Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #578 – “Chapter Four: …So Shall Ye Reap…l”! In the previous installment, Batman joins forces with Joe Chill, the man who killed his parents, in order to stop The Reaper, a man who is barely doing anything and just minding his own business killing cops and being an all around good Samaritan. Leave the guy alone.

Batman struggles internally with his decision to work with the murder guy, but I barely care about that. Honestly, if it bothers Batman so much then he should just “accidentally” push him off a fucking bridge. Oops! And he still keeps his moral compass pointed north. Then we’re all happy.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #578 [September, 1987]
Written by: Mike W. Barr
“Chapter Four: …So Shall Ye Reap…”

Joey Chill has disappointed his boss yet again! Not only has The Reaper escaped unharmed, very much the opposite of the intention, but they lost a shipment of drugs too!

Chill seems to be panicking internally. His best diversion tactic is something along the lines of “but now I know how The Reaper and The Batman operate, so I can be two steps ahead of them!” So Chill’s boss, Mr. Morritz, finds this suitable enough without needing to stab his throat 47 times. And then a couple stabs in the eyeballs for good measure.

So kill both The Reaper and The Batman and we won’t fit your ass with a pair of cement jeans. You have until Friday, which is also Pizza Hut night. Don’t forget.

Meanwhile, The Reaper accosts a garishly-dressed George R. R. Martin guy in the alley and plucks the glasses right off his fat face. Fucking police informers. What good are they? So here’s a deal, random sir on the street: “You will tell the police that a council of organized crime will meet Friday at the Brayshaw warehouse. You will not tell them the information came from me.”

The Reaper cracks the dude’s glasses and goes on his merry way. George R. R. Martin starts crying in the alley, basically. He’s got an armful of books, too. He’s just like Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone! That’s a good reference for the kids.

Elsewhere, Bruce Wayne gets ready for another dinner date with nun-turned-whore Rachel Caspian. Dr. Leslie has resigned to the fact that Bruce’s charms are transcendent enough to melt the panties off a bride of Christ, but we can leave all that to our imaginations. Alfred is caught unawares that Bruce is going out since he made TV dinners for two. He still has an awful Hitler mustache. Alfred still fucks, though.

Bruce takes Rachel out to a Chinese restaurant where an awful racist caricature of a man offers them fortune cookies. Rachel cracks one open and finds a very expensive diamond ring! All like “will you marry me” and all like “ok”.

Delicious!

Now that such an unpleasant display of human affection is behind us forever, we can turn to Gritty Jim Gordon and his craggy, shitty face. He and a lieutenant are staking out an alley waiting for the go-ahead to bust open the warehouse and apprehend some motherfuckers. And, of course, the motherfuckers hear the rumpus and start panicking. Then other cops show up as backup. Then a few get scythed by the lurking Reaperman, who enters the warehouse and scythes Mr. Morritz! He’s all bloody and gross now. It’s a sight to behold, unless you’re squeamish about that kind of thing.

Gordon’s like “I KNEW THE REAPER WAS INVOLVED” and he yells this at no one in particular.

Then Batman shows up and it’s chaos all over again. Our hero decides to bash a couple of cops’ heads together, then proceeds to run over a couple more with a stolen police van. ACAB indeed, sir.

Then Batman tries to plow into The Reaper, but I don’t think he hits him as there are plentiful panels of poorly-drawn explosions and other bullshit to wade through here. Lots of WHUNKTs and WAH-WHOOMs as sound effects. There’s even a CROOOM!

By now the warehouse has been set on fire ten times over, and Gordon’s team has to yell at him to run away because he’s still frantically looking for his targets. Luckily, later, they corner one of the Mob Boss-type guys to get more information on Mr. Batman. And he was only working with the mob until he got the Reaper, who may or may not be dead now I guess. Hard to say.

You’ve gone on, like, two dates. Try boning a little bit more.

At any rate, Gordon now trusts him enough to send up the Batsignal. He wants to have a cordial chat with the cowled man. Meanwhile, Bruce shows up at Rachel’s door to whine and moan a little bit about not being the man that she thinks he is. He has to do something that he may regret and that Rachel may find shameful, but he promises he’ll hide the magazines and video tapes when he’s done.

Ignoring the Batsignal for now, because Commissioner Gordon doesn’t have, like, a family or anything to go home to, Batman traipses his way over to Joe Chill’s decrepit living quarters and sticks a gun right against the sleeping man’s temple. Then Chill stirs and wakes up. “You were knocked unconscious by the explosion,” Batman explains. “I brought you here – a hideout of mine.”

Batman has many hideouts! As many as he has orifices, and those can also be considered hideouts! Mr. Morritz is dead. The Reaper is dead. It’s just you and me now, buttercup. There’s talks to be had.

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna give me a hard time. They wanted me to ice you, yeah, but there’s no point now,” explains Chill as he whips out his own gun. “What say we shake hands and call it quits?”

No, we’re not calling it quits, Broseph. Batman leads him to the dingy, dark, graffiti-laden alleyway. “Don’t you recognize it?” Batman asks as Chill wonders what the fuck is going on. “You’ve been here, Chill. It was twenty years ago…” Batman frowns and looks constipated.

“You tried to take a necklace from a woman. Her husband tried to stop you… and you killed them.” And when asked how Bats knows this, Batman rips off his face revealing his other face. “…Because I’m their son!”

Titillating! My nips are hard just reading through this suspense!

Does “bukkake-style” mean anything to you?

Batman goes nuts and punching and pistol whipping this stupid butthole. Chill dares him to follow through. Shoot him now, pussy. He doesn’t think Batman has the guts.

Batman presses the barrel right up against Chill’s forehead. Then his head gets blown to festival of blood, guts, gore, piss, and cum.

…but it ain’t Batman who pulled the trigger. The Fucking Reaper stands there with a smoking gun. Holy Jesus, sir, he now knows Batman’s unmasked visage. The handsome, chiseled face! “Now your secret is mine!” The Reaper jubilates. He invites Batman to finish this fight at the foundation Bruce is building in memory of his father, opposite the hot dog cart.

The fighting happens and it’s very glorious and *checks watch* exciting. It’s kind of funny seeing Batman just go apeshit with a gun, though. He keeps trying to pop The Reaper with no success since he keeps dodging the bullets like he’s fucking Neo. Batman backs The Reaper to edge of a steel beam, where he tumbles and loses his skull face head thing, revealing his very Caspian-like secret identity.

Caspian goes “ha ha it was me all along!” before deciding to voluntarily plummet off the building to his death. All like “Batman, you have proven yourself to be a worthy successor of mine in Gotham’s vigilante business!” *splat*

About fourteen seconds later the press swarms outside Rachel’s house. This is probably how she learns her father is dead, the vultures are shrieking stuff like “YOUR DAD IS DEAD LMAO”. Bruce shoves his way past the crowd and into the house. He uses this is a great opportunity to bring up one of those “let’s leave together forever” ideas that don’t ever work out, but she isn’t having it.

Child sex trafficking isn’t that much of a crime, dear. Matt Gaetz gets away with it all the time!

Apparently, it’s Nun Time for Rachel again since her father was a such a poopypants Crime Man. Bruce walks away dejected and toward the other 35,000 women who want to fuck him.

EPILOGUE! Bruce shows Dr. Leslie Thompkins her first floor office. Just the way she wanted it!

Batman later swings around in the sky, eagerly anticipating his next great adventure!

Final Thoughts

This was just OK. It’s nice to see some actual blood in a DC comic; some real late ‘80s grit. Nowadays Batman uses a water-squirting boutonniere to catch the bad guy. How times have changed.