Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #7 – “The Talons Strike!”! In the previous storyline… you know what? I don’t remember anything about it anymore. After all, it was only the very first fucking DC story I’ve ever read! So forget about it for now. I’m finally getting to the Night of the Owls event! And not four years too late!

So, enjoy the ride that will assuredly take years due to all the tie-ins I don’t really want to deal with right now. Nightwing Vol. 3? Red Hood and the Outlaws? Bleeeeccccch. Someone jam a stick up my peehole.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #7 [May, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“The Talons Strike!”

“Some ancients believed that the moment of death brought with it visions. Not just visions of one’s past, or of things known to the dying… but visions of one’s self as one truly existed in life…”

The pages are dolloped with this narration while we see a flashback of Bruce Wayne deciding that he will become that Bat that we oh-so know and “love”. As you recall, he was sitting in a lavish chair in his dad’s lavish study when a fucking diseased flying rat crashed through one of the windows. Bruce didn’t even miss a beat during his jerkoff session.

Some strong symbolism happens: the wounded bat flies away and gets grabbed in the talons of a healthy owl! Write that one down, it’s assuredly going to come up later.

“They believed, the ancients, that these final visions often went beyond what was known to the dying man in life… that they constituted secret truths about his life, revealed.”

The owl eviscerates the bat and eats it’s delicious, delicious innards.

“Some truths were comforting. Some were heart-shattering.”

The owl stares out of the page with its scary ink-on-paper yellow and black eyes!

“Either way, these visions were meant to offer a sense of closure so that he may leave the world in peace, knowing all there was to know about himself. A vision of himself as he truly was. Reflected in the burning eyes of his god.”

A woman crudely jumpstart’s Batman’s heart in the back of a van with jumper cables and a battery. He is so overcome with gratitude that he shoves her out of the way and runs out of the vehicle hootin’ and hollerin’ about leaving him alone. Her name is Harper and I have no fucking clue who she is.

“And you—you who stand before us now—will certainly find yourself changed… when you open your eyes. Which you will do now…”

A figure opens his eyes revealing, from his point of view, a whole slew of creepy individuals wearing masks. The Court of Owls, as it were. The awoken man is veiny and you can see his nipples. There’s a really good nipple shot coming up, I swear it. The man has been “restored” and improved upon: stronger, faster, immortal. Battle wounds will heal instantly. Diarrhea will no longer affect your life as profoundly as it had before!

Titty!

Huzzah for the Court of Owls! They will take over Gotham a restore order to the fair city. And offer free ice cream to all the burliest men. No children.

Batman slinks through the sewer, as he does. But he’s not in good shape. He ends up at a gate that says “No Trespassing” on it, which I believe means exactly what it says on the label. A man sticks his double-barreled shotgun through the gate. “Identify yourself!”

“It’s… me,” Batman says weakly. Not very heroic, honestly.

“MASTER BRUCE!” says the bald, thinly-mustachioed gun-wielder. “MY GOD…”

Alfred, with tears in his eyes, drags Batman through the corridor that presumably connects this part of the sewer system to Wayne Manor’s fanciest toilet. Or the Batcave, I suppose. Batman is terrified to see the dead body of an Owl propped up like Hannibal Lecter. “We discovered his body in the frozen water,” Alfred says, “near the spot we detected the short beacon from your suit.”

“I moved the body here to the Batcave for examination,” Alfred continues. “Let’s get you to the medical station.”

“No.”

Batman wants the dead guy in the medical station instead. You know, for funsies.

Meanwhile, the lavishly-dressed Owls are continuing to indoctrinate Mr. Man-Titties by showing him slides of Batman and going “HE IS YOUR ENEMY”. They replace the man’s armor. “Tonight, we will strike down our enemy. Not just strike him down, but tear him apart. Limb from limb. And eat his bones.”

Egad! Not the bones!

Not now, son! Daddy’s using his BDSM chair!

Robin – or Red Robin, not sure – comes downstairs to bug Bruce even though the tired sack of crap has told the old man repeatedly to keep the riff-raff out. “Geez, Bruce, what did they do to you?” Red Robin asks. Bruce looks like someone dragged his face across a cactus that someone defecated on.

He tells Red Robin that the dead Owl was named Talon. An assassin for the Court of Owls. He may be dead, but the Owls seemed to have synthesized a compound found in his body that can reanimate his dead cells if they want to. Bruce found a significant amount of electrum lodged in the man’s anus! Or in his cells, actually, and all this electrum can bring him back from the dead. Bruce read about it once in a copy of Scientific American. Or maybe it was Hustler, and it was a naked woman. Hard to remember.

Anyway, he had a tooth shaped like an owl that deposited the electrum into his body for decades. The Owls woke him up like an ignition spark for the sole purpose of killing. Once this electrum compound bonds with the cells, they’re capable of getting reactivated over and over.

“I took a tissue sample, Dick” sounds dirtier than it should.

So how do you take a guy down that can come back to life ad nauseam? Well, first of all, try burning the body, stupid. Or cutting off the head. Do I really need to answer this question for you? Bruce decides that cold is the way to go, so he’s pumping him full of very expensive freezing solution to keep him at bay.

Oh by the way, Red Robin: his name is William Cobb and he’s your great-grandfather! lol

This is Dick Grayson, by the way, so it’s actually Nightwing. Sorry. How confusing for all of you.

“You know, Bruce, I get that you think you’re protecting me by keeping your secrets. Or rather, I get that you want to think that’s why you keep secrets like this. But since we’re being so honest and up front – right? Let’s just admit that both of us know the person you’re really protecting is yourself. From needing to have a damn human emotion!”

Ooouch, tough talk there, Dick. He’s going to growl at you for sure now.

Dick pushes it and pushes it until, finally, Bruce cracks him across the jaw, sending blood flying everywhere. Then he picks up a gold tooth with an owl on it. “You were supposed to be one, too, Dick,” he says, pocketing the gold for later bartering! You see, all the circus stuff? Training! Training to be a Talon. To be a killer, Dick. A killer.

His blood gushing all over the place, Dick asks Bruce how he knows all this. And Bruce blah-blah-blahs about how every decade brought a new crop of child athletes from the circus, and how one was picked by the Court to become their newest Secret Assassin! It all makes sense! *fart*

This the part where Bruce complains that “his city” is actually overrun by these Owl fucks who think they run the place. “And I’ll tell you, Dick, if someone could have protected me from that truth, I’d have been grateful.”

Quit bleeding in my cave, kid.

We end with the Court of Owls inviting a slew of ne’er-do-well-lookin’ assassins into their mansion headquarters overlooking the fine city of Gotham City (the City!) “Yes, this way! Come see! For tonight, we will not only kill our enemy, but we will take back our city! WE WILL TAKE BACK OUR KINGDOM!”

Final Thoughts

What kind of milquetoast shit is this? Let the Owls take over, see if I give a shit. They’ve obviously been running things for centuries; Bruce Wayne is just some nobody who’s getting in the way. So, yeah. Ax that motherfucker. Let the Owls reign supreme.

That’s the correct opinion, right?