Detective Comics #37

Batman in The Case That Makes Him Look Like A Fascist Fearmonger!

This cover could have gone another way. Instead of "chaos" for Anarky, it could have said "Freedom." And instead of "order" for Batman, it could have said "Subjugation." Or maybe a shorter word that would fit on the cover better. Like maybe "control!" Rules are for people full of fear. They desperately need to know that other people are being told to behave. They have faith that everybody in society will follow the rules because they're all too fearful of the punishment of breaking the rules. Civilization is just a tottering Jenga tower of frightened children agreeing not to move too quickly because any sudden movement might cause the tower to topple. The problem with a civilization based on hugely thick law books is that it's all just illusion which restricts freedom. As we've seen anytime a sports team wins the big game (or loses the big game), chaos reigns supreme. At any moment, enough people can decide to stop following the rules, and your precious rules will no longer be there to keep you safe. I guess that's where Batman comes in!

Except we don't get Batman! What we really need is less faith and trust in laws, and more faith and trust in each other. That, my friends, is anarchy. And it's a lot more honest than people behaving correctly because they're afraid of being punished. Of course, in an anarchic environment, you might suddenly be severely punished by your neighbor's shotgun because they don't like the way you were masturbating in their garden. But at least nobody is constrained by lawmakers! Anarchy is worth it just to see all the lawyers lose their jobs! Although with lawyers out of work in a society where anything goes, they'll probably just become more dangerous than plague-ridden vermin.

So it's kind of a few dozen birds in one hand and a few dozen birds in the bush situation. But I have an answer that will satisfy both the people with a need for laws and me. Let me make the rules! Then we can all be happy. Or at least I can be happy. And that's the whole point, right? Everybody just wants the kind of freedom that allows them to feel safe and secure and feel free and happy. That's why so many assholes are currently defending torture.

Let me, in an example of anarchy, completely ditch the previous topic to talk about torture. Here's the problem with most people's arguments for torture. Their argument amounts to "If torture saves lives then we should torture." The problem is that word "if" because torture does not save lives. Torture results in people not wanting to feel any more pain telling the people causing the pain whatever they want to hear to get them to stop the pain. It's the reason the police get so many false confessions. Because extended interviews filled with psychological games is torture. But then, all those jerks that want order need to feel safe, so they convince themselves that torturing people reveals truth. Plus have you seen how well it works in television and movies?! The bad guy always tells the truth! And is always the bad guy! Because why would the good guy torture somebody who isn't the bad guy? That's ridiculous! That would never happen! America is God's country! Obviously they're not good if they're revealing things the torturer expected them to reveal. Why would a good person make up lies under those conditions? Torture works! Case closed!

This issue begins with Anarky sentencing Lester to death by immolation and/or a sudden landing after a long fall out of Wayne Tower. Whichever happens first.

Here's another reason why people love rules: to exploit and manipulate the masses! The people who make and enforce the laws generally think they're above those same sets of laws. As we've seen, every day for years and not just recently, as police officers constantly avoid indictment no matter how awful their behavior or what terrible atrocities they commit while in uniform. What District Attorney is going to ruin their career by pursing an indictment against law enforcement agents that the District Attorney needs to work with every single day? Remember, masses, the rules are there only to keep you in line. And we follow them even when we know that the politicians and the rich and the people within law enforcement and the judiciary shrug them off on a daily basis. Laws are not meant to protect us by creating a rich tapestry of order. They are meant to corral us and keep us complacent.

I don't know how you're supposed to follow instructions that tell you not to follow instructions. I'm confused!

The Mad Hatter gets his face kicked in by The Batman for threatening homeless people with a knife. It's interesting that Batman can threaten people for information but The Mad Hatter isn't allowed? Maybe it's because The Mad Hatter has a history of actually making good on his threats of death while Batman has never killed anybody*.

*At least nobody has ever died from the injuries inflicted on them by Batman while Batman was still in the vicinity of the victim. If they died later, it was either their own fault for not seeking adequate medical care, or the doctor's fault for not providing adequate medical care, or just the perp's own fault for engaging in activities that The Batman frowned upon. But Batman has never, technically, killed a person.

My guess is that The Mad Hatter is slightly outclassed here.

Batman throws The Mad Hatter into the frozen bay to remind The Mad Hatter of their last encounter when The Batman almost walked away from The Mad Hatter as he drowned. And even though Batman threw The Mad Hatter in the water that time, is it really Batman's fault if The Mad Hatter never learned to swim while unconscious? I don't think so. The Batman finds floating in the bay, or just disturbed by The Mad Hatter's flailing so they rise up before sinking again, or maybe they were on the ice and are now sinking in the panel that looks like they're floating, or perhaps they're just full of air, skulls! A new mystery has been discovered! Time to take off his Bat-Boots and put on his Detective-Shoes!

But first Alfred convinces him to put on his Billionaire-Slippers!

The problem with writers that want to tell gritty, action-oriented Batman stories is they often forget this part of Batman. Batman doesn't work without this stuff.

Meanwhile Bullock is working a non-case that involves the anarchy symbol being spray painted all over Gotham. He also has a "World's Greatest Detective" mug which is a special kind of awesome. Yip is hanging out with him because she's not sure if she's his partner or his friend or his future romantic disaster. She'd better be careful, though. I bet Harvey Bullock has a huge refrigerator.

What's with all the pissing references? I think they're made for each other!

The call comes in about Lester's Icarus impression (the myth! Not the drug! Well, maybe both!) so Bullock and Yip head out to investigate. At the scene, they find Batman investigating as well! They also find a computer loading some kind of program that, if you believe Batman (which Harvey doesn't), will cause Wayne Tower to blow up. Batman is pretty nonchalant about the whole thing because fuck Wayne Enterprises and their new government overlords, right?!

Before everybody can be evacuated or Batman can shut down the computer program, the building blows up. Okay, so it doesn't completely blow up. Parts of it blow up so that Wayne Tower turns into a gigantic scarlet letter.

I'm pretty sure this is the biggest clue Batman has ever found!

Detective Comics #37 Rating: +1 Ranking. Even if Manapul and Buccellato weren't writing an interesting story, the comic book would be worth reading for their art alone. My favorite thing about the current run of Detective Comics is that Francis and Brian are making Detective Bullock a central character. He could practically be the "chaos" figure on the front cover! The dichotomy between Bullock and Batman is just as interesting as the comparisons of Batman with all of his villains.

Batman: The Dark Knight #20

Through the Looking Glass, bitch.

Last issue, Alfred Pennyworth was ecstatic to finally have some female company in the house without having to worry about accidentally blowing Bruce's secret super hero identity. That's because Bruce already blew it and told Natalya that he was Batman. Now The Mad Hatter is planning on kidnapping Natalya to use for his play, "The Day A Woman Seemed To Like Me But Was Just Being Nice." Also, Damian is still dead.

At the end of last issue, Batman was facing a river of corpses flowing out of the Gotham sewers. Now he and Jim Gordon have to figure out where they came from. I think Batman knows they're victims of The Mad Hatter because unless there has recently been a breakout at Arkham, he generally only has to deal with one madman's plot at a time.

It's about time they made this announcement! Even if they didn't know the exact way The Mad Hatter was distributing the hats, once Batman found out he was battling the Mad Hatter, they should have released the news to force your loved ones to stop wearing their stupid new hats twenty four hours a day.

Batman investigates the sewers and comes pretty close to finding the abandoned missile silo that The Mad Hatter is using as his base. But Alfred has to hack into some government files first which means Batman has a little downtime to contemplate his situation.

I guess the Bat Computer is doing all the hacking work since Alfred is busy giving Bat Therapy.

Meanwhile Natalya is busy being kidnapped. The Mad Hatter, parodying his literary self with the line "your hair wants growing," has thrown her in a cell to wait for her hair to grow out so that she'll look more like Alice. The Mad Hatter did not kidnap Natalya's dress with the Bat Tracer on it though, so Batman is going to have to wait until his Bat Computer is done hacking the government files to figure out where The Mad Hatter is keeping her. I bet the Court of Owls know about the abandoned missile silo! Batman is a terrible keeper of Gotham City.

After the Damian thing and now that Bruce seems to have found love with Natalya, he's actually beginning to think about a future where he gives up The Batman. He flies off to discuss it with Natalya. Too bad he's going to find her apartment filled with broken glass and her urine from when she was kidnapped. That might cause him to rethink the rethinking The Batman thing. It's just going to remind him that he can't get close to anybody ever. He'd probably ditch Alfred if Alfred would let him.

No, that's not true. Alfred is the only non-Nightwing person that Bruce can trust and confide in and doesn't have to really worry about because he can, mostly, take care of himself. He even dealt calmly with being The Joker's butler for a few days.

Back in Wonderland, The Mad Hatter figures out that Natalya isn't going to be a very convincing Alice when she scratches the shit out of his face. So it's time to find another lead actress. Well, almost time.

Doesn't he have a special Hypno-hat that would make her talk?

Batman shows up at the scene of Natalya's kidnapping where the police are already investigating. Batman ignored the Batsignal to head to Natalya's first. It turns out the Batsignal was to alert Batman to Natalya's disappearance. So now Jim Gordon has a few handy clues to figure out the identity of The Batman. You know, if he thinks about it for a few seconds. I'm pretty sure people know Bruce Wayne is dating Natalya the famous pianist.

As I supposed last issue to make any sense out of Batman seemingly acting stupid, his Bat Tracer he put on Natalya seems to have been a subdermal implant. Batman begins tracing her as Natalya is beaten by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in an effort to have her give up The Batman's identity.

Natalya's interrogation is happening on a helicopter and when The Mad Hatter finally realizes she either doesn't know or she's just not going to talk, he dumps her out. Once again, Batman is too late. How much more death can Alfred handle?

And thus Bruce Wayne never ever again thought about retiring The Batman.

Batman: The Dark Knight #20 Rating: +3 Ranking. This comic book needs to rise through the rankings faster than it has been, so I'm giving it a little boost. Since Gregg Hurwitz has taken over, it's become a great Batman title staking out it's own little corner of the Batman Universe. It really reminds me of Shadow of the Bat when that series first began.

Batman: The Dark Knight #18

Groovy.

Grunion Guy was supposed to finish up Chapter Three of his story, "Temperance Goes Down", but he couldn't make his deadline. Oh sure, he claims he finished! But do I have a copy of it? Fuck no.

Grunion Guy: "Did you realize Chapter Three was about Alice getting cock?"
Me: "I am not printing that story."
Grunion Guy: "Censorship! First Amendment! Freedom of Speech!"
Me: "You want freedom of speech? Fuck you."
Grunion Guy: "Wait, wait! This is my first paragraph: "The Gerbil's brother decided to tell a story because Alice had gotten so wet. But the duck just wanted to do it. And the Dildo was all about getting some cock."
Me: "Stop it. That's enough. I won't print your explicit Alice in Wonderland porn."
Grunion Guy: "It's not worse than that Alice in Wonderland comic book on the shelves at the comic book store where she's basically sitting on the Queen of Heart's face with her pendulous breasts sliding out the sides of her apron!"
Me: "Yeah? Well I don't publish that shit. Get out of here with your Alice porn. You're fired!"
Grunion Guy: "Oh yeah?! Well have you heard about the Second Amendment?!"
Me: "Is that a fucking threat?"
Grunion Guy: "Hunh? No, I was just wondering if the Second Amendment could help since you're shitting all over the First One that I think can help me somehow. Is the Second One about ghost writers?"
Me: "I don't have time for this. Turn in a less vulgar version of your story or get the hell out."
Grunion Guy: "What if Alice ends up on a floating city with a bunch of racists and crows?!"
Me: "Good day."

Anyway (fucking Grunion Guy), this issue begins with The Dark Knight investigating a night club run by Tweedle Dee and owned by The Mad Hatter's company, One Size, Inc. He tries to interrogate Tweedle Dee but Tweedle Dee has some truth to lay down on Bats.

It's like Gregg Hurwitz was birthed directly from my brain.

This is an excellent moment. I've bitched a number of times about how Batman beats people so severely that they can easily end up dying from their injuries and yet he still espouses a non-lethal ethic. It's easy to believe that he knows the limits of the kind of damage he can do to a person without actually killing the person because, well, he is the Goddamned Batman, after all. But you would think the amount of hit point damage he deals out on a nightly basis that somebody would eventually succumb to their wounds. I have a feeling that Batman feels fine about what he does as long as nobody dies on the scene. If they happen to expire in the hospital later, it's the fucking doctor's fault.

But no matter how nice this moment is with Tweedle Dee acting righteous, Batman's response is even better.

Batman's look in that first panel is classic. "Are you fucking kidding me? Is he havin' a laugh?"

Batman continues his investigation by swinging in through windows, booting people in the face, fracturing people's palates and sinus bones and orbital sockets, cracking skulls, and unhinging jaws. It's all very effective. Although I have to wonder who he's maiming since most of them are wearing hats which mean they're probably innocent bystanders being hatpnotically controlled. Batman's "investigation" turns up a robust tea trade. All the different kinds of teas give the Mad Hatter all kinds of different powers. That's exactly like The Virgin class in the Roller Playing Game, Places & Predators! Which must mean The Mad Hatter is a virgin!

Oh wait. That's not a big surprise. He's a tiny, snaggle-toothed, cross-eyed man. Although I'm sure he's not a virgin because of his looks! Nobody in this day and age would ever judge somebody by their looks! Everybody should be willing to fuck everybody while using all the correct pronouns and being as inoffensive as possible! I'm sure The Mad Hatter is a virgin because he's an angry, misanthropic asshole who constantly reblogs bigoted shit on Tumblr.

The Mad Hatter is currently checking out his tea distribution business and he must have been drinking from the tea that makes him super strong and super agile and unscented and super quiet and invisible because he gets the drop on Batman and cracks him over the head. The Mad Hatter gets away and Batman stumbles out to find Catwoman stealing the hubcaps off of the Batmobile.

If the other villains in Gotham learned that you could get away with anything as long as you have a fuck buddy history with Batman, this comic book is going to become X-Rated.

Batman drives off after The Mad Hatter missing a hubcap. Alfred is going to be pissed.

Meanwhile The Mad Hat[t]er's play is almost ready. They only need to cast the part of Alice and they'll be set to make all of Jervis Tetch's adolescent fantasies come true. I have a feeling Jervis's play is going to be more vulgar than Grunion Guy's story. Jervis also has a chance to reminisce. In a stunning twist, it turns out it could be an experimental drug that makes Jervis go crazy and not being bullied and brow-beaten by other children.

One pill makes you bigger; one pill makes you smaller. But the kind your doctor gives you turns you into a raving, homicidal lunatic.

Now, I don't know yet if he takes the pill or not. The side effects line up perfectly with the monster he becomes but it still could be his social life falling apart that puts him over the edge after he decides not to take it. Perhaps he'll decide not to take it, find that Alice won't dance with him at the dance, and then he'll rush home and eat all the pills at once. Or he might just take them and succumb to the side effects. I like that version because it's so tragic. His friends have all accepted him for who he is up until this point. He's the only one that can't accept himself. And in trying to change himself, he's going to turn into something that his friends won't like and he'll lose them that way. I hope that's what happens.

It looks like Gregg Hurwitz is going to give all of the crazy villains a sympathetic background. The reader can care more about them and understand why they've become the person they've become. But Batman doesn't give a shit about that kind of feel good garbage. His life was tragic and horrible as well and he didn't resort to killing and hurting other people. Oh wait. Yes he did! He just decided to hurt the kind of people the police don't mind getting hurt. But seriously, he decided to dedicate his life to justice and helping others. So Bats doesn't particularly care if these maniacs came from tragic backgrounds. He didn't let his tragedy turn him into a monster, so he understands they also had the choice not to become monsters. All Batman cares about is that choice they made. And once they make it, Batman can justify beating the living shit out of them!

Later at the dance, Jervis tries life without the pills, probably for the last time.

What a whore! Can't she see how much he likes her? Doesn't that mean she owes him a chance!? What is she going to do? Find somebody that likes her that she also likes? Ugh. How dare she! I mean, this is so tragic and sad!

Back in the present, Jervis pays a visit to Alice Kahla (née Dee). He finds her a sad, middle-aged woman with a bitter husband and a brood of children. But Jervis isn't big on reality.

I'm with The Mad Hatter. Fuck reality.

And then we get the Bruce Wayne mirroring Jervis Tetch's part of the story. Bruce apparently really loved Natalya the Penis. So like Jervis, he wants that love, that perfection back. But he doesn't simply want to relive the past. He wants to live in the present and change the future. I'm not sure if the next couple of pages are Bruce's fantasy or if Bruce is actually revealing his secret identity to Natalya to get her back. Also her name might not be Natalya.

Well, he does need a new Robin.

I really can't tell if Batman has just gone through with revealing his secret self to Natalya or he was fantasizing doing this as he looked at a photograph of her. I suspect he's really going through with it as she already hinted that she knew who he was just before they broke up. So Bruce kind of has to keep her close to him before she blabs his secret to every guy she gets close to. "You know, I was fucking The Batman!" I also think a grown ass woman would be a much more appropriate Robin than a young preadolescent boy. I also can't wait to see Catwoman's face when she first runs into the new Robin swinging about Gotham.

And then the issue ends with Jervis finally deciding whether or not to take his Testosterone Supplements.

Because The Batman's origin mirrors the bad guy's origin in The Dark Knight stories, this must mean Batman took steroids. I fucking knew it.

Batman: The Dark Knight #18 Rating: +2 Ranking. Gregg Hurwitz has come along and pulled a 540 on this title. A 180 wasn't enough to rid it of the David Finch writing stench that had been clinging to it for so long. So he had to spin it full around one extra time before turning it around and making it good. I also think The New 52 needed a Batman title like this. I want stories like this that sort of stand alone and aren't completely wrapped up in the current continuity. I'm sure they are but they lack any links or indicators that tie them directly to it. Notice The Dark Knight wasn't forced to do a Requiem issue? DC needs more comics that DON'T rely on the whole world building thing. Give me good stories with good characters. Surprise me. Make me feel something for the heroes and the villains! Hurwitz is doing these things. Thank you, Gregg Hurwitz!

Batman: The Dark Knight #17

I wonder if that hat makes Batman feel like a little, curious girl?

Grunion Guy has been bugging me all month to publish the next chapter in his story he assures me is a loving homage to Alice in Wonderland instead of just a sordid rewriting of it to titillate the more lascivious amongst my readers. I told him he'd better make it a lot fucking shorter than his last chapter if he wants me to keep publishing his story. I also warned him that this Mad Hatter story probably isn't going to last long enough for him to complete his chapter by chapter "homage" and that he'd better wrap it up quickly. I think he took some of my advice. Or he's already bored with this story since his books tend to only run one or two pages at most. Anyway, "enjoy".

Temperance Goes Down
Chapter Two
Pool Party!

I think the end of the last Chapter was where Temperance was suddenly real tall for some reason I can't remember having been a whole month ago. But anyway, she grew so tall that her boobs were as big as my head!

"Oh whatever shall I do?" Temperance sighed as she bumped her head into the ceiling. Also I think her clothes probably tore right off of her body and only her underwear didn't break because I think there is a limit to how much nudity you can show even in a Rated-R movie. You should also probably be reminded that Temperance was at least eighteen years old so it was okay to look at her in her underwear and sexualize her body. Unless this movie were being filmed in France or Canada and then I think she could probably be sixteen. But now she was too tall to get into the door so instead she kicked down the door to the garden with her giant foot!

"Here I come, Garden that was behind the door that I should have mentioned but might not have!" Instead of a garden behind the door, there was a Werewolf in a scary castle in a shower cap. The werewolf was wearing the shower cap, not the castle.

"Awww!" it screamed and dropped its white gloves and fan it was holding for some reason. And then it put a hip record on the turntable and turned on some rainbow lights.

"What a groovy party!" shouted Temperance over the noise as somebody served her a chocolate coin and some french fried onions. And then she remembered that eating things made her feel funny and she shrunk again! Plus she was drunk this time because of the rum in the chocolate coin. You see, it was French.

"I'm super small again! And I've fallen into the Werewolf's pool! But look, here comes a Gerbil! Hi Gerbil! Do you like cats?" Temperance was mean and stupid and really didn't know that a Gerbil was just a glorified gay mouse.

"Jerk!" screamed the Gerbil as it drowned from fear.

"Whoops! I guess I should get out of this pool since it is filled with animals all of a sudden and I might get Hepatitis C!" She remembered this from a film strip in school she saw last week. So she climbed out of the pool and into Chapter Three!

End of Chapter Two!

Um. So. The Goddamned Batman. Where were we?

The Mad Hatter's plan seems to be franchising his Hypnotic Hat Stands across Gotham and selling them right out in the open for every Batman to see. But seeing that Batman needed The Penguin's help to figure out The Mad Hatter was behind all of the kidnappings, it's likely Batman won't figure this out either. Currently The Mad Hatter has just sold a Hypno-hat to some jerk kid that pointed out all of The Mad Hatter's horribly wonky facial features.

Is it weird that this moment endeared me to The Mad Hatter?

And look at how much The Mad Hatter is enjoying making and watching that kid punch himself in the face?

Are we sure Batman is the hero and not The Mad Hatter?

Meanwhile in The Batcave, Batman is desperately searching for recent traces of Jervis Tetch (The Mad Hatter! Don't be upset that I pointed that out, nerds! I know you knew that! But there are some non-nerds that read these commentaries! (not to mention the super sexy and smart non-nerd that writes them!)). So the first page made me chuckle. And then Gregg Hurwitz nails some dialogue between Batman and Alfred.

See? One of the reasons Alfred is so enjoyable to read (and, I assume, to write!) is because he plays the part of us. He sees Batman's ridiculous aspects, his faults, and his foibles, and he gets to comment on them and say what the author knows the reader must be thinking. I believe The Joker called himself Batman's Jester in Death of the Family but he was wrong. Alfred is the court jester, and, at times, the Fool to Batman's King Lear.

Obviously the "bata-mining" term by Batman is fairly ridiculous, a term more apt to appear in the sixty's sitcom. Without Alfred commenting on it, the term would just grate and seem like a horrible Batpun. But Batman seems so obsessed at times that he doesn't even realize he's making horrible puns. I think Bruce Wayne is simply thinking of trademarking proprietary software with his copyrighted Bat names!

By page five, I have to wonder what the fuck Gregg Hurwitz is doing to The Dark Knight! This comic book is called the Dark Knight because it's supposed to be the grim and bloody and dark and scary version of Batman. Isn't it? Instead, Gregg Hurwitz has made me chuckle on four of the five pages so far. Stop making Batman funny, you idiot! What is he to you? A joke?!

Okay, so it's Jim that being funny here. I think Batman is still serious when he makes the boot comment!

I actually like my Batman comic books to have more humor in them. I don't know why people feel silliness should be relegated to The Batman Adventures and other "kid" comics. Adult comics aren't about sex and violence. They're about mature themes and profound and complex ideas. There is plenty of room for whimsy and humor in stories like those. So I appreciate any sense of levity that comes through in a Batman book. Maybe Gregg Hurwitz will turn this comic into the "funny Batman book"! I hope so!

Do I have to apologize for calling Hurwitz an idiot when it was so obviously done sarcastically and in fun? Is that question a good enough apology?

I imagine this joke has been done multiple times over the years but I really like the timing and the way Batman actually waits for Jim to acknowledge the end of the discussion before he takes his leave.

From the very beginning of Hurwitz run on The Dark Knight, it seemed apparent that he was going to be focusing strongly on the antagonist of each story. So he presented a lot of The Scarecrow's history through flashbacks to flesh out the experiences that drove him to be the insane creature he had become. I mentioned how that would really differentiate this title from the other Batman titles and justify its inclusion in The New 52. Thankfully, he's continuing that trend with The Mad Hatter.

This is a pleasant twist on the high school bully scene. But why are they his friends? None of them are wearing hats!

Jervis spends time with his father making and selling hats. Their store is called Tetch and Son Haberdashery which could cause some confusion for men looking for clothing and not just hats. Perhaps they should have went with "Hattery" or "Hat Barn" or "A Place to Buy Hats"? Tetch's father is teaching him how to make hats without using the mercurous nitrate so that he won't go crazy. Hmm. I guess he goes crazy for a different reason later! Probably a reason that has to do with that girl Alice he really likes. During this scene, Hurwitz takes a moment to teach Scott Lobdell how to write characters.

Wait, what?! You mean it's cheating to have Kid Flash and Solstice begin kissing while mentioning how close they've been getting since they met without actually ever have shown them interacting at all? Isn't their explanation good enough for readers?!

Jervis invites Alice to a new Wonderland theme park that's opened up. It's this memory of his time there with her that he's trying to recreate by building sets and kidnapping people that will fill all the roles. I imagine this trip to the theme park did not end as Jervis was hoping. Or perhaps it was perfect and he's restaging the entire thing so that he can manipulate the ending and Alice will fall in love with him.

Or perhaps, and I'm beginning to suspect most probably, Alice actually declined to go with him and he's finally staging the fantasy he's had of what that day could have been like so many years ago.

Later Batman stops some of The Mad Hatter's thugs from kidnapping a boy that was probably destined to play Jervis's role. Batman sticks a tracer on the thugs' van and lets them go. But when he follows the van to its location, he finds no trace of anyone because The Mad Hatter's operation is beneath hundreds of feet of reinforced concrete in an old abandoned missile silo. So Batman heads back to the Batcave to search through all of his Bata on the case while The Mad Hatter relaxes with a nice cup of hallucinogenic tea.

I would hang a print of this on my wall.

Batman: The Dark Knight #17 Rating: +3 Ranking. There is just so much to like about this issue, I've got to give it a bigger bump than I might normally simply to balance out the bad taste of the early Finch months. Remember when Venomized Deathstroke dropped out of the sky to land on the Batplane? What the fuck was that about? And when Two-Face declared himself "One-Face"? Ugh. This comic book was so incredibly awful early on. Gregg Hurwitz has actually developed it into a worthy Batman title.

Batman: The Dark Knight #8

I asked in another commentary why Batman has so many Wonderland foes. And now we get to see them all together! Maybe Finch and Harris will "make up" some new ones. I put make up in quotes because I really meant steal or plagiarize or borrow without asking.

This is my last issue of the New 52 until I'm technically caught up. Technically because it's currently May 31st and the only comics left in the stack came out in this May! Technically because that means I still have 50 regular issues and 2 Annuals left to read (I'm actually caught up on Batwing and Justice League International. This probably means I'll rush through the commentary on this one. Except it's about Wonderland, one of my favorite places, so maybe that won't happen.

First off, the cover gives credit to David Finch and Richard Friend. But that's all they did was the cover. The interior pencils are by Ed Benes and the inks by Rob Hunter and Jack Purcell. Just one of many editorial fuck ups on DC's part.

Commissioner Gordon calls Batman to take a look at a crime scene before the regular police get their hands on it. It's in the subway and dozens of corpses litter the platform and the train. And they all apparently killed each other and/or themselves.

Gordon continues to be hassled by Forbes, the idiot in Internal Affairs. Forbes has gone to the mayor and requested that Gordon undergo a psychological evaluation and Mayor Hady agreed. Gordon is a little bit pissed about it.

So the two parts of the story are tying together neatly with the title of this issue, "The Madness."
The Gotham subway is full of old closed-off tunnels which Batman has decided to investigate. The first foes he encounters are Tweddle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum prepare to have a battle.

Batman has entered Wonderland and they're all mad down there. Although, technically, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum roam the lands behind the looking glass. The Tweedles are acting loonier than usual so Batman decides they're under some for of mind control just like the passengers of the subway. Alfred, who is in radio contact with Batman, fears what this might mean for the rest of Gotham. And no sooner does he voice his fear, then he sees evidence on television that other people are being affected by the Madness.

Wouldn't Batman be investigating the subway much later than a press conference would be scheduled? This timing seems fishy and contrived!

And across Gotham, Gordon has already been scheduled to visit the shrink. Now that's really really convenient! Really!

Batman chases Dum and Dee back to their headquarters where he encounters the next Wonderland resident.

Who else when Mind Control and Wonderland are involved? And the cover highlights his participation.

The Mad Hatter has the Tweedle boys positioning a radio transmission dish over Gotham. The Hatter is spreading his madness and Batman, well, Batman stops it. With a little help from Gordon who arrives in a helicopter in time to distract the Mad Hatter. Yeah, he does it that easily. Just, you know, stops the Mad Hatter.

And that's the whole story! A story just to showcase more Wonderland villains because the White Rabbit has been running around Gotham for the last 8 issues. It also, sort of, compares Gotham to Wonderland. Are the people of Gotham prone to violence, crime, and madness simply because they live in Gotham? Were the residents of Wonderland mad because of the influence of Wonderland? Or is the madness already there in the heads and hearts of the people, just waiting for something like The Mad Hatter to tip them past the breaking point.

Who cares? The Mad Hatter is a big jerk that caused a bunch of people to kill themselves and then Batman knocked him off of a building. Batman seems awfully careless with the lives of villains in these Dark Knight stories. Is that why they're Dark Knight stories? Is he supposed to be a bit more ruthless in these than in the others? This story was also just filler until the Night of Owls story in Issue #9.

Batman: The Dark Knight #8 Rating: No change. So this is the comic where the creators pull an emotion or a state of being out of a hat and then write a story based on that?

"Fear!" "Oh! Oh! I can fill seven fucking issues on that! Easy!
"Madness!" "Oh! Wonderland characters! One issue story!
"Impotence!" Yes! More White Rabbit cameos! Four issues!