Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #12 – “Ghost in the Machine”! In the previous installment, one of the most boring comics books I’ve ever read, Batman defeats Lincoln March Owlman Brother Wayne by collapsing a building on top of him (OR DOES HE??) and realizes, after about 20 broken bones, that Gotham isn’t his city. It’s everyone’s city. Then he and Dick Grayson share a luxurious hug.

The story of Jarvis Pennyworth is concluded by Jarvis warning his son never to go to Wayne Manor, then Jarvis getting killed, then Alfred going to Wayne Manor anyway. So fuck you, dad.

Anyway, let’s get this piece of shit over with.

*groan*

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #12 [October, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Ghost in the Machine”

“Sometimes all it takes is a few words to change your life. For me it took seven. Seven words, spoken in the dark.”

*leans up really close to her ear* “Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.”

This woman with a septum ring is working sixty feet below Gotham City on the eastern section of the old power grid. Then she heard those words. Those seven delectable words: “Harper, phonecall! Your brother – he sounds pissed!”

Now, far be it from me to be pedantic, but I do believe “phone call” is TWO words. Two words.

Those weren’t the words, though. The real words came later. Harper’s still nervous about talking to her brother, at any rate. But we don’t get to that yet. We flashback to a few weeks ago in the “Narrows” of Gotham City, wherever that is. Harper’s brother, Cullen, brushes her hair while she stands there petulantly in a beautiful red dress. She starts pulling off her fancy gloves, saying that this whole thing is beyond stupid. “I feel ridiculous. I’m going in my own clothes or I’m not going at all.”

But the Wayne Gala is fancy and rather schmancy! Harper has to look like a prostitute or Bruce will get hella mad, even though Harper is only going because they’re tearing down their building (to build a better one, though, according to Cullen). Plus, how is she going to win the heart of TIM DRAKE (loser) dressed like a flannel carpet-muncher? (Cullen’s words, not mine, I swear. I swear! I mean it! Stop looking at me like that!)

While Cullen talks and talks, Harper notices a large bandage on his arm. He quickly pulls his sleeve up, saying that “they” are messing with him and that they’ll get bored soon enough. And, finally, Cullen pushes Harper out the door to the waiting cab, but only after he promises that they’ll take care of this situation when she gets home. He begrudgingly agrees.

Who are these fucks? Why am I reading about them? Where’s my handsome, manly hunk of a man Bruce Wayne at?

AH, THERE HE IS! He’s addressing the patrons of his fancy gala, running his spiel of a bigger and brighter Gotham. Harper tries to steal a bunch of desserts off the table to stuff into her purse until she’s caught by Alfred.

WE’VE POISONED THE COOKIES! YOU HAVE 45 MINUTES TO LIVE! BAH HA HA HA HA HAAA!

“You’re making a serious error, young lady…” Alfred says menacingly, “…if you leave the dessert table without tasting the brownies.”

Oh man, does that dude ever fuck.

Harper asks the beloved butler for a way out of this popsicle stand. So she can blow it, you see. Alfred recognizes her as the young woman who won a raffle to be at the gala. She corrects him; her landlady gave Harper the ticket after she rewired her apartment. She doesn’t want to be at this bullshit event.

Alfred asks her what she thinks of Bruce’s new plans to transform her neighborhood. Harper is skeptical that a rich guy like Bruce Aloysius Wayne, who has never set penis inside the Narrows before, can fix up her shitty neighborhood. Alfred winks and tells her that she might be surprised. Then he winks again, and then a third time. Then he appears on the sex offender registry.

Harper thanks the butler for the brownies and fucks off into the night. She returns home to find Cullen sobbing on the floor of their apartment. He’s all banged up half to death. You see, while Harper was gone, “they” came. “I thought they were going to kill me, Harper… but they just wanted to hear me scream… they just kept kicking me.” Cullen’s all bloody and gross and I’m surprised that Harper even wants to touch that mess, but she hugs him all the same.

No cussing.

“They” keep kicking Cullen’s ass because he’s gay, and in the year 2011 that’s a felony. And perhaps it’s a flashback, or perhaps it’s the next day, but Cullen and his boyfriend walk through the school grounds (college, presumably, where Cullen majors in TV/VCR repair) while everyone stares at them. Harper does a little soliloquy about how she’s always trying to fix things. Mostly because their dad was always breaking things! In fits of anger! Eventually, Harper got good at fixing anything. That’s why she works on Gotham’s old eastern power grid. ‘Cause it needs to be fixed, you see.

Later, Cullen walks down the street late at night with Harper when a group of toughs try to kick his ass. After a few clocks to the mug, Harper ain’t having it anymore. She brandishes a homemade taser and zaps Tough #1 right in the gut. “Come on! I dare you!” she cries to the other jerkass jerkbag. “It’s not just a taser. I powered it up, you scum. You come near my brother again and I’ll fry you, you hear me?”

About six more guys come out of the shadows. “Heh, you can’t fry us all, baby.”

So now Harper starts getting punched and almost knifed and it’s a real sorry state of affairs. Good thing BATMAN shows up with his various smoke bombs and starts kicking some real gay-bashing ass. He gets right up into this dude’s face, close enough for a passionate smooch, and tells him that shit will get super real if he and his gang hurt Cullen and Harper again. The gang runs away while Batman grapples the top of a building and swings away.

Harper looks positively thrilled! The coolest thing ever just happened and it had nothing to do with Steven Seagal or Prince! She smiles like she just got an idea, but the idea seems to be “look up Batman on the internet”. Even Cullen is getting annoyed with Harper showing him a hundred videos of Batman dancing and prancing.

“The last few days I’ve been able to walk home without having to worry about anyone giving me crap. I love Batman… but you’ve been on your computer watching every little scrap of video you can find. Don’t you think it’s time to… I don’t know… give it a rest?”

Harper’s not listening. Give it a what? Give what a rest? What what a what? Check this out! She found security footage from her employer’s cameras. After a little illegal password cracking, she was able to watch this short video of Batman not appearing at all because the feed cuts out for four seconds. Eh? Eh?

Any Bat-like Man could’ve knocked down that trash can! Doesn’t prove nuthin’!

Cullen has to admit that it’s pretty cool that he’s able to scramble a camera feed. Harper finds it curious because the Gotham grid can’t be accessed remotely. Batman must have his own secret grid! Like a ghost grid, heh heh, boo! And something he can access remotely, to boot. Harper asked her boss what it would take to build a private grid like that, and her boss was like “WHAT KIND OF DUMBASS QUESTION IS THAT? GET BACK TO WORK.”

Also, it would take a lot of power. And somewhere along the real grid, Batman is siphoning power to use to scramble cameras and… what’s this now? Power the real grid further? Now we’re talking nonsense. “He actually saps power secretly from Wayne Industries buildings, like Robin Hood, to power these boxes he keeps at the hubs. They’re amplifiers – Bat-Boxes.

And if that isn’t boring enough, Harper starts tinkering and she cobbles together something that will give wider range to the signals hitting the Bat-Boxes in case something happens. “It’s just a thank-you, I guess. For everything.”

And not only that, but Harper can track Batman using these Bat-Boxes! And one just went offline, punching a hole in the ghost grid and making Batman visible to everyone at this very moment. Harper has to go save him!

So she drops down into the stinky sewer and fixes a Bat-Box to get Batman back off the grid. And just as she finishes up, a fucking boat cruises through the tunnels at 506mph with Batman hot on its heels. This stupid thing happens where Batman catches him and calls him an Owl, then the guy denies it and unleashes a tiger from below the deck to gnaw on Batman for a bit. The Not-Owl guy laughs sinisterly as the boat drives away (with Batman and the tiger still on it).

Little Harper wants to help! But how?!

She turns off the run-off valve, which lowers the water level in the tunnels and brings the boat to a screeching halt. The tiger is incapacitated. Batman grabs Mr. Not-Owl and gets ready to fuck his butt… until he notices that some mysterious so-and-so shut off the valve and ran away before being detected. “Hrm…” Batman says with conviction!

That’s Eau de Sewer and it was expensive, thank you very much!

Harper revels in her success to help Batman! Cullen says he has to now wash the sheets 50 times to get the poop smell out of it.

Lying down reflecting, Harper remembers those seven words again. The real seven words this time, not some bullshit seven words about Cullen being pissed.

“Whatever you think you’re doing, you’re finished.”

Batman shows up in the sewer to speak to Harper, who is working on the grid. She claims she was just trying to help, but Batman disagrees. Fuck off, kid.

He disappears and she smiles, because here are the real words, spoken to herself:

“Harper Row, you’re not finished. No way.”

Final Thoughts

WHAT A WEIRD ISSUE, RIGHT? Who cares about Harper and Cullen Row and their slice-of-life bullshit story. If we did an exposé on every citizen of Gotham City, we’d have 400 issues of bedwetting children, plumbers, charlatans, and bedwetting grandmas.

Let’s keep it to Batman from now on, Scott Snyder, or you’re fired.