleep will cure you of your massive head injury! Rest well, deadman. I mean Batman!"

Love that Alfred's main concern with Bruce's health right now is that he's running himself ragged just like always. As if the head injury wasn't the catalyst for the onset of all the physical problems Bruce is currently experiencing. So Bruce sleeps and doesn't die from a subdural hematoma. Instead, he has fever dreams about hunting bad men, his parents' murder, and his final confrontation with The Cavalier. At the end, his eyes pop awake and he's all, "I know who Mr. Lime is!" So that's all it took? A nap? Maybe he should incorporate naps into his investigative tools.

Who the fuck is Dewhurst?!

I didn't mention Dewhurst or scan the one panel in which he was mentioned in the first issue of this three part story because I was too obsessed with Photoshopping Catwoman to make it look like she was taking a shit. But here he is in what mystery writers for television and movies call the "Playing Fair" moment (unless they don't call it that because I made it up! Which would make sense because it isn't really playing fair. It's like that moment in that everybody missed in Along Came a Spider where some guy who's part of the murder investigation is asked a quick question or something and it's revealed at the end of the movie that he was the killer instead of the person they were chasing. It's like how in True Detective, they talk to that landscaper for a second so they can reveal at the end, "It was this guy! Did you guess it? We gave you a chance!"):

Why stop at Dewhurst?! Maybe they were all in it for the inheritances!

Batman knew it was Dewhurst because his parents were the only elderly people murdered at close range. Seems so obvious that I'm annoyed Batman didn't see it sooner. I guess living in a place as chaotic as Gotham where insane killers kill randomly all the time, it's easier to get away with something like this.

Anyway, Batman catches the guy before he gets shot in the face even though Batman's still suffering from the blunt force trauma.

Meanwhile, The Cavalier becomes a murderer just like the woman he loves! They have so much in common now.

As he gave up the knife, Salt threatened that he might use his eyewitness testimony at a future date to blackmail Ellen some more.

This has been a story about how everybody fucks up. Mr. Lime fucked up by discovering he had a real joy in killing old people and kept at it too long after killing his parents which gave Batman time to figure out the scheme. Ellen fucked up by not going to the police immediately after accidentally killing her abusive husband, becoming trapped in Salt's machinations. The Cavalier fucked up by not killing Salt immediately so that he wouldn't have thrown away his vigilante career getting caught stealing jewels for the bastard. Salt fucked up by telling a guy with a sword that he's going to fuck his girlfriend sometime in the future. Gordon fucked up because he continues to work with the Gotham Police even though he knows every single one of them is corrupt, even the fat guy and the lesbian, probably. Alfred fucked up by letting Bruce go to sleep with a serious head injury. And Batman fucked up by not realizing who Mr. Lime was before he killed dozens of elderly people. All of that is supposed to make the reader feel better about how they fucked up by living the kind of life that would wind up in reading comic books, right?!

I guess all that's left is the sword fight between The Cavalier and The Batman. Cue Batman raising a sword up by his head and saying, "Ding ding." That's a reference to whichever Rocky movie ended with Apollo and Rocky fighting with no audience to see who was actually the best and then the movie ended because fuck you, audience, you suck and we're not going to just hand out that kind of information, especially when it's a white guy against a black guy! We're in the business of making money not in commenting on racial disputes!

Before Batman can sit back and relax, Gordon comes to him and tells him The Cavalier wants to meet up. So Batman, constantly on the verge of passing out now because he apparently needs a good sleep and not surgery to reduce the swelling in his skull, decides to meet with The Cavalier.

To the death? Ha! Batman wouldn't even kill Hitler in the annual!

This issue still has twelve pages left. Is that how long this duel is going to last? Or does the story need an epilogue where The Cavalier gives up everything to move to Metropolis with Ellen and Bruce Wayne is remembered by the populace of Gotham after he dies of a head injury?

The inner monologue of both combatants merge as they both think nearly the same thoughts throughout the battle. They are equally matched: The Cavalier exhausted; Batman sick and wounded. They battle from rooftop to rooftop until they come to an old derelict building with a weak roof.

Bruce Wayne thinking, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh! I should buy this property and fix it up! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Down below, Gordon and the police have gathered to watch and contain the fight. But being that they suck at their job, Ellen rushes past them and into the building. Being that they don't suck as bad as actual American cops, they don't shoot her as she runs past. Ellen finds Batman lying on the ground, ribs broken, ankle sprained. The Cavalier stands over him. Batman tells The Cavalier, "I'm finished. You've won. Do what you will. But be gentle, baby." But Ellen is all, "No! Don't fuck him!" And The Cavalier is all, "What? Of course I wasn't going to...? Who do you think...? What the hell?"

It turns out The Cavalier simply assumed Batman would win the battle and kill him. He was choosing suicide by Batman, the big dumb idiot. Doesn't he know Batman doesn't kill?! What a fucking waste of time.

He should have thought of this first: suicide by cop.

The Cavalier unloads the pistol because he doesn't want to hurt any cops but he wants them to feel threatened so they don't feel guilty about murdering him later. As if cops ever feel guilty about killing anybody. If this were real life, he could have just gone out with the sword and they would have shot him. Or just went out and refused to lie on the ground when they all started panicking and shouting at him. Why are the people who are supposed to protect and serve actually the most cowardly and blood thirsty members or our society? Defund the police doesn't go far enough! Imprison the police!

I don't know for sure that he's going to get suicided by cops being that I have yet to read the page following the one I scanned. But he's turning a knob which means he's probably going outside and he removed the bullets from the gun and he wants to die so, you know, I did some math.

Neither Ellen or Batman try to stop him even though they have plenty of time because if there's one trope you don't fuck with in story telling, it's that when a person ends a scene by leaving the stage, you don't go after them or try to stop them. You just say their name over and over and refuse to show any agency yourself.

The next page might be the most realistic page I've ever seen in a DC Comic.

Maybe in real life, there would have been twice as many BLAMs.

And that's the end of the story except where Batman contemplates The Cavalier's final words to him about how there's potential for evil in every man. Maybe that's why Batman wound up creating a bunch of In Case of Emergency Kits, one for every hero in the DC Universe in case they turned evil or were mind-controlled or were Starroed or Eclipsoed.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #34 Rating: B. The Cavalier didn't commit suicide because he'd killed Salt and his bodyguard. He killed himself because he liked killing Salt and the bodyguard. Isn't that sometimes one of Batman's reasons for not killing? Isn't he sometimes all, "What if I enjoyed it? Who would ever stop me? Certainly not that joke Superman!" Or is Batman usually just, "I might find it too easy to find reasons to cross the line over and over again, even if I don't like it which you can't prove that I do?" I guess this is also a story about love and what people do for love. The Cavalier basically threw his body in front of a speeding bullet headed for Ellen to save her life. And Batman obsessed over stopping Mr. Lime to his absolute breaking point, almost dying, because Bruce loved his parents so much that he couldn't stand to see other people losing their parents every few days. And Alfred, I don't know, has given up a regular sex life because he loves his little boy Bruce so much?

Before I get to the next issue about Fat Batman, I have another $1 comic from the yard sale I went to a couple of weeks ago! It's going to destroy my brain so badly but I'm going to read it out of, um, love, I guess?