Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6 – “Chapter Six: St. Patrick’s Day”! In the previous installment, Batman and Catwoman spend some time together and then they spend some time together out of costume and neither knows each other’s secret identities, which is insane to me.

A car full of Falcone’s men get killed! Not the car. The car doesn’t get killed, but the men do. Chalk another up for Holiday! He is someone to admire, that’s for certain.

Bruce Wayne gets seduced by Poison Ivy, who all but spreads her legs and wraps them around his butt in the universal gesture of courtship.

Anything else? Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent weren’t able to question Bruce Wayne yet about his Falcone connection, but I’m sure we’ll also not get that at all in this issue either!

OK, that’s enough.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6 [May, 1997]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter Six: St. Patrick’s Day”

A guard turns the key in a locked cell. “Step away from the door” he says to a pair of eyeballs in the dark. Early parole for this lucky so-and-so at Gotham Penitentiary. She – yes, a woman! Women can be criminals too, as it turns out! — returns to Carmine Falcone’s office. “I’ve missed you, Poppa,” she says. “You have been away too long, my daughter. The family needs you now. I need you,” says Carmine.

Yeah, this broad is gonna be dead in about six pages.

Bruce Wayne, now the Gotham City Bank President, has to sit in on his monthly BORED MEETING, get it? He speaks, but it’s like someone else is talking. In short, the bank and Falcone Imports should do business together. He’s given the go-ahead of a $350,000,000 wire transfer right to Falcone’s bulging pockets. The other board members are thrilled, but what’s with the change of heart??

…

Bruce Wayne leaves through the elevator in a haze. Here’s his change of heart: Poison Ivy’s scratchy, itchy pussy has gotten to his brain! As Bruce leaves the bank, Selina “Scratchy Itchy” Kyle tries to get his attention with no success. When Bruce opens his car door, Selina notices that’s filled with… gasp… ivy.

Back at the precinct, Gordon and Dent pore over their case. Bodies are piling up, and Dent is excited that the mafia families are killing each other. Makes less work for them! Gordon disagrees because he’s a “good cop” (there’s no such thing).

The Jackson Pollock painting here is right! You stink, Dent!

“What do you want to do about Bruce Wayne?” Dent asks. “With what we suspect about the connection to the Roman, we could hurt them.”

Jim Gordon talks about Chicago instead for a minute, the parade downtown and turning the river green for St. Patrick’s Day. That actually happens, they dump gallons of dye into the river every year. Isn’t that fucked up?

This St. Patrick’s Day ain’t green, though, Dent. It’s red. Blood red. Holiday is gonna strike again and they’re no closer to figuring out who it is than they were five months ago, gawddurnit. So, I guess Gordon’s point is to stop focusing on Bruce Wayne and focus on Salvatore Maroni. That guy is the cheese today.

Whatshisface is eavesdropping outside the office. Vernon the Nerd. The assistant, the one in Maroni’s pocket. He’s going to get a meat hook in his butthole Action Jackson-style if he keeps this up.

Elsewhere, Carmine’s sister Carla is shooting her gun for fun into a piece of paper with a target on it. It looks like she’s in her kitchen. Carmine’s daughter, Sofia, pays her a visit. They hug. Drat that Carmine, he never said anything about getting busted out of da joint! Give your auntie a kiss now, sugar.

Carla shows Sofia the gun that killed Alberto. She “forgot” to give the evidence to the police. It’s the same gun that was used to kill her son, Johnny. “I’m going to use this gun, Sofia. I’m going to get this cafone ‘Holiday’.”

Sofia is about seventeen feet taller than her aunt. She tells her that their going to hit Maroni on St. Patrick’s Day. “Poppa believes that Maroni either is Holiday or knows who it is.” And on top of that, money is flowing from the bank. All is good in the Falcone family right now! Except all the sudden murders, that is, I guess.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is having a lovely dinner in his manor with his sweetie.

My sensitive ivy is all a-flutter!

Things go well until Catwoman trespasses and breaks and enters and runs along the table and starts trying to beat up Poison Ivy. “You’re like a weed that’s come into someone else’s yard,” Catwoman says, kicking Ivy’s face. “A weed that needs to be torn out by the roots!”

Bruce grabs her neck and tells to stop. Catwoman, instinctively, lets out a “MRROW!” And then she starts trying to rip Bruce to shreds with her cat claws, and his chest bursts open to reveal all this fucking ivy. Then he collapses. And Poison Ivy has disappeared.

At 5:02am, a whole bunch of people get shot and then a chandelier falls and people die. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

That morning, when reasonable people are awake, Sofia and her driver approach Maroni’s house only to find it already broken into. “Someone beat us to the punch,” she says. “This changes things.”

That night, Catwoman is playing with the Batsignal and summons Batman to the roof. He tells her to knock it the fuck off before he gets the spray bottle.

HE’S IDENTICAL FROM THE NOSE TO THE CHIN! FIGURE IT OUT, ALREADY!

“Why? Why do you help?” Batman asks her.

“In time. You’ll see.” Catwoman flips away.

“I… am no longer in the green,” Batman thinks. “Poison Ivy is no longer in my system. But, her spell made me do… things that will have to be repaired. The bank. My reputation. I… owe Catwoman much…”

We end with Mr. Carmine Falcone pushing a stack of money over to Poison Ivy on the other side of his desk. “If it hadn’t been for Catwoman’s unexpected interference… think of how much more we could have accomplished,” she says.

“Miss Ivy. If there’s one thing I learned in business… it’s to expect the unexpected.”

Final Thoughts

WELL THAT SETTLES THAT. I’d bone Poison Ivy, probably. Dude should’ve stayed addled.