Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #608 – “Chapter 1: The Ransom”! I heard that this is one of the best Batman stories you can find in comic books. So good, in fact, that it should be a crime that it took me this long to get to it. What am I, an idiot?

Well, let’s not dilly-dally any longer!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #608 [December, 2002]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 1: The Ransom”

Gotham City shipyard, just shy of midnight. Batman has one minute and thirteen seconds left to find the hostage or else it’s hella curtains. “The F.B.I. and D.E.O. cut the power,” Batman thinks. “That will either make my job harder or easier. I’ll know in the next few seconds.”

Batman uses his Super Scope of Endless Information to gather intel on a few grunts in the warehouse. I won’t bother naming them; they have names like “Carlos” and “Spider” and Batman takes them all out with immaculate ease!

“I have to make it clear to Hancock that I do not have time for a long discussion,” he continues thinking. Batman thinks a lot. That’s part of his problem. “Where is the boy?” That one he said out loud to a guy he wrapped up in cord and hung upside-down. The guy swears he doesn’t know, but Batman doesn’t have time for “doesn’t knows”. “You’re lying,” Batman says astutely.

“Fear is an excellent motivator,” he thinks (again) as he reaches for the guy’s face with his hands. I guess the guy gave up the goods, because in the next panel Batman finds a hunched-over crying kid locked in a room that looks like it’s closed with a submarine door. Batman blows it open, killing the kid inside instant and ending the issue.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Batman says to the actually-not-dead kid. The kid has giant glasses and he looks like Jonathan Lipnicki circa 1996. “Y-You’re… Batman,” he says dumbly.

There are only 37 seconds left. Batman notices that the boy is not much older than Bruce was when his parents got shot and killed and died forever. “It makes me think about Clark and how he’d handle the situation. Not just the bending steel and flying out. Clark could smile. That Boy Scout thing. And then say something homespun to put the boy at ease. But the boy doesn’t have Clark. He has me.”

And that’s quite sad, because Batman has the bedside manner of a prickly porcupine dunked in hydrofluoric acid.

This kid is Edward Lamont IV, heir to the Lamont chemical fortune. A subsidiary of LexCorp that created a substance that makes “napalm look like lipstick”. Little Edward was kidnapped by Killer Croc, and not a moment too soon! Speaking of the devil, Killer Croc has finally emerged all giant and going “ROARRR!” “You shouldn’t have come here,” he growls at Batman. “This doesn’t involve you.”

The ransom was for $10 million. The family, the police, the F.B.I., they all wanted to pay the ransom. Batman did not.

So help me god I will keep whaling on you with my special Samsonite briefcase!

Batman bleeds all over the place as Killer Croc punches him with onomatopeia like “BRAK”, making me think about Space Ghost. “I was off by eleven seconds,” Batman says, as if that would have made a world of fucking difference.

“I’M GONNA EAT YOU ALIVE,” shrieks Killer Croc. They keep fighting while Batman muses about Killer Croc’s modus operandi. For one thing, he’s not a kidnapper. He’s not smart enough to be a kidnapper. Someone else was involved here…

Batman remembers that Killer Croc has a vulnerability! Hypersonics! Batman faps a button-shaped device on Killer Croc’s neck and loads him up with vibrations, causing Killer Croc to howl with pain and agony. 1000 decibels! Dude, that would hurt anyone. Nothing special about that.

“YEAH!” yells Edward with joy. Batman tells the kid to stuff it.

Soon, the F.B.I. shows up fashionably late. “Not how we would have handled it–” says the sexy F.B.I. lady. “This is my city,” responds Batman. Like a pompous assjerk.

The Samsonite briefcase, containing all the dang money, disappeared during the fight. But that’s impossible! The F.B.I. had scoped the perimeter and decided that everything was nice and secure as the dickens. So what happened?

Doesn’t matter. Batman chalks this one up to “not my fucking problem” and Bat-grapples his way out of there yelling “CATWOMAN!” Ah, I see, he saw her in the distance and started chasing her. It would be funnier if Batman just fucked on out of there for no reason, but comics can’t be funny all the time.

“What took you so long?” she purrs as they swing across town. It is noticed that ripping off someone else’s ransom is not Catwoman’s style, but she did it anyway. Lots of stuff happening today that isn’t anyone’s style. “I have known Catwoman – Selina Kyle – for years. It seems like each step we take toward each other… we only get further apart.

I guess comics can still be funny after all!

Anyway, something fishy is going on and it’s not just Catwoman’s cat food breath. Batman starts plummeting after someone cut the line on his Bat-rope. Catwoman looks behind her with hesitation and trepidation and other words that end in “ation”. Batman’s shoulder plows into a stone gargoyle on the way down, busting it all up. He crashes onto the street in a manner that would kill literally anything, but he’s pretty ok. Except for the street toughs descending upon him with knives. Oh well, that’s a story for another issue!

Because we end with Catwoman bringing the briefcase to her client.

“Any problems?” asks the unknown client.

“Batman.”

“And…?”

“He… couldn’t keep up.”

“You sound disappointed…”

“Would that matter?”

“Not really. As long as you have the money.”

It’s Poison Ivy.

Final Thoughts

That was short! Nothing much has happened yet to make me impressed with Hush, but the story is still young, isn’t it?

Poison Ivy needs to put on more clothes. Or less clothes. I haven’t decided yet.