Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, Lex Luthor frames Senator Crabtree, Chairman of the Picking and Choosing Which Company Gets the Weapons Defense Contract Board, by pinning the prostitute murder from Issue #1 onto him. Batman is completely onto Luthor, so much so that he may as well have just planned and executed the framing himself. Gordon thinks Batman’s reasoning is flimsies, and since Batman himself was witnessed at the scene of the crime he’s going to do a lot more wriggling to get himself out of this than he has bargained for.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is searching for the notorious bat-like man and will succeed in his efforts by using one of his magic robotic Batman-sensing bats. It’s dumb as shit and I predict each issue left in the story will get progressively dumber.

I’m having a blast.

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [May, 2007]
Written by: Andy Diggle
“Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”

“Welcome to Area One, General. I trust you’ll find it fit for your purpose.” Lex shakes hands with a guy who will use Area One to rub one out to his anime porn collection.

Area One is full of robots as part of Luthor’s defense system. The General is in awe of how big the army of robots is, and how quickly Luthor was able to put it all together. Lex Luthor’s head looks like someone grafted a shoe to a neck.

The General starts talking about the robots like he’s the General of Robots while Luthor dips out to make a quick phone call. “Sir, you wanted to be informed the moment we lost contact with the infiltration unit,” says Luthor’s lackey on the other end. This sounds like bad news but it is, in fact, good news. This means that the Bat-tracking device is tracking the Bat! Luthor smiles, showing off his 400 teeth. Time to proceed with the plan! *pulls out box of anime porn*

In the Batcave, Batman is readying his Batjet. Alfred is requested to make himself useful for once and help Batman get ahead of Lex Luthor. They’ve been behind the 8-ball this whole time! Let’s get in front of the 8-ball! We’re talking 9-ball here. “Now that they’ve won the defense contract, LexCorp is supplying G.I. robots to every military base in the country.

Stupendous, sir. Maybe you should’ve been better at sucking dick than your bald counterpart. At any rate, Batman wants to try infiltrating Area One to, I don’t know, see what he’s up to or something? Meanwhile, Luthor’s robot Bat-tracking bat device, which is very conspicuous, is scurrying around the cave spying on the two. It plugs itself into a keypad and hits the “KILL” button! This is bad news!

Damnit, I was told it would be a bad idea to install that button on the keypad, but I wouldn’t listen! I wouldn’t listen!

Alfred and Batman hear a low rumble like someone had too much spicy chili for dinner. “ALFRED! MOVE” Batman shrieks, pushing his butler out of the way and bracing for the impact of a released missile. The missile hits the floor, making the tiniest explosion I’ve ever seen, harming nobody.

Back at the military base, Lex Luthor decides he wants to own the base and all the robots with it. I suppose this wasn’t actually a military base owned by the government, unless Lex Luthor owns the government, which very well may be the case. He presses four buttons on this clunky machine and overrides their command functions. They now answer only to Luthor. “Secure the site,” he smiles. “And give General Adams thirty seconds to run screaming from the perimeter gate. If he doesn’t make it in time, vaporize him.”

General Adams has a shadow cast over his face that makes him look like he has a rather impressively bushy Hitler mustache. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he blithers.

“What you should have done a long time ago, General. Taking a stand.”

General Adams runs screaming from the perimeter gate. Look at that little nerd go!

Am I to understand the the missile that blew up covered the Batcave with bat shit? “The floor of the Batcave is submerged beneath twenty feet of guano. Writhing maggots. Flesh-eating cockroaches. Dead bats. Unpleasant, but deep… deep enough to cushion a fall.” Ah, I see now. The missile blew a giant hole in the ground and Batman never realized that his Batcave toilets never actually transported all that feces to the sewer system. An unfortunate oversight on the planning and construction of the cave. Alfred is going to hang by his shriveled little testicles about this.

Batman removes his grappling hook from his Swanky Utility Belt and intendeds to hoist his guano-saturated bulk back out of the hole. The jet is still “looking for targets”, including Alfred, who begins sprinting away from it as it shoots bullets North by Northwest-style. He doesn’t make it out of the cave, and in fact ends up holding onto a broken ladder hovering over the floor. Somehow. Batman is chasing the jet down and somehow lands right on top of it, intending to override the controls. This whole scene is immensely dumb.

Sits. Shakes. Rolls over. Craps on the floor.

Batman eventually enters the jet and discovers that Luthor’s robot bat has plugged itself into the mainframe. He is terrified now that it’s going to do the same thing to the Batmobile, but Alfred emerges out of nowhere and steps on the fucker, crushing it beneath his shoe. “Filthy vermin,” he says, dusting off his hands like the badass that he is. Bruce Wayne’s got nothing on this pimp.

Captain Jimmy Gordon is stuck in traffic! The radio has no news of what’s going on, some announcement is taking up every channel. It’s Sex Luthor, and he rambles on and on about his plans for world domination. Here, let me cut out the important snippets of his monologue:

“Democracy isn’t working.”

“Our leaders have failed…”

“Monsters walk among us. Aliens and freaks.”

“We would never allow a rival nation to develop such catastrophic power.”

“Who are these people? Who do they answer to?”

“It is within ourselves that we will find the means of our salvation.”

“My G.I. robots have taken control of our army bases and missile silos.”

“Martial law has been declared.”

“My name is Lex Luthor.”

“My pants are filled with diarrhea.”

Here’s a shot of how worried Gordon looks:

Nice Bono sunglasses, sir.

Final Thoughts

Whatever, man. This Lex Luthor cat ain’t gonna get away with it. For someone so goddamned smart he sure doesn’t get away with anything.

Except my heart.