Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #61 (Third Thursday of January 2026)

E!TACT #61
Batman: Shadow of the Bat #13, Invasion: Book One, Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1, Cerebus #39, and Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!!
By Grunion Guy

Comic Book Reviews!


Why's that balding guy wearing Batman's outfit under his suit?

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #13 (June 1992)
By Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, and Adrienne Roy

I don't know how people do it. How they begin a new life in middle age or later, I mean. Not that I'm considering that! It's just this story about a drunk who lost everything and wound up living on the street who accidentally learns Batman's secret identity got me thinking about it. The man in the story lost his family and business and turned to alcohol before becoming homeless and while that's one hardship I can hardly imagine, the thought that's actually burning uncontrolled through my brain right now is how somebody young losing their twenties and maybe even their thirties to drugs and alcohol and a transient life ever feels that life can actually be anything more. I'd constantly feel sad and hopeless about the life I had lost and the futureless life ahead of me. Maybe I'm looking at it through the eyes of a bit-too-old-for-change man. I once found myself convinced that I was a lost soul living on the street who had made up my actual life as a delusion to feel better about my actual circumstances. But that's because I was on a fuck-ton of psychedelic mushrooms and waiting in a strip club parking lot for my friends to emerge. I think I'd be bitter and angry constantly. I can't imagine I'd ever find a way to improve my life, partially because I'd think, "Why bother? I've already lost so much time."

I wonder if what I just described is how angry incels feel about all the years they've wasted online, missing out on actual experiences? I mean, they're bitter and angry, right? Do they also feel hopeless? Is that why they become so nihilistic? I wish they could find joy in something. But where do you start when you think the world has turned its back on you?

Now all the Wayne Industries security guards think Bruce Wayne was at a gay club all night.

Pretty sure Bruce Wayne wasn't supposed to be the one yelling "A trick!" in that panel above. Also his arm makes it look like he just chugged some Gingold.

Anyway, that houseless dude saw Batman's face when his mask was torn off in a fight with Johnny Zero (just some guy named Johnny with a shirt with a 0 on it). He recognized him immediately and thought, "Hey! This will help me turn my life around! I'll sell Bruce's information to the underworld!" And he tries but he's just a nobody with a secret and as everybody knows, especially terrible, awful people, the cops aren't going to investigate when a nobody turns up dead. When Mr. Nobody (not the Doom Patrol villain for whom I'm still deciding whether or not to sue Grant Morrison for identity rights) tries to sell Batman's secret to some guy named Doc Creasey, he winds up stabbed in the back for his trouble. Doc Creasey decides that the next night he's going to hold a 1992 Zoom Meeting to auction off Batman's secret identity. But Mr. Nobody doesn't die in the alley he was tossed; he wakes up just long enough to see Batman swinging through the morning sky and thinks, "I may have fucked up my entire life but that guy's got purpose. I should probably tell him what I did so he can get Doctor Fate to erase the mind of Doc Creasey." So he drags himself to Wayne Industries (or Enterprises? I don't know!) and confesses.

"I do it for the massive erection I get from breaking bones and punishing criminals!"

Mister Nobody makes sure to die because DC can't have extraneous people running around knowing Batman's secret identity. Luckily, Doc Creasey also dies later because, you know, of what I just wrote. Batman doesn't have to kill him; he just has to interrupt the auction (which actually becomes a kidnapping when The Joker decides he also doesn't want to pay for the secret) where somebody else does the killing for him. Standing amid the corpses of all the people who almost blew his secret identity, Batman thinks, "Another successful job by The Batman!"

The Ranking
I like how this issue told the story of how Batman lies to himself about the reasons why he fights crime when he could live the rest of his life on a yacht surrounded by hot women in bikinis. "Oh, I do it for the nobodies, man! Totally! Not because of my crippling PTSD, childhood trauma, and severe OCD at all! I'm like, um, Superman! Yeah! I do it for truth and justice! Go me!" Okay, Batman. If you want to believe it, I guess I'll pretend to believe it too.

Invasion! Book One: The Alien Alliance (October 1988)
By Keith Giffen, Bill Mantlo, Todd McFarlane, P. Craig Russell, Al Gordon, and Joe Rubenstein

When I first purchased this comic in 1988, I probably gasped at the "80 pages! No ads!" bit. But now that I'm thinking about writing about it, that just sounds exhausting. Good thing I've decided to resurrect my Newsletter format where I barely discuss the comic book, if at all! This'll be a breeze! Let me just type out "The Dominators invade Earth and kill a lot of people." Is that good enough?

No, it's not! Because to my surprise, this is the first comic book in my collection that has Todd McFarlane as the penciller! Holy shit! I didn't think I owned any comic books by him! Did they hire him to draw the Dominators because he was adept at fitting too many teeth in people's mouths? I don't know if Todd was known for that; I'm projecting my knowledge of Rob Liefeld onto Todd. Sorry, Todd! I know you actually grew as an artist over time!

Like, you probably eventually learned how to draw feet, right? Right?!

This comic book written in 1988 begins more woke than any other modern comic book (and I don't mean woke in, like, punching Nazis or Superman being a compassionate role model or whatever weird fucking shit those right wing idiots think woke means): the Dominators themselves declare that Earth is scary frightening because the Earth people's diversity makes them strong. Also probably their meta-genes. Maybe mostly their meta-genes. But they sure do go on and on about how they and the Khunds and the Durlans are basically the monocultures of alien life (I mean each species is a monoculture unto itself and not that all three are mix and match species). So right away, we see a group who thinks of themselves as the superior race in the universe, a group that are all exactly the same and love it that way, show intense fear and hatred for diversity. And also meta-genes!

Let me be clear: it's not the good guys obsessed with the purification of race in this book.

The titular "Alien Alliance" forms with nine different races. Todd McFarlane may have done the pencils with P. Craig Russell doing the inks on this chapter but take a look at this page and tell me if it screams "Keith Giffen" to you? Yes, he did the plot and breakdowns.

Could this page have been part of the breakdowns that Todd basically just redrew? Or traced?!

On closer examination of all the races, I notice the Psions seem to be different than I remember them. Aren't they usually more lizard-like? Is that another race I'm thinking of?! Maybe I'm just remembering all that shit David Icke revealed about the royals.

The first chapter ends with the alliance of nine races formed. The second chapter tells the story of the prisoners. The Dominators want to destroy Earthlings because they fear their potential, especially if they ever begin working together. But the thing that makes them special, the meta-gene, means the Psions want to take as many of them prisoner as possible. To vivisect them and discover their power. Along with whatever humans they can capture (like Adam Strange), they're also imprisoning any other aliens who try to fight back. This includes Brainiac of L.E.G.I.O.N. and all of the Omega Men who weren't killed while being captured. Adam Strange has been imprisoned with the normies but he wants to break out and find the place where they're keeping those with powers in the hopes to recruit them for a revolution against their keepers. This all takes place as the Dominion and their allies move the fleet within range of Earth's system to begin their assault.

Yeah, okay. This isn't Keith Giffen's work. Sure, sure. Todd did this. *WINK*

The invasion begins in Australia because the only super heroes there are gay and there's only like, what, two of them? I meant "gay" literally there and not in "lame". I am not an immature dweeb from the '80s. I mean, I was. But I'm not now! They easily defeat Australia to set up their base of operations. I think I remember the aftermath of some of this in Justice League International.

Chapter Four is both penciled and inked by Todd McFarland and, well, yeah it is.

Yep. Checks out!

Sixty-seven pages in and there hasn't been an appearance by a single super hero. Unless you count The Omega Men which, of course, you don't. Also Adam Strange but, I mean, you know what I mean.

A few pages are devoted to The Spectre being told by the Lords of Order not to interfere or else the Lords of Chaos might join up with the aliens. I thought The Spectre works for God not the Lords of Order? Not that it matters since the Lords of Order are basically concerned that if any magic wielding being participates in the defense of Earth, the Lords of Chaos may see it as interference and give them a right to interfere too. But if the Lords of Order have the option to interfere, why don't the Lords of Chaos interfere? What do they care about maintaining balance? They're chaos, man?! The Spectre seems to think he has to obey orders from the Lords of Order (oh? Is that why they're called that? They can order people around?!) so he rushes off to make sure none of the magic heroes take part in this battle. Boring!

Page 73 gives us the first appearance of an actual hero (The Spectre is not a hero. He's God's Vengeance or some nutty shit): Tasmanian Devil. See? Gay! The rest of Earth's heroes are told to stand down until they hear the Dominator's demands. When they come, they're told to stand up because Earth isn't giving in to the demands which are to give up the heroes. So politicians decided to fight instead of backing down and allowing fascists to take over? That's the most unbelievable part of this story so far!

The Ranking!
Was this 80 pages of prologue? I think this was 80 pages of prologue! The most exciting part of the story was when The Omega Men were battling the alien alliance and you know how exciting I found that? I'll let you know by telling you this: there's a fucking reason I don't own Lobo's first appearance. Because The Omega Men comic book looked like it sucked assholes! I don't know if it did but I saw it on the shelves month after month and I thought, "That looks stupid." Yeah, I know I'm the stupid one now because my favorite character of all time, Lobo (maybe tied with Ambush Bug), wound up appearing there first and I could have owned that shit off the shelf! Although luckily, for no reason at all, I was collecting DC Comics Presents back then so I do have Ambush Bug's first appearance! Yay for young me actually doing one thing fucking right!

I didn't realize that was an actual plastic diamond on the cover until I re-scanned it because the first scan was out of focus. Because of that fat old diamond.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 (July 1992)
By Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bart Sears, Randy Elliott, and Mark Pennington

Hey! My Eclipso: The Darkness Within comics! Now I can box them with the Eclipso comic run (which was a huge mistake because they just couldn't get the tone right. Man, the concept fell apart so fast!)! It's kind of insane that my boxes of comic books have absolutely no organization to them. I think they're mostly by when I bought them and shoved them in the box. These probably haven't seen the light of day for thirty years!

Let's get this out of the way immediately and also this might not be a long review so I want to make sure I say this: I could not stand Bart Sears' art at this time. Everybody looks like they're roided out and constipated (just look at the cover!). In 1992, I had yet to cultivate my comic book tastes so I just purchased comics featuring whatever comic book character I liked and/or whatever huge Summer Event DC was trying to sell me. Eventually, I began to buy comics based on the writers and, less often, the artists. I'm not sure I ever refrained from buying a comic because I didn't like the artist but I definitely didn't buy comic books because I couldn't stand the writer. But that was a short period of years between "buy anything with characters I'm interested in" and "buy every single book DC publishes". The period between those two moments were the only time that I read a majority of Marvel books. Because all of the writers I loved had gone to Marvel!

The story begins in 1890 when Bruce Gordon (at least I'm assuming it's Bruce Gordon? Does he gain immortality when infected with the black diamond?), apparently travelling on the same boat as Joseph Conrad traveled on that served as inspiration for Heart of Darkness, braves the jungles of Africa to find the legendary Black Diamond (which is called "The Heart of Darkness"). He finds it, kills his partner, has the gem cut up into 1000 tinier gems, and, well, that's the prologue! 100 years later, we learn about Eclipso's secret base on the Dark Side of the Moon which we know means that the sun never shines on it. Because if the sun did somehow shine on the Dark Side of the Moon, which it totally doesn't, not ever, Eclipso would be destroyed. Luckily, at least in the DC Universe, the sun never shines on the Dark Side of the Moon. Somehow.

Oh, that's how. It's just a deep crater with anti-sunlight technology.

Valor is the first person to discover Eclipso's evil lair on the Evil Side of the Moon in Evil Crater. Probably because DC really wanted to make Valor happen. Did it work? I don't fucking remember. I know I bought in, at least for a little while. I own the first issue of his series if not a few more after.

Valor's easily possessed within Eclipso's palace which gives Eclipso an idea: invite all the other heroes to his house for a possession party! Or maybe just use Valor to go out and possess more heroes. Eclipso makes sure to mention how Valor's obviously more powerful than even Superman so the fans would be all, "Oh? I should check out this Valor guy! Is he starring in his own book yet?!" The answer to that question was "No! But wait until September! Hoo boy, it'll be the biggest event since the Death of Superman! I mean it'll be the biggest event until the Death of Superman!"

Bruce Gordon appears next and he's obviously not the guy from 100 years before because even though he has exactly the same roided out and constipated body type, his hair color is different. Bruce studies the black diamond to try and figure out how it's attached to making him turn into Eclipso when he stubs his toe or gets cut off in traffic. But he just can't figure it out. Until it begins to react like a sperm attracted to a hot, sexy egg. It swims to the edge of the petri dish so Bruce concludes that it's trying to get somewhere. Bruce takes it along like a little sperm bloodhound and they head out to find a sexy ovum.

Oh yeah! Baby making time!

Actually it's murder time. But you probably guessed that because the picture that should have been a sexy naked lady was an angry Eclipso-faced and fully dressed woman with a knife. My erection nearly flagged when I saw that. But then it just got harder for some reason? Hmm, I'll just note that down to discuss with my therapist.

Bruce finds a second Black Diamond on the woman possessed by Eclipso after he defeats her by shining a flashlight at her. How was this a huge summer event if Eclipso can be defeated by pointing a three dollar light at him? Oh, wait. I remember. Gordon's little gizmo actually produces "sunlight" or something. That's why there was an earlier scene to show that his flashlight's bulb was burnt out so he had to take his special Anti-Eclipso light gun.

But now that Bruce has found two Black Diamonds, he realizes Eclipso has been planning something way bigger than just fucking with him by turning him into a murderer whenever he's slightly irritated. Little does Bruce know, there are 998 more Black Diamonds out there waiting to make people murder each other! I'm sure glad DC didn't have 998 monthly titles or they definitely would have tried to make everybody buy 998 stupid Annuals in the summer of 1992.

If only The Phantom Stranger hadn't been too busy polishing his thirty pieces of silver, he could have stopped this whole event and saved me so much money!

Eclipso takes over The Creeper next as a test case. Unless Eclipso just wants to gather up the most irritating heroes he can find. Maybe one of each? He's got boring and irritating. So next he's going after most powerful with Superman. But thanks to Bruce Gordon, leading expert in solar sciences, Eclipso's defeated before he can trick Superman into picking up the Black Diamond and getting angry. Although does Superman get angry? I guess it depends on who's writing him at the time.

The Ranking
The reason Eclipso has been tormenting Bruce Gordon all these years and not living up to his full potential is that Eclipso wanted to delay the advancement of solar sciences and solar energy and LaserTag equipment that mimics the sun's rays. The sun's light, being the only thing that can hurt or defeat Eclipso, had to be kept where it couldn't hurt him: 93 million miles away. Which actually makes you wonder: what good would an Eclipsoed Superman be? Superman's full of yellow sun energy so can he even be turned? Or can he only be turned when he has none left and then what? He's as useless as Jimmy Olsen! I don't think Eclipso thought through going after Superman first. I don't remember if Superman ever does get possessed but it probably doesn't happen in the next chapter of this story: Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #1. That's because Superman probably had like four different annuals in the summer of 1992 and it wouldn't be great if he were possessed right from the start. I was going to say I'll never find out because why would I have the Superman: Man of Steel Annual #1 but you know what? Seems like I really went for this event in 1992! Looks like I've got most, if not all, of the annuals! Oh boy¡ I used the upside-down exclamation point to indicate that I'm actually the opposite of excited.

Dave Sim was making fun of Image artists a decade before Image existed! Except Sim can draw a mean fucking foot.

Cerebus #39 (June 1982)
By Dave Sim

When I last read Cerebus, the story was in the middle of Petuniacon, a Comic-con-like convention to highlight the candidates for Prime Minister. The candidates running are Cerebus, Lord Julius, Elrod, and K'cor. Cerebus wants to be Prime Minister because Astoria wants him to be Prime Minister. At some point, his ambitions were hijacked by Astoria and I'm not sure when (if ever) he really regains control of his life. Once he's put on this course, he's too lazy or stubborn to change direction. It's possible he tries during Jaka's Story but once his life as a houseguest falls apart thanks to the Cirinists, he once again loses his free will as he feels compelled to destroy Cirin. He probably has a few more chances to do his own thing and go his own way but he's way too easily manipulated by other people, either directly or simply by their influence. Last issue he almost broke free from Astoria's grip when he attempted to murder Elrod but she stopped him because killing Elrod wouldn't be politically expedient. Although it would have been satisfying.

I think they would have been saying, "I say, I say, son, that white-skinned boy sure is leaking a lot of red stuff. Blood, that is."

Mr. Blakely drops by and patronizingly ushers Astoria out of the room. Not many people can tell Astoria what to do but Blakely makes sure she realizes that he could easily run for Prime Minister himself and then where would she be? Without a dank little aardvark to manipulate? Blakely, of course, thinks that he's manipulating events for the benefit of the Church of Tarim. He needs to find the right candidate to rally behind to either turn everything around (as the city is falling apart and the Church has self-exiled for the time being, seeing abhorrent prophecies everywhere) or become a patsy. Everybody Cerebus meets tends to think Cerebus is a patsy so, um, Blakely's probably headed in that direction. The only problem is that Cerebus is some kind of magickal, talismanic figure which fate and prophecy can't seem to touch.

Before they even begin to discuss whatever business Blakely wants to broach, Lord Julius walks through in a towel to borrow the bath. Cerebus takes it in stride. Blakely near pisses himself. Lord Julius does the thing where he confuses the fuck out of everybody around him, calls for a taxi in the middle of the Ambassador Suite, and then disappears. The taxi driver arrives moments later through the front door while The McGrew Brothers come in through the back. It's pure chaos because, again, Cerebus is some kind of magickal, talismanic figure which not only can fate and prophecy not seem to touch but which also sews chaos in his wake. Oh, and the taxi driver turns out to be The Moon Roach.

Kevitch is basically Khonshu.

We learned previously that Dirty Drew seems to be so super attractive that even Astoria tried to fuck him. That's why the voice in Moon Roach's head notices how hot he is.

After Elrod barges in to brag about replacing Cerebus as the Ranking Diplomatic Representative of Palnu (and Cerebus beats the shit out of him, proving he's a more capable warrior than Elrod) and The Regency Elf admits she wrote the graffiti about Cerebus peeing in the sink, Blakely's seen enough. He winds up agreeing to write a letter of recommendation for Cerebus as Prime Minister even though, after every person barged in, he thought he could use that as an excuse to not recommend Cerebus. But Cerebus reacted correctly each time, barely fazed by any of it.

The Ranking!
We're still early days in Cerebus's 300 issue run when it's still fun and chaotic and carefree. Sim's a master at these early days of his storytelling where most of the characters are mostly one note (and often caricatures of other characters or famous people). This allows him to play up how Cerebus is the only character with any real free will and, I imagine, it's what helped him move the story along. In any situation, Sim knows exactly how Lord Julius will act or Astoria or Elrod or The Roach. They're barely two-dimensional. They're punchlines with straight narratives. But it's how Cerebus reacts to each of them in every scene that builds Sim's story and keeps Sim guessing as to how he's going to continue. Sure, he's definitely plotted a lot of this out. He's a master notetaker who pretty much knows the beats of the story. But that's all built around how Cerebus will surprise him in any give situation as he comes up with every new plot point. Or how Judaism and Islam and Christianity would absolutely surprise Sim when his plans for the end of the series went from a parody reading of The Bible by a selfish, ignorant barbarian aardvark to Sim's own interpretation of Genesis (by way of misogyny and conservative beliefs). "Surprise!" said the religions of the Book, "You're penultimate story won't be funny anymore! It'll be a long, boring trudge of a read as you explain that there were two Gods in The Bible, one good male one and one evil female one! What a genius to be the only person in all of history to understand how the pronoun used for God was actually two different pronouns discussing two different gendered Gods! Not crazy at all!"

It's possible I've forgotten a lot of that penultimate run of Cerebus and I'm miscategorizing some of it. If that's so, I apologize to Dave. We'll see for sure whenever I get that far into the series again! But before then, lots and lots of great plots, genius characters, and loads of laughs! Especially when Oscar Wilde lays dying for ten issues! Ha ha ha! So good!

Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!

Electric Salsa (Baba baba) by Off (1986)
After some initial "Baba baba"s and a single line, this song begins with a simple Casio beat while a guy clears his throat, blows a load, and then takes a shit. Don't worry if that was your favorite part because he'll do it again later after the Casio horns and some rather tepid verses. I find it hard to criticize the lyrics as they're in English and singer slash DJ was German (Sven Väth). You can't (or at least, I can't!) shit all over a guy because the lyrics he wrote in a non-native language are simple and trite! I mean, I'm pretty sure English was Rebecca Black's native language and I never got on her case about the trite lyrics in "Friday"! I just listen to it and dance and sing along! Also this was released in 1986 which was practically the stone age for electronic dance music. So you probably have to forgive the simple Casio sounds and one note beats, right? Although Seth could have been a little more honest about his dance groove and named it "Electric Ketchup" instead of "Electric Salsa" because there ain't a bit of heat in this tune. At one point, he refers to himself as the Master of Salsa and I would have laughed out loud if I wasn't dancing so hard. Doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie bah bah!
Grade: B-.

Moron's Moron by Scratch Acid (1986)
A bassy intro leads into a song which sounds like it could have been the B-side off a single of "Black Dog Runs at Night" by Angelo Badalementi, David Lynch and the Thought Gang. For a band labeled as "noise rock", I was surprised to find less noise and more music. Sure, there's screaming and an intense bassy build up. But you don't say you play "noise rock" and then make me listen to actual music. What the fuck, man? If this is "noise rock" then isn't all music "noise rock"? Maybe I just don't understand the definition of the genre. Should I look it up? It could just mean "music in which you can't understand any of the lyrics except the word 'fucking'". Oh, check out this line from the definition of "noise rock" on the Wikipedia page: "The term 'noise rock' is a portmanteau of 'noise' and 'rock' music." Wow! I never would have fucking imagined! I'm so glad that's cleared up. Ultimately, I don't give a shit about pretentious portmanteaus masquerading as ever more specific names to describe a piece of music. What did Douglas Coupland call it in Generation X? "Musical Hairsplitting."
     Overall, for a band named Scratch Acid playing a genre specifying that it's at least half composed of "noise", this was pretty fucking good. If I could open a worm hole, I'd take a cassette of Scratch Acid and hurl it back to 1986 to hit dopey fourteen year old me in the face so maybe I'd discover at least some interesting music.
Grade: B+.

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #5 (October 1992)

Why is The Black Spider purple?

The Cover
Brian Stelfreeze's painted cover depicts the story of a man trying desperately to expose his secret identity. If you run around town as The Black Spider while wearing a purple outfit, the first question people are going to ask is, "What the fuck?" The first and a half question people are going to ask is, "Why would he call himself . . . oh! Of course." I guess in 1992, comic book writers were still using the trope of having Black heroes often use "Black" in their superhero name. Sometimes it's cool, I guess. I like Black Lightning sounds like some kind of dark fucking arts Satan shit might be taking place. And Black Panther's costume wasn't purple. And Black Luke Cage was probably what Iron Fist called him when discussing him with his white friends to distinguish him from their drug dealer during college, white Luke Cage. But this guy's entire body is covered in purple spandex and he still prepends "Black" to his name. Weird choice. Although we'll soon see that maybe it makes sense in context to this one issue story. We might be getting a 1992 story about race so buckle up, Babies of the 21st Century (not derogatory!).

The Story
Issue #5 opens on a tragic scene that causes Batman to experience emotion. See, 21st Century Babies, in 1992, Batman was still allowed to show actual emotions on his dumb rich face. Sure, this was after The Dark Knight Returns but before the concrete conception of Batman as a hard-ass mirror to the world fully broken by the violence of that world had completely hardened. Or maybe Norm Breyfogle should have been drawing way more Batman so people could have growing up without scoffing at the notion that even a Batman can cry.

Look at how sad and anxious he looks! My poor orphan baby!

Speaking of grown men crying, do you want to hear the last two times I fully broke down this week? Yeah? Okay! The first time was Sunday night at work while I was buffing the floor of one of the stores I clean. I've been listening to all of my albums in alphabetical order while at work and had come to Jesus Christ Superstar. When people are asked what movie they've seen the most, I often answer Heathers or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure because I believe musicals fall into a whole other category. But if I didn't think that, it would easily be Jesus Christ Superstar. I named my first cat as an adult and my best friend forever and my one true pairing and my soul mate and my familiar Judas because of that movie. Now, sure, that could be an easy reason to think that I broke down and cried. Because I was thinking about my beloved boy gone ten years now. But it wasn't. It was this line that hit me so hard because it rings so true as I've ventured into my fifties: "At first, I was inspired. Now, I'm sad and tired." Just that. Broke my fucking heart and I was snot crying (not hard sobbing but slow and unyielding tears coming) on security cameras while also still belting out some great lyrics!

The second time I broke down this week was at the end of Good Boy which, I know, I probably should not have watched being that my history of nearly dying of emotions after watching movies about animal characters began at the tender age of nine when I went to see Fox and the Hound (before that, at five, my heart broke from The Rescuers but that was about my huge first crush on Penny (and a quite confusing second "crush" on Miss Bianca. Confusing because I didn't know what sex was and because Miss Bianca was a mouse). But that wasn't exclusively about manipulating the audience with feels about animals). The movie Pig absolutely destroyed me. I can barely even talk about it without breaking into tears. It's happening right now, dammit! But a movie about a dog confused by the illness of his owner? And the way it ends? And the things that are said? And the way it ends on top of the way it ends? Come on! I was telling the Non-Certified Spouse about it the next day and crying about it and she was crying just hearing me tell her about it! At least it was, mostly, happy and sweet and sentimental tears.

I should point out that Batman isn't exactly crying hear. But he's yet to read the murder/suicide note left by his recent new friend, The Black Spider.

Sorry! Suicide novella.

Batman doesn't bother checking the bodies of the woman on the couch or the boy on the floor for signs of life because he's an expert on life and death. It's how he can so easily not kill anybody and also he doesn't want to leave any DNA for the Gotham Cops who hate him to find. The note explains that by the time Batman reads it, the people who destroyed this man's family will be dead. I say it's a suicide note because the implication is that he'll probably be dead too. He's going up against some dangerous criminals to get some kind of justice for what they've done. But Batman doesn't care about justice! I mean, he does care about it but he only cares about it if it's done his way which means no killing by non-law enforcement officers.

The Black Spider's suicide/murder novella narrates the story happening while Batman reads it. Or just before if The Black Spider's timeline is correct. Hopefully he timed it out so the criminals would be dead before Batman got to the line about everybody being dead by the time Batman reads it. Because Batman would surely not finish the note before rushing off to stop him at that point. Right? Wait. Is Batman still reading the note as the comic continues?!

Interesting. I learned all life is sacred by living in a community of, you know, living people. Who fucking needs Sunday School to teach that?!

One day at Sunday School was the entirety of my religious experience and I hated every fucking minute of it. I was five years old, just recently totally confused about the things I wanted to do to a posh cartoon mouse, and in Kansas with the entirety of my mother's side of the family (not a huge family: her parents, her brother and his wife, all their kids) to visit my aunt's family. It was the first time I saw finished basements with pool tables and recliners and carpeting (being from California where we don't need to hide from twisters). It was also the first time I was sent to church because, I don't know, that's what they fucking did on Sunday? At first I didn't care because I would just be hanging out with my cousin Jason who was just three months younger than me. But then, because those three months had caused us to be split up in the school system, they split us up at this Sunday School. I don't know if it was the biggest and most Satanic tantrum those Sunday School teachers ever saw but I tried my fucking best. I don't recall a lot of what happened but I'm pretty sure they just stuck me on a stool at the back of the classroom where I did my own thing through snot and tears.

Do all of my stories involve me sobbing? Um, yeah, probably. I think I've always resented having been forced to exist by my horny ass parents.

It never gets old, does it? Having the antagonist mirror Batman to show just how difficult it must have been for Batman to keep his shit together. Or as together as you can call shit that winds up making you wear spandex, take the name of an animal, spend every night beating the shit out of criminals, and spending all of your cash on crime fighting technology.

By this point, it's looking like The Black Spider's partner and child weren't directly killed by his friendly neighborhood drug dealers. They were killed by his addiction to heroin and bringing that addiction into his home. I'm not sure exactly how his son died yet but he probably sprinkled heroin onto his corn flakes instead of sugar. Fucking hell. That sounds delicious!

After The Black Spider kills a bunch of drug dealers, he begins interrogating the leader by shoving his face into piles of heroin. He's looking for the supplier so he can destroy the entire heroin trade in Gotham! But Batman, realizing he probably shouldn't read the entire novella of a note before trying to stop The Black Spider, arrives to, um, stop The Black Spider. I should probably put more thought behind the structure of my sentences. My writing would be much better if my editor hadn't quit after I asked her if my dick in a hot dog bun would be considered a sandwich.

Was "The Black Spider" a street term for heroin? If it was, that would be fucking cool! I'm going to pretend it was because unlike Ann Nocenti or Scott Lobdell, Alan Grant's a good writer.

Yes, that Syd and Nancy marquee shows up a lot. I said Grant's good not subtle. Also maybe Norm's behind that?

Do I need to italicize Syd and Nancy since it's a parody name of the actual film Sid and Nancy? I'd ask my editor but, well, I just explained that. Also is it a sandwich?

The Batman and The Black Spider spar for a bit, physically and verbally. The Black Spider must have recently read Infinite Jest because he makes a pretty good point about everybody being addicted to something in an effort to not feel the actual pain of existence. Maybe he doesn't put it quite like that but having read Infinite Jest and having nearly sobbed while describing to the Non-Certified Spouse the only shot in the movie, Infinite Jest, in the book was composed of, I tend to read a little too into comic book conversations about suicide, addiction, family, and our overall inability to fully communicate with anybody else. In other words, all the shit Hamlet is about. Which might seem obvious being that Foster called the fucking book Infinite Jest.

In a previous Shadow of the Bat review, I asked if Alan Grant got a credit on Knightfall. Well, now I'm wondering if he got a credit on Infinite Jest (published four years after this) too?

The Black Spider gets away by grappling a passing train with his Spider Grapple which Batman fails to grapple with his Bat Grapple because he's a few seconds too late. So being that there's a break in the action, we should get back to The Black Spider's suicide novella! He still needs to explain what happened to his partner and their son.

The note explains how, fucked up on heroin, The Black Spider accidentally kills his father when his father tries to intervene when The Black Spider robs a local store. He's convicted of murder and winds up in prison, leaving his partner alone after giving her just two things: a son and a heroin addiction. Ironically, those two things will eventually cancel each other out!

So I was right about two things: the kid does put smack on his cereal and Alan Grant isn't subtle at all.

I know I shouldn't blame the victim but that kid deserved to die if he was adding extra sugar to a cereal called Sugar Smackers.

Well, well, well. Maybe Alan Grant does have a subtle bone or two. It turns out that the story of Batman chasing after The Black Spider happened the night before Batman found the note. What a clever little comic book writer you are, Mr. Grant. I learned this because after The Black Spider gets away from Batman, he heads back to the apartment where his partner, Linda, has just shot up with the heroin stashed in the cereal box. He yells at her and shakes her and their son comes out and is all, "Mom! Dad! Why are you fighting?! Is it my fault? Should I eat less Heroin Smackers?!" And The Black Spider is all, "Don't cry, son! I'm going to end drugs soon! Then we'll be the happy family we never really were because the only thing that me and your mother have in common is our sweet, sweet love of dope!"

While The Black Spider deals with his family issues, The Batman tries to make sense of the poisoned verbal barb delivered by The Black Spider earlier that night.

Arguing with a murderous vigilante who's also an ex-dope addict is the closest Batman has ever come to therapy.

I should clarify that Linda is The Black Spider's ex-partner. He only recently came back into her life after getting out of jail and seeing she had a Black son at just the right age he was last able to perform before the smack turned his boners into floppers. Now he just wants to help her get off the heroin so she and his son can have a better life. But she doesn't want him back in her life and she doesn't want the heroin out of her life. I think their son just wants to eat cereal and not die from eating cereal. Too bad we can't always get what we want but sometimes we get what we need but did he need to die from eating heroin flakes? I don't know I might be rambling now.

"'Now!' he says," mutters the reader of the blog.

The drug dealers, upset with The Black Spider and knowing his secret identity (probably because of the whole purple costume/Black Spider name thing (and also maybe a little bit Batman shouting the guy's name along with this vigilante name whenever he confronts him)), decide to give Linda some pure grade powder that will 100% kill her. As a treat. Goddamn it. Why is saying "as a treat" so addictive? It must be due to all the pain I'm feeling from existence! Nobody has ever suffered like me! Or The Black Spider! Or Batman!

How can he even ask Batman this question? The man dresses up like a Bat and fights crime for a living! He's obviously been through some shit.

Linda tells The Black Spider to get out so he heads off to round up more guns to kill everybody at the heroin supply warehouse. While he's gone, the dealers give Linda her free heroin. She doses up and dies. Then Mikey puts it on his cereal and dies. Then The Black Spider comes back to apologize and figuratively dies when he finds them all dead. He spends the next few hours writing a novella for Batman to explain why he's going to murder all the drug dealers down at the local drug dealer warehouse. Batman's spent the last day and a half trying to rustle up Linda's address so he can find out why The Black Spider's back on the streets killing drug dealers again. By the time he figures it out, well, that's when we saw him coming through the window back on the first page.

The Black Spider's suicide/murder novella ends by telling Batman where he's gone. But The Black Spider only reveals it in the hopes that, if he can't stop them, Batman can. The problem is that Batman's a much quicker reader than The Black Spider realizes so Batman winds up at the warehouse just before The Black Spider's plan of blowing it all to shit takes place. So The Black Spider has to knock Batman out of a window to save his life before he and the drug dealers die as one. Batman climbs in the Batmoblie and goes home with a few things to think about. And every now and then, he does. Probably. Maybe not. He's really not that fucking into therapy.

The Ranking
Just another fantastic Batman story. Were Batman stories where the antagonist is a dark reflection of Batman as common a trope in 1992 as it seems it is today? Probably! It's not like that's just a staple of Batman comic books. Loads of fiction is just about looking at what small things happen to different people to drive them in completely different directions. Or how, as often happens in a Batman story, nearly identical things happen to two different people (one of them Bruce, one of them Hush or The Black Spider or that one guy I can't remember in The New 52 or any of the many characters I've never read but definitely exist) to show how Batman never allowed himself to fall into criminality or despair when he easily could have. I think most of the responses to those observations were, "Well he was a fucking kid of a wealthy fucking family who had a military-trained manservant to raise him. Of course he did better!" And that's why Hush was created. Probably. What do I know? I'm just a dumb little Internet guy! Just a wee baby smol fry who weeps at everything! You probably shouldn't listen to me at all!

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #4 (September 1992)

Fourth painting in a series depicting Batman jizzing in his pants.

The Cover
In previous reviews of this series, I mentioned how this fourth cover would be another picture of Batman ruining his bat-underwear with the bitterest of sex's many juices (unless Santorum can be considered a sex juice and then, well, um, I'm barfing now). But after really taking a close look at Batman's face in this picture, if he's being depicted in mid-orgasm by Brian Stelfreeze here then Batman has the most infected prostate in the fucking world. I don't believe I've ever made this painful a face in my life, certainly not while spooking a young lady by coming in her face too quickly while she thought she was just giving me a little oral to get me nice and hard for the actual sex. Also, if this face simply depicts a man doing a really strenuous activity like breaking some chains or digging a small hole, I'd have to admit I've never had occasion to make that face either. Hard work? Get the fuck out of here! I'm my momma's special baby boy! But enough arguing against my initial reaction to this cover since I've got the evidence that Batman actually has just unloaded a major bat-load in his jockeys: the cover is cut off just above where the growing bat-stain would be seeping into his outside underwear. Surely that's why the painting was bordered the way it is.

The Story So Far
Batman has been busy doing a reverse-Knightfall in this series except instead of Bane masterminding it, Zsasz has. Who is Zsasz? readers of 1992 asked and Christopher Nolan probably asked zero times because if he cared, he wouldn't have simply made him a henchman for some mob jerko. Well, he's a serial killer who also seems to be Jeremiah Arkham's life coach, therapist, and new bosom buddy. Or he's just a really manipulative mastermind and Arkham is really sweet and naïve and lonely. At the end of the last issue, Batman was about to battle every single one of his insane villains at one time. Being that most of his insane villains aren't martial artists or championship Mexican wrestlers (Bane doesn't exist yet), that battle should last all of four pages (and I'm only guessing four because there were so many of them. It'll take some time to show each one losing half of their teeth to Batman's fists).

The other story so far that most people won't even be wondering about is why it's taken me so long to review another comic book. I don't know! I'm old! I've got responsibilities! I'm trying to lose some weight and get back in shape during the worst possible fucking time: America's eat until you shit yourself and then eat some more holiday season! And other projects that I've been ignoring forever, like my Against the Day blog and Eee! Text Adventure Reviews Daily blog and doing other stupid bureaucratic chores that need to be done! Get off my fucking aching, old man back! Oh, also I have a needy cat whom I love. That takes up a lot of time!

The Story

In 1992, you were still allowed to allude to prison rape so I think the whole "humiliate him" and "pucker up" and possibly "bitten off" are all attempts at communicating the impending rape of The Batman.

I don't recognize the two characters who taunt Batman on that page. Do creators get royalties on characters if they just appear or do the characters have to speak? Is that the reason that some unrecognizable nobodies get the dialogue threatening sexual assault? Or is it simply that the Alan Grant wasn't allowed to saddle Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum with a legacy of trying to rape The Batman? Or The Riddler. "Riddle me this, Batman! What doesn't take two to Tango?!"

After reading that first page, I decided to take a quick break, discovered the Supergirl trailer had dropped, and subsequently came in my pants while making that same face as Batman on the cover. Five times. Because of this:

Please, please, please tell me Lobo and Supergirl fuck. And we see both of their asses during the consensually brutal sex scene.

Batman spends the next two pages defeating a room full of villains. But we don't get to see him knock out Poison Ivy with a sexy choke hold because that wouldn't be chivalrous, no matter how huge my erection would be seeing it. So three pages instead of four although the top third of page four shows Batman standing over all the unconscious bodies so I was pretty close.

After Batman's Tased by the guards and locked up in "special punishment" (which doesn't occur on-panel so we have no idea what the fuck that means. Is he sat in the uncomfortable chair? Tickled with feathers? Forced to eat too many Cinnabons?), Arkham heads back to whine at Zsasz about how Zsasz's stupid plan didn't work at all. Zsasz casually replies, "Yeah, idiot. Batman's a top-notch fighter and an athlete! All those other inmates are just fucking insane!" After that, Arkham gets angry at Zsasz and sends him back to his cell. I guess the iron lung he's been keeping him in was just to protect Jeremiah while he talks with him. I thought it was to make sure he doesn't escape. But now that Arkham doesn't want to speak to him anymore, Zsasz is just tossed back in the cell where he, apparently, can just come and go at will. Oh! That's probably why he killed the architect of this new asylum! They probably built a secret exit in his cell. That was the loose end he was taking care of! Although I still don't know why Zsasz killed Everard Mallitt. Or who even that person is!

The Special Punishment consists of being forced to speak with Jeremiah while his old man balls hang out of his bathrobe. And you can't avoid seeing them because you're chained to a wall in a straight jacket.

While Batman's forced to stare at Jeremiah's deflated sack, Zsasz escapes from his cell through a secret passage he paid the architect to build for him (the architect of the new asylum being a man plagued by a gambling addiction). Plus we learn that Everard Mallitt was the first inmate that the architect approached for a huge lump sum for easy outside access. He refused because he was too crazy to understand the architect was a real person and not a ghost. Zsasz had to kill him too because he wouldn't stop blathering about ghosts coming out of the walls, sobbing about their gambling debts, and asking for his PIN to his ATM.

Oops. I think we learn that later from the ongoing investigation. Zsasz just tries to escape again once Batman's in Special Punishment only to run into Nightwing in the sewers because Nightwing's scurrilous filth. Or a good detective, maybe?

I remember a time when I didn't know what the word "twink" meant.

Dick actually discovered the secret passages built into Arkham by the gambling addict architect whose name I refuse to look up even though it almost certainly contains less letters than "gambling addict architect" because Batman told Dick to research the two names out of hundreds they somehow decided to concentrate on in Jeremiah's office. By doing so, Nightwing discovers the secret plans with the secret escape tunnels for patients who could pay a hefty fee to use them. That's how he found Zsasz in the sewers.

Meanwhile, Batman escapes Special Punishment because he still has the lockpicks that he keeps in his belly and vomits up when needed. But he also realizes to escape Special Punishment, he has to make his way through a Microwave Hallway! "How can I possibly survive being microwaved for the amount of time it'll take me to crawl through this hallway without setting off any alarms?" Batman thinks before remembering all the fucking trash meals Tim Drake eats every day.

Batman turns himself into a Hot Pocket to survive!

I know! That's not the most logical way to survive being microwaved. Hot Pockets makes those little cardboard pouches to help the meal get crisp. But Batman realizes that if you turn the little cardboard Hot Pocket coffin inside out, it will reflect more of the heat than retain! I think. Maybe he doesn't actually make the Hot Pocket analogy and he's actually using real science that I was too dumb to understand. I was just giggling and yelling at the cat, "Look at Batman! He's a fucking Hot Pocket! Ah ha ha ha ha! What an idiot!"

He actually looks more like Ekuar's friend, Bag of Bones, from Elfquest.

Instead of winding up crispy and mouth-burning delicious, Batman simply emerges with sweaty balls and buttcrack. He manages to find the secret passage in Everard Mallitt's old cell and follows Zsasz into the sewers where he's kicking Nightwing's ass.

Batman and Nightwing barely survive a fight with this nobody with the cool name and cool gimmicks who doesn't make as big of a splash as I was assuming he would back in 1992.

Zsasz appeared in both Batman Begins and Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) as a fucking henchman for mob figures instead of as the great and terrible lone wolf monster he should have been. He's been wasted on the big screen and not really given his due, no matter how much you may have enjoyed Chris Messina portraying him. Of course, for me, Chris Messina's greatest work will always be the therapist in The Boogeyman. I know all of you Stephen King purists are screaming at me right now, "What are you talking about? The therapist was the Boogeyman!" And I just want to say, "Yeah but that was fucking stupid, wasn't it? That was the worst ending to a Stephen King story in the history of all of Stephen King's story endings which are all the worst. Somehow, the movie actually made the short story better! Not great, mind you. But I'll watch The Mindy Project's Danny Castellano in anything he wants to be in. Unfortunately, he has yet to do porn.

Jeremiah Arkham learns that everything he thought he knew in the last few weeks was absolutely fucking wrong when the cops and Gordon show up at his asylum and began telling him what's what. He kind of throws a little temper tantrum even if, while tantruming, he does get one thing right: Batman's fucking crazy.

Jeremiah Arkham loses his mind when Batman forces him stare deeply into Zsasz's eyes.

Earlier in the issue, Jeremiah Arkham explains to Batman that he "can see directly into the heart of madness!" What he means is that he can look at somebody and see exactly how crazy they are and what they need to help them get better, or to pull them out of their current mania, or, in most cases, simply break them using their psychosis as a cudgel. So when Batman forces Jeremiah to look into the eyes of a madman who cannot be broken, who knows nothing of repentance, who simply thrives on killing, Jeremiah's mind cracks. Batman knew what he was doing! He's a monster!

The story ends with Jeremiah, now insane, beginning a new journal of Arkham, probably even crazier than his Uncle Amadeus's journal which was full of time travel and sex stories between Amadeus and a raunchy cowboy with a mutilated face. But he'd burned that journal so people would have to wait until The New 52 to learn about those amazing stories!

The Ranking
A pretty fun and interesting Batman story that, for some reason, didn't guest star Lobo. But setting aside that flaw, this, in 1992, was what I wanted from a Batman title. I wanted Batman lore outside of the current, linear story arcs taking place in the other titles. I just wanted to read coherent stories of Batman with a clean plot and themes that had a definite beginning and nearly definite ending. Obviously I had an expectation of some kind of ambiguity at the end so that the story could have some kind of future impact on Batman's current stories. Here, Alan Grant creates a new piece of fiction in Gotham: a modern Arkham Asylum with a new owner, one just as mad as the occupants (with the added twist that Batman helped make him crazy). Thanks to this beginning, I continued to read this series until, um, Issue #9. That might not seem like a lot but if you've recently seen the cover of Shadow of the Bat #9, you might know why I stopped reading. Don't throw Tim Drake on the cover of my Batman comic book and expect me to thank you for it! Fuck that kid! Um, I mean, you know, not like that. Don't twist my words!

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #3 (August 1992)

The Cover
Last issue I mentioned that the painted covers of this issue and the next provide us with a glimpse of Batman's body language as he ejaculates in his bat shorts. I wish Brian Stelfreeze painted a variant cover for Issue #4 depicting Alfred scrubbing out the crusty gusset of Bruce's bat underwear. I suppose that's a cover which didn't previously exist up until this moment but now Dream of The Endless has to place it in my section of his Dream Library as he mutters, "Christ, another fuckin' sick piece of work by this bastard?" Sorry, Morpheus, but at least my section of dream books must be a pleasant stroll in a sunny park next to Neil Gaiman's.

The Story So Far
Supposably, Batman has killed a cop and been placed in Arkham Asylum without ever being read his rights, arrested for the crime, or given a trial. That's the second biggest clue that he didn't really kill a cop. The biggest clue is that all the police standing around when Batman killed the cop didn't immediately kill Batman too. Although I'm probably wrong about that because I'm sure nobody but Gordon, Batman, and the "dead" cop were in on the plan. That plan was to get Batman on the inside of Jeremiah's new and improved Arkham Asylum so he can investigate Zsasz and find out how he's escaping every night to murder people and pose them like happy families. Also, Nightwing's probably figured it out so he's off to help. Robin, on the the other hand, just sits at home and jerks it.

The Story
The issue begins with Nightwing breaking into Arkham through the ventilation ducts. He figures Batman's been framed because he knows Batman would never kill a cop, even accidentally. If Batman could kill accidentally, Dick reasons, the whole premise of the comic book would be shot. If accidental deaths could happen while Batman's beating the shit out of thugs, he'd have to stop beating the shit out of thugs. And then what red-blooded American kid is going to give two shits about Batman? The violence is the best part!

Dick (and the less astute readers) doesn't realize that Batman has set this whole thing up to catch Zsasz escaping the asylum. He's liable to ruin Batman's whole plan by not trusting him the way Robin trusts him. Unless Robin isn't trying to free Batman not because Batman told him not to but because Robin's a lazy fuck. Plus he's got the entire mansion to himself for a bit (ignoring Alfred, of course, which Tim does, constantly).

While crawling through the ducts, Nightwing runs into an old friend.

What year did Batman lose the ability to show emotion through his mask? It seems like he's had grim-face for at least two decades now.

Batman decides to let Nightwing tag along and help instead of yelling at him and telling him to bugger off and then Dick sticking around anyway. I mean that in a good way! It's so often the other way that this is refreshing. Batman's actually accepting help! Plus he explains everything to Dick immediately. By 1992, I probably was deep in my hatred of Dick Grayson thanks to his characterization by Marv Wolfman in The Titans so I completely missed this interaction between the Dynamic Duo. Bruce treats Dick with respect and like an equal here. I'm sure this wasn't the standard portrayal of these two even in 1992 though. This is probably all Alan Grant being a superb writer who understands how the relationship between these two should be. Or I really only read Wolfman's Nightwing during this time because why would I pick up any other books starring Dick Grayson if I thought he'd act the way Wolfman made him act?!

The two break into Jeremiah's office and begin digging through his files. Batman absolutely randomly stumbles upon a file for Everard Mallitt which seems interesting while Dick Grayson triggers an alarm while poking around Arkham's computer. Batman doesn't even yell at him! He just tells him to keep searching the file that set off the alarm, a file on the architect of the new asylum, Zolly Hiram.

Nothing the staff at insane asylums love better than beating the shit out of the inmates.

I just got to the point in my Against the Day: One Line at a Time Blog where Merle Rideout is breaking Ed Addle out of Newburgh where I said the same thing as in that caption. So I should probably throw this panel up on that entry too, right?!

Coincidentally (even if Batman says later, "It can't be a coincidence!"), the two random people that Nightwing and Batman focus on in their search of Arkham's files are murdered by Zsasz that same night. If Batman and Nightwing had any sort of reason or given the slightest nod at doing detective work to explain why they searched the files of and then decided to talk to the two people Zsasz ended up murdering, I might think it wasn't a coincidence. Obviously Zsasz is clearing up loose ends. But why did Batman and Nightwing focus on those two people?! I think Norm Breyfogle lost a few pages of Alan Grant's script, shrugged, and just left them out, substituting a few more pages to replace them during the Amygdala fight near the end of the story.

Oh yeah, so after Nightwing escapes in plain view of everybody so Jeremiah and his goons all know Nightwing had broken in and maybe they might report it to the police, he escapes to go tell Robin everything's okay. But Batman is captured and sent to the punishment cells. But that isn't enough, according to Zsasz who seems to be Jeremiah's therapist. Zsasz suggests he break Batman in front of the entire asylum and then they'll all worship Jeremiah for being the guy who broke the Bat! "Break the Bat?" Jeremiah thinks and then pre-remembers Knightfall! But since Bane doesn't quite exist yet, he decides to break Batman with Amygdala who is just Bane without the luchador mask. Also without the smarts.

Big dumb oaf never stood a chance.

But then Jeremiah remembers the first part of the plan in Knightfall: tire Batman out by making him fight all the other villains! Well, he fucked it up but maybe it would work backwards? Maybe once Batman's tired from fighting Bane, he'll get his back broken by Poison Ivy and The Joker and and The Riddler and Crazy Quilt and Tweedle Dee and the Mad Hatter and Doctor Destiny and Two-Face and Scarecrow and Tweedle Dum and all the other ones.

Even in 1992, I couldn't name all of these villains. I just didn't read enough Batman!

The Ranking
Isn't it fucking crazy that this is basically the Memento version of Knightfall? Instead of the inmates breaking out of Arkham, Batman breaks in. Instead of fighting all of his villains and then finally the big muscled oaf Bane, Batman fights the big muscled oaf Amygdala before having to fight all of his villains. Did Alan Grant get a co-writer credit on Knightfall? It's no wonder I remembered this series so fondly even if I didn't remember the details. I always loved a comic or cartoon where all the heroes or villains made an appearance. So Batman being forced to fight all of his nemeses at once? I'm sure my mother cleaned a few pairs of stiffened tighty whities that month!

Yes, my mother was still doing my laundry at 20! Maybe. I might have taken it over by then because I was beginning to have sexy time relations with women and it didn't feel right to have my mother seeing the underwear of her non-virgin son! Gross!

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!

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #1 (June 1992)

Batman has the kinkiest parties.

The Cover
The cover's an eye-catching, gorgeous painted cover by Brian Stelfreeze and if I just glanced at it, I'd have gone on with the rest of my life unhindered by the petty nitpicking beast that lurks in my head. Instead, I had to notice that the Arkham guards (who, we can all agree, all just look like various aspects of Multi-Man ganging up on Batman) are using their billy clubs incorrectly. Unless — and I'm not being charitable here as I think it's a distinct possibility thought through by Stelfreeze — gripping the batons by the wrong end indicates how the guards are treating the inmates violently and inhumanely by smashing them with the short, protruding handle. Also Batman looks like he's taking a difficult dump.

The Title
What was the implied theme of this series based on the title Shadows of the Bat? I'm making a barely-considered assumption that the titles of the various Batman comic books directed the kinds of stories that would be told in them. Legends of the Dark Knight told stories out of linear continuity and overall context, highlighting some unspecified moment in Batman's life. Detective Comics actually considered the World's Greatest Detective aspect of Batman's character. Batman was all-encompassing and played out in present time, according to continuity. Penthouse Forums told the tales of Bruce Wayne's sordid love life. But what was Shadow of the Bat meant to indicate? Were the stories in this series meant to be Gotham tales, highlighting other people, places, or aspects of Gotham under the surveillance of Batman? That's the best theory I have being that Alan Grant begins with a four part story about Jeremiah Arkham and his renovated, new and improved asylum.

The Story
Alan Grant chooses to begin this series with a story about the sorely needed renovation of Arkham Asylum and the secret origin of the renovator, the newest member of the Arkham clan to run the joint, Jeremiah Arkham.

Not just a major mistake but the one most often committed. Over and over and over again.

Alan Grant tells us Jeremiah Arkham began life as an unambitious slacker. High-five to all my fellow unambitious slackers for the representation we were getting in 1992! Although Jeremiah eventually causes a mentally unstable person to kill themselves when Jeremiah instinctively knows the right thing to say and after that, he's all, "I've found my calling! Hurting the mentally ill!" I'm disappointed that I've never accidentally encountered the thing which would reveal my true calling to me unless it was that time I saw that feral cat fucking a raccoon and I popped a boner. I guess I just didn't have the wherewithal to see how that could become a career. Or maybe I just needed a daft uncle running a brothel for feral cats full of raccoon prostitutes to have recently died so that I could take it over. Because that's what happened with Jeremiah. He discovered his ability to "help" the mentally ill while also having an uncle who ran an insane asylum. So of course he had to take over when his uncle Amadeus died.

Alan Grant couldn't have wounded me worse than Arkham's dialogue in that second panel if he'd come to my house and smashed me directly in the balls with a 3 wood.

Jeremiah tears down Arkham to start over completely. Being that Jeremiah's family name is Arkham, Grant may be smashing us in the face with metaphor here. Jeremiah's own past burns beneath his now out-of-control need for control. He rebrands himself, hides his own past, and comes out shiny, clean, and more secure than he's ever been in his life. He is the proverbial new man and he's ready to start swinging some massive dick.

Also, Grant might just be speaking literally because he has an interesting story idea. A modern asylum for a modern Gotham! Jeremiah doesn't knock down the haunted house façade to put up a modern building. No, he keeps the historical look of the place. He doesn't want the change to be obvious to onlookers or new inmates. He wants them to be lured in by Arkham's quaintness and familiarity. What Jeremiah is mainly concerned with is renovating the cells and the security and the violent guards. Along with that, he makes a major change to the way inmates are treated. No more keeping them locked up just to keep them away from society for as long as it takes The Joker to cause a mass break-out. Instead, he takes an individual approach to each inmate to give them the care, medication, and experimental treatments that will allow them to one day be re-integrated into society. In other words, he tortures the fuck out of them in various imaginative ways.

Interrupting a series of vignettes serving as examples of how Jeremiah has convinced himself he's helping the inmates while he's really just deriving pleasure from novel treatments he's come up with that scare the shit out of the inmates (a particular case to drive the point home: Jonathan Crane, the man who's usually on the other side of causing fear, now trembling in his boots at Jeremiah's care), a scene showcasing Tim Drake doing Batman's job of keeping the peace and Nightwing taking some time away from the Titans to help out.

"Just heard"? Just heard about what?! What is happening?! Where is Batman?! But more importantly: what's up with the ponytail?

For now, that's the end of the conversation. But it isn't long before the reader learns that Batman has somehow become an inmate in Arkham. Not Bruce Wayne! No, no. Batman! After a brief conversation between Jeremiah and the soon-to-be super-scary new antagonist Zsasz, Grant reveals Batman, in full costume, chained to a cell in the asylum. Jeremiah accuses him of murder but you have to wonder, "How does a vigilante go through arrest, trial, sentencing, and imprisonment without ever taking off the mask?" Something is dreadfully wrong here. When Batman declares there's been a mistake, the reader understands that Batman has somehow been framed and captured by Jeremiah and his staff alone. Once again (the again being Talbot's recent story (though that was published several months later in 1992 than this story)), Gotham finds Batman missing!

My memory of this story's details have long decomposed in the moist, dank recesses of my mind but I feel like maybe Batman was in Arkham to help Jeremiah test the security when he found himself a prisoner. Maybe Arkham had a guard killed during the training and testing so that he could give himself an excuse for incarcerating a person whom Jeremiah finds is no different than his other captors. I mean patients. Or perhaps Batman was captured, overwhelmed by a bunch of bald-headed inmates, while investigating the claims that Jeremiah has resorted to torturing the inmates. I suppose we'll discover those little secrets in the second issue.

This is a different kind of Gotham by Gaslight story.

Jeremiah saves his own life and the lives of his guards by not unmasking Batman. Obviously not because Batman would have to kill them but because Alan Grant would have to kill them to tie up the loose ends (again, see Bryan Talbot's "Mask" in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #39 and #40). Instead, Jeremiah hopes that once Batman has been cured of his antisocial behavior, he'll willingly drop the mask and walk out of Arkham a cured man. Hmm. Is it possible Alfred drugged Bruce and dragged him into Arkham for some therapy? He'd probably enjoy life much more if the little boy he's cared for for so long got some well-needed therapy.

The Ranking
Alan Grant lays out a sumptuous feast of story ideas in one of the better first issues of yet another Batman monthly. And I, currently re-reading Stephen King's Danse Macabre, sound like a total asshole with regards to my voice in the review of this comic. It's weird how fondly I remember this comic book (or at least this first story arc) and yet I only collected the first nine issues of this series that went for a 94 issues and seven years. Or is it? I'm constantly reminding myself that my younger self never really collected many Batman and Superman comics so I shouldn't be surprised that I'm quickly coming to an end of my Batman and Superman titles, titles I've concentrated on for the last few months. Unless I discover another one of my many short boxes full of old comics holds more Batman or Superman (I mean, the Death of Superman issue has to be somewhere with other Superman titles, right?), I'm nearly done with Supes and the Bat forever!