Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #10 – “Assault on the Court”! In the previous installment, Batman escapes out of his own property by the skin of his teeth as the Talons try to tear him to shreds. Alfred is trapped in the armory like a goose.

While the rest of the Bat Family is keeping an eye on the people on the list who weren’t murdered yet, Batman visits local politician Lincoln March, whom no one was keeping an eye on. He gets murdered right in front of Batman! BUT, March was able to give him a list of three Owl names, and now Batman’s going to use these leads to sell some real estate! You betcha!

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #10 [August, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Assault on the Court”

So, to start off, we learn about Joesph [sic] and Maria Powers. They own the most expensive residence in Gotham City – the top three floors of the Powers Hotel, estimating $58 million. Hard to get to without passing a thousand protective guards and the hotel itself, it has never had a visitor that wasn’t invited by the Powers.

UNTIL NOW.

Maria comes back to the residence to find the whole place trashed. She drops her monocle in her champagne glass and tries to call security on the comm, but no one answers… she gets into the elevator to escape…

“Going down?” asks a menacing slab of beef of a man. The kind of man who wears a stupid bat suit. Batman shows Maria an Owl mask, and she immediately tells him that it’s not Joseph’s. She swears on her 145-year-old life! “I know, Mrs. Powers. It’s yours. I found the case for your husband’s mask, but it’s empty. Where is he?”

Did you check the various brothels or bowling alleys? Barring that, look up your butt. Ha! Maria Powers threatens Batman to leave the city and never come back. Batman thinks he has the upper hand, but he ain’t got no hand at all! Batman doesn’t do much more than huff before turning away from her.

“Your scare tactics worked, sir,” says Alfred in Batman’s earpiece. “She’s dialing her husband now.”

“Tell me you can track the call, Alfred.”

Alfred can do anything. That guy fucks. Meanwhile, all the frozen Talons have been moved into the Batcave’s cold storage laboratory. “They seem to have retreated into some kind of preservatory stasis.”

Alfred gets a lock on Joseph Powers’ phone. The location is in a “blackout zone”, as in, ask about the zone again and you’re getting punched in the eye! But really, it’s a quarter-mile radius in which the phone could be anywhere. It’s on Gotham’s south side, so take the B train with all the homeless people pooping on the seats.

Batman immediately deduces the location of the phone at 77 Irving. “Right where it always was.” Alfred is perplexed, and he of course doesn’t get an explanation because Batman is an asshole.

Earlier in the evening, when Lincoln March gave Batman the list, Joseph Powers was named. Joseph Powers, the guy who founded the Gotham Aviary and its collection of rare owls. Joseph Powers, with the skewed financials. Joseph Powers, with the club foot and the lazy eye.

And at 77 Irving, Batman feels a tingle in his nethers. “I came to Harbor House when I was a boy. I was looking for the Court of Owls. That time I found nothing. Not tonight. Tonight, the Court goes down. Once and for all.”

No more skulking or billowing. No more Mr. Nice Bat. No more Mr. Scared Bat, either. Or Mr. Poop-My-Pants Bat.

Batman barges into Harbor House and starts punching stone gargoyles, vowing the end of the Court’s influence on his city. HIS city! And Batman is so fucking confident that he’s going to win this thing right here, right now, that he doesn’t expect to stumble upon a creepy dining room with a long table seated by about two dozen dead losers in Owl masks. Wine spilled everywhere. Well-dressed socialites dressed all fancy-like. A real suicide cult situation. “Damn you…” Batman mutters, walking away. “Damn you all.”

The next morning, Bruce sits at a chair in his manor with a view the overlooks the city skyline. He looks tired and scruffy. Alfred walks into the room all like “SIR! You’re meeting with the firms bidding on the elevated park in less than an hour!” Bruce doesn’t give much of a shit about that right now. “It doesn’t make sense, Alfred. Members of the Court, taking their own lives, just like that.”

Alfred says it does make sense. After all, Bruce took the city back from them. Bruce isn’t convinced. After all, this is only Issue #10 and the story doesn’t end until Issue #12! Something fishy is going on. Another thing: all the money was siphoned from their bank accounts. It feels more like a setup.

Treating him like a child, Alfred tells Bruce that this is all over and maybe he should move on. You don’t get more answers. There are no questions left! Scoot along now, the firms are waiting for your tired, disheveled-lookin’ ass. And, as no surprise to anyone, Bruce is going to go out as Batman instead to go after… him. The one he forgot. Whoever that is. Even Alfred is perplexed, but that’s a usual state of mind when you work for Bruce Wayne.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Batman starts talking about sinkholes. There’s on in Gotham City under the old Willowwood Home for Children.

And, to this day, their creepy, emaciated ghosts still do jumping jacks and various other calisthenics in the foyer.

Eighteen years ago, a sinkhole opened and swallowed up the orderlies’ quarters. After that, all the abuse and neglect that the children suffered came to light. “They say the sadness of the lost children caused the sinkhole. They say the place is haunted by their spirits.”

What all this has to do with Batman meeting the last Owl he forgot about, I don’t know. But he suddenly gets entangled in a dang net and approached by shadowy figure.

“So, tell me, Batman… Who? Who am I?”

“I don’t know,” Batman says, writhing on the floor stupidly. “But you’re not Lincoln March. Because Lincoln March doesn’t exist. He’s a paper man, set up by the Court of Owls.”

“Good. So if I’m not Lincoln March, then who am I?”

Then Batman answers with about 1000 boring words. A traitor, a thief, an old member of the Court before he betrayed them. He poisoned a whole room full of them and made it look like a suicide pact. Meanwhile, he included his name on the list of targets as a fake-out and staged his own death. The man counters this by saying he actually did die, but he took the serum that brings Talons back to life.

The man tells Batman that, before the serum, the Court was developing a suit for a newly trained Talon that was supposed to rival Batman in speed, strength, cunning, and penis-girth. And, again, he asks Batman if he knows who he is. Come on, now. Guess!

Well, it turns into more of a tangle, so I’ll let you fuckers read some of this now. I don’t wanna read any of this.

Yeah, I’m not reading all that noise.

After all these words, the man gets upset. Batman still isn’t answering the question of WHO HE IS! WHO IS HE, GODDAMNIT?! “SAY IT!”

“The pin,” Batman responds.

“The pin! What pin?” the man asks, stunned.

“In the story you told me, in Old Wayne Tower. About your mother’s death. The car accident that killed her.”

“There’s the lie, but where’s the truth?”

“You mentioned a pin she wore. A misshapen heart pin. Made of clay.”

“And?”

“You saw the picture of my mother wearing that pin and you used it in your–”

Whoops, they’re blah blah blah-ing again! I also don’t know what the fuck these two are talking about, prompting me to suspect that I accidentally skipped about a dozen issues of pin talk.

Anyway, here’s the big reveal:

Is this comic over yet?

“I don’t have a brother!” Batman yelps in the net, turning purple. The man reminds him that he is supposed to have a brother. Twins, son. He was born first, sickly and thin, and was thrown in Willowwood out of sight of the public eye! Batman doesn’t believe it! His parents would never do such a thing!

“If you wanted to know if the Court had anything to do with our parents’ deaths, Bruce, the answer is no. They didn’t. That was all your fault, Brother. And I’m going to make you pay.”

One-on-one fight coming up! Owl vs. Bat! Who will win! Not the audience, that’s for sure, brother!

Continuing the Jarvis Pennyworth side story, the one where he thinks he single-handedly ruining the city. He’s running away from menacing figure near the gate that exits the manor’s grounds. “Death’s shadow draws closer with every passing moment,” he says, rather melodramatically.

He runs back into the manor, closes the door behind him, and presses his body up against it. Knives jut through the door, piercing his shoulder!

Anyway, the legacy of the Wayne family has been irrevocably fucked for reasons that are still not at all apparent. Martha Wayne wanted to open a school for underprivileged children. This would help shape the city into something less shitty than its current shitty state, and therefore be suitable for Bruce and her (!) unborn child.

One day, Martha is yelling into the phone to mayor complaining like a Karen about men, who represented the city, coming to threaten her unborn child. Jarvis scoots young Master Wayne up to bed so he doesn’t hear the irate hootin’ and hollerin’.

“In a city like Gotham, there will always be those who stand firmly against progress,” present-day Jarvis thinks as the door opens and sends him flying across the room. He runs, rudely leaving blood dripping everywhere. “My father even told me once never push a Wayne towards greatness. Happiness is a more worthy goal. And far less deadly.”

Jarvis now hides, terrified, from an approaching hooded figure. He never took his father’s advice until one day when he received a call about taking Martha Wayne to Dock 17 at the Gotham Marina. Failure to comply will result in an anal thrashing the likes of which you have never felt before! Maybe!

Brave like a skunk, you little shit. Go to your room.

Jarvis comes to Martha to tattle on the mysterious caller, who may be bigger than City Hall. They want Jarvis to take her to the docks, so saddle up! Jarvis looks out for Numero Uno around here!

Change of plans: take Martha and Bruce to the grounds for the new school for Underprivileged Little Wankers. Jarvis is nervous as an emu.

Because the school grounds are on the corner…

…of Lincoln and March!

Then the car flips over or something in a fiery crash. I don’t know.

Final Thoughts

Is anyone invested in the outcome of all this? I certainly am not. I’m invested in this bag of Sun Chips I’m eating though. This is infinitely more worthwhile. Mmmm…