Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Shaman (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, a fiend is running around with a shaman bat mask shooting arrows at bitches. Batman gets one in the back and lives! Dr. Spurlock gets one in the back and dies!

Bruce visits the Alaskan village to try to get his bone on, only to discover the village hates his guts for funding Spurlock’s expedition, bringing Western bullshit to the little town, ruining the lady’s grandfather’s life, etc.

Then a car runs them off the road and they plunge into a lake. If this were real life, they’d all be killed instantly. But this isn’t real life, so Bruce is going to walk away without a scratch while No-Name Woman and her grandfather get killed. You can bet your butt.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [February, 1990]
Written by: Dennis O’Neil
“Shaman (Part 4)”

The cover art is getting more and more dire! The skeleton behind the man behind the mask behind the mask! Issue #5 is going to have just a neck stump with steam coming out of it at this rate.

We pick up EXACTLY where we left off! Well, not exactly. Where we left off, the car plunged into the water. Here, we see Bruce bailed from the car before it left the cliff! Clinging precariously onto a tree branch, he sees the car splash and decides that the woman and the old man must still be inside! No fucking shit, dude. Best detective in the room, right here.

Bruce sheds his coat and does a swan dive into the river. “For a moment, the chill is painful–” the narration describes. One of these days, some sucker in a work of fiction is going to dive into water sight unseen and break his neck. How often are these bodies of water deeper than three feet? Come on, now!

“–but almost instantly, the pain is gone.” Cool. Bruce has magic cold-blooded thermophysiology-changing powers now. Like a goddamn frog, he is.

So this white knight, he dives down to the car and rescues the woman first. “She may already be dead,” he thinks as he drags her body up to the bank of the river. No time to check now!

The Leaping Puma to the rescue!

Myself, I’d be content with saving only the one life. Good enough, call it a day! But no, Bruce needs to save both. How annoying.

So he leaps into the river and rescues this Bret Michaels-lookin’ floofy-haired headband-wearing shaman guy. The wind picks up, and their drenched bodies ain’t helping the staying-alive part of this whole adventure. Bruce retrieves his suitcase and accesses his Batman costume, where he keeps a butane lighter in his trusty utility belt! Good thinking, Mr. Wayne! Light them on fire!

No, not the victims! That won’t work, silly! So he looks around for giant rocks that might have some thickets dry enough to keep a flame going.

“The flame is tiny, frail. The cold is fierce. He must save the flame, nurture the flame–”

Be one with the flame. Caress the flame. Get inside the flame’s mind. Channel your own inner flamer.

Bruce notices the two of them shivering, which is a good sign. A good not-dead-yet sign. As good a sign as any. He grabs his apparently no longer shredded cape and plans to wrap both of them in it. The old man croaks out a request: “Tend to her.”

Why? Because the shaman, much like Bruce Wayne, has thermophysiological magic powers! So he’ll be ok, but the poor young woman. Yeesh. She’s got nothing going for her. Plus, she’s bleeding on top of catching hypothermia on top of having nothing going for her. She needs a doctor, stat! One of them real doctors, no offense sir. Bruce doesn’t mean to undermine your…you know, superstitious wacko ritualistic bullshit.

But desperate times call for desperate mystical powers. “Look, you once saved my life…” Bruce turns to the old drunk, “two years ago, when I was suffering from exposure…I had pneumonia…”

These are all true statements, very good! Unfortunately, the old man traded in his magic healing powers when he decided to dance for nickels in the town square. HOWEVER, sir, Brucey W., YOU know the healing story! Remember? He told it to you and then you blabbed about it first chance you got? Step up, bitch. And put on your mask.

Here, put that stupid thing on. That’ll help.

Bruce starts deflecting. He’s not a shaman, and that’s not a shaman mask! OK, well, close enough, right? It’s all snake oil, anyway, dummy. Put the mask on! Now’s not the time to be bashful, a lady is dying! Put it on!

…fine…

“And when the mask hides his face, he feels something surge–” What is it, his erection? No thanks.

This part’s pretty funny. He’s wearing the Batman mask and his ‘80s cable knit sweater trying to mumble his way through the Raven and Bat healing fable. He gets embarrassed and gives up, but the old man is like “no, look, see, she’s breathing better! Keep dancing the hokey-pokey.”
So he dances the hokey-pokey, and it works. That’s what it’s all about!

She hangs on long enough to find paramedics, they take her, everything is fine. Bruce does a lot of thinking. OR, maybe he does a lot of drinking. Sometimes they are one in the same.

Later, he visits her in the hospital. Need I remind everyone, we STILL do not know this woman’s name. Clearly no one thought it important enough for this reasonably important character to have a name. She’s got her head wrapped up in a large bandage. She has the cold, tired, dead eyes of Melania Trump, except with much more vibrancy!

I somehow survived having to look at that awful sweater.

Bruce starts grilling the poor woman. He wants to talk about two years ago, when her grandfather saved his life. There was another guy there too, right? Tom Woodley, the maniac who killed the best bounty hunter in town! The guy who was being bounty hunted in the first place! He survived his fall.

This is where Bruce rubs a couple of brain cells together and connects some dots. Dr. Madison Spurlock hired Woodley to help with some of the more…unseemly tasks. They had a falling out, but Woodley wanted revenge. He killed Spurlock and his assistant Mr. Fancypants Bennet Young.

With bows and arrows, mind you. Not a gun. That would be too hard to figure out! He stole those from Spurlock’s display.

“I’m not sure about the mask, though–” Bruce ponders. The woman confirms that Woodley, while insane, reveres the sacredness of said mask. He promised to return it. Which means, at some point, he’ll be returning to Otter Ridge. He’ll be killing two birds with one stone! And Bruce Wayne is one of those birds, because as the principal financier of the Spurlock adventure, he is also a likely target for Woodley! For some reason.

Time to go! He gives her one of those fatherly kisses on the forehead. For some reason.

Then he leaves. He cuts a check to the hospital to cover every medical expense incurred, and whatever’s left over can go to the hospital itself! That’s a lot of zeros on that check. Maybe start with better snacks in the vending machines.

At the local airport, Bruce telephones Alfred. It’s likely the middle of the night there. Alfred’s in his robe and slippies. Bruce will have “the information waiting for him” when he transfers in Anchorage. Meanwhile, there are still a few loose ends to tie up. Don’t wait up, Alfie!

Alfred hangs up the phone and heads back to his quarters. He discovers an open door on his way; an open door he was sure he had locked…

I’m not taking your money unless I earn it, sir, via very degrading sexual favors! Please? Hint hint.

Bruce spots his old man shaman buddy dancing like a dumbass in the middle of the terminal. He tries to give him money, and promises plenty more where that came from on a monthly basis, but the old man doesn’t want his dang pity! …but he WILL accept payment for another story that he’d like to land softly upon Bruce’s ears. *grabs cash*

“After Bat blew the sickness away from Raven, he collected it and blew it in the nest of Vulture. Vulture went away forever.”

That’s it! That’s the story? Know why? Because we can’t tell you a story with you blabbing to everyone, that’s why. So we’re giving you one of the short, dispensable stories we have lying around.

Shaman advises Bruce to “wear the mask” and “become the mask”. Like Jim Carrey. Also, find a way to blow the sickness into Vulture’s nest! It’s only fair. Vulture kind of sucks.

Later, Bruce is on his connecting flight riffling through Alfred’s collected records that all point to Santa Prisca as the Drug Capital of the Caribbean. But what’s really preoccupying him is getting rid of the Vulture. But what’s REALLY preoccupying him is the death of his parents! Perhaps that event was pivotal? What does everyone think about that?

Bruce calls home from the plane, and even his answering machine is snarky: “You have telephoned Wayne Manor. Kindly leave a message after you hear the ridiculous beep.” The RIDICULOUS beep! Alfred is even grumpy about an answering machine beep! Now there’s a man who misses his orgies.

Wayney is gonna stay downtown tonight, which is why he’s checking in with Alfred. He doesn’t want the little guy to worry. The Batman convention is in town and Bruce has got a costume ready!

Hey, sometimes you just need a break after spending a whole afternoon studying Winnie the Pooh.

As Batman, Bruce breaks into Tom Woodley’s house to do a little snoopy snooping. He grapples and tightropes his way to the top floor of the manor instead of, you know, going through the front door. That’s way less cool, I suppose.

In a giant room with a giant bookcase, he immediately discovers a tiny Winnie the Pooh book among the shelves and shelves of banking books. He pulls it, revealing a secret compartment, where he finds the secret exit to the bonus level. “If I ever use this gimmick, I’ll pick a better book,” Batman mutters, pretending to know how to read.

The secret compartment contains a gun, a bulletproof vest, a full Chubala Shaman costume complete with feathers and a large bird skull, a couple of Snickers bars, and a box of old pornography where the ladies have stretch marks and nicotine-stained teeth! Also, but really, a scrapbook with a press release that Bruce sent out after financing Spurlock’s expedition. “I think I just found my connection,” he thinks, not fully appreciating the convenience of finding literally everything he needed to find in one spot in a secret compartment in his assailant’s residence within two minutes.

So it all makes sense! Otter Ridge is where Woodley got the whole shaman idea in the first place. Then Woodley went to Santa Prisca to research the Chubala Shaman ritual so that he could profit off of it and kill people and sell drugs and eat Ritz Bits.

At this moment, Batman starts to hear voices. Either he forgot to take his atypical antipsychotic medication again, or the guards are hootin’ and hollerin’ in another room somewhere!

Lucky for Batman, he remembered to take his atypical antipsychotic medication.

Whoa, settle down there boys! You’re out of control!

Batman tries to get their attention by throwing shit around the room, but even the loudest of THUNKS is unheard by these arguing rent-a-cops! As a final gambit, Batman takes a Christmas tree and crashes it through a window! That’ll do it, sort of. They maybe heard something somewhere. They’re gonna go check it out.

“Oh, you caught me,” Batman says coyly, thinking he’s cute, when the two guards corner him in the study. He scares them both with some real TOUGH GUY ATTITUDE and the guards scurry away like frightened mice. Then Batman leaves! The sun is starting to come up.

I didn’t mention this yet, but there was a homely, middle-aged couple that was traipsing through the airport in Alaska while Bruce was talking to the old man, and we saw them again walking through the airport in Gotham while Bruce was leaving a message for Alfred. Had Bruce not been distracted, he would have noticed these two flapping their gums about “reporting something”. We see them now in their high-rise apartment building. Let’s check in on the conversation already in progress…

“BER-R-RNIE, I still think you shoulda reported it…”
“Shut up, Peaches. What’s this, you been buying stuff again? I told you, no more buying stuff– …a bat? You bought a dead bat?”
“I don’t think I bought it. Maybe it’s from your mother,” says Peaches, then notices Bernie has grabbed a note. “What’s it say, I don’t have my glasses.”
“’I know what you did in Alaska. I saw the license plate on your rental car and traced it. Give yourselves up.’”

The robust criminal masterminds you see before you have finally been taken down.

While Bernie and Peaches call the cops, the guards at Woodley’s manor speak to a private investigator about the “giant bat what terrorized us last night hyuk hyuk”. The P.I. is gonna check out the study…alone…so get the fuck out of here while he doesn’t something completely legal and not at all suspicious.

Among other things, the completely legal and not at all suspicious actions this P.I. takes are as follows: Access the secret compartment. Pour acid on the bulletproof vest. Replace the bullets in the gun with blanks. Attach a homing device to the costume. Sew non-lethal explosives to the costume. Sniff the costume.

The P.I., who looks like Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard by the way, leaves the study and reports back to the guards. He recommends a bunch of really expensive security gadgets, insults them without them even realizing it, and leaves.

HERE’S THE REVEAL! Mr. Bruce Wayne is a veritable Master of Disguise! Why, just two issues ago he was masquerading as a drunk homeless guy, and now he pulled off Martin Mull as a private investigator! Slick, man. Slick as the dickens.

Bruce telephones Alfred again to let him know that he’s heading home (and get dinner ready, he’s had a long day). For the second time, Alfred doesn’t pick up. Now that’s strange, Alfred is always picking up phones. He picks them up all day, left and right. There isn’t a phone around that Alfred won’t pick up. Something fishy is going on.

Well, it is Christmas Eve after all. Perhaps he’s churching it up. OR, maybe he’s dead from too many strange open doors that he thought he had locked? Either way, I’m sure he’s perfectly fine!

Whoops, no, he’s not fine at all! The Chubala Shaman has invaded the home and Alfred’s tied up and gagged and getting threatened with a knife as we speak! Merry Christmas!

Woodley is raving about stalking Bruce for a month. He’s seen him out of costume! He’s seen him in costume! And he wants revenge for getting bested in Issue #1. He almost got him at that construction site, but he plumb got away! Oh well, no matter, he’s dead soon. And you too, Butler Boy! Har har!

And there’s Bruce now, pulling up to the house!

“He comes through this door, I put a knife in him. I put it in his throat and watch him die.”

Final Thoughts

Oh no! That doesn’t sound very friendly at all! You better watch out, Woodley. Bruce is gonna spread the sickness to your Vulture’s nest.