Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #613 – “Chapter 6: The Opera”! In the previous installment, Batman fights Superman and wins.

An issue called “The Opera” sounds infinitely exciting. I can’t wait to fucking read this garbage. I hope Pavarotti makes an appearance in all his fat glory.

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #613 [May, 2003]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 6: The Opera”

Wonderful. Catwoman’s dead. Harley Quinn’s got an oversized novelty gun aimed at Batman’s head from a poster on the wall. Things are getting grim in Gotham. For once.

Bruce Wayne is at the Gotham City Opera House where he’s fidgety and antsy because he’d much rather be prowling around as Batman. Every second not out there pounding the pavement is another second that his antagonist will either get away with it, or harm more people, or cancel Severance. And believe me, you don’t want any of those scenarios.

Alfred makes a quip about Batman cavorting around in his pajamas, which is exactly the same joke I’ve made about almost every superhero twenty-five times. Alfred is the fucking man.

The intrepid butler asks Bruce to please make it until at least intermission. And Lucius Fox wants to speak with him after the show, something about *rifles through notes* WayneTech business. Cancel? OK. How about Selina Kyle joining you this evening? Does that tickle your scrotum, sir? I mean… fancy?

Bruce doesn’t like the silence of his opponent. He also doesn’t like the way the silence is silent. As if they were instructed to be silent. By an even more silent boss!

Anyway, it’s showtime, baby. “Bruce! Really glad you could make it,” jubilates Dr. Thomas Elliot, Surgeon Extraordinaire. Selina is there with her sexy pixie cut, so all is right with the world.

Bruce looks positively bored already as he and Selina take their seats. His father liked the opera; the whole tragedy and sadness of it. Only fitting that the dude got a BULLET in his BRAIN. lol.

Bruce whispers to Selina, asking how she knows Thomas Elliot. She doesn’t. She knows Leslie, and it’s that old hag’s benefit. She’s here as her “date”. Thomas shushes them because the stupid opera is going to begin.

The fat guy in the Pagliacci costume literally bangs a drum and yells “I’VE RUN OUT OF RICE KRISPIES!” I kid you not. I’d take a screenshot of it, but I don’t wanna.

I’d rather show this one:

Good opera brings a single tear to my eye.

Well, if it isn’t Harley Quinn in the costume! She pops out of it looking quite not-fat-at-all, as it were. Holding her giant stupid gun, she is quick to remark “OPERA, SCHMOPERA!” as goons in masks in the orchestra pit pull out their own guns. “Ladies and jerks, there’s been a slight change in tonight’s show,” she says, smiling in that way she always does.

Thomas Elliot, safe upstairs in the box, announces that he will Call The Police! But then Harley Quinn does about forty somersaults in the air and kicks the phone out of Thomas’ hand. Maybe Thomas shouldn’t have yelled his intentions. Maybe the police would be here by now if he didn’t say anything out of his dick-filled mouth.

Bruce knew that Harley Quinn was working with Poison Ivy. And now that Ivy is back in Gotham, so too is Quinn. She gets up in Bruce’s frowny face, then she gets up in Selina’s icy face, then Leslie goes “WAAAHH PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!”, but Quinn sets her sights on Thomas’ pretty green Lifesaver-looking necklace pendant. Bruce recognizes that from when they were kids; it was a gift to Thomas from his mother. Bruce tried to roughhouse to steal it once and made Thomas extremely pissy angry.

Mmmm, is that sour apple?

Quinn, of course, steals it away from him right now in the present at this juncture. The next thing everyone knows, Quinn flips back down to the stage and opens fire in the crowd along with her goons. Of course, since this is DC Comics, no one dies. They just run around hollerin’.

“Harley has never tried something this… big,” thinks Bruce. It’s quite uncouth of her, actually, if you think about it.

Selina yells at Thomas to keep down, but the dude gets up and tries to make his way to the stage to steal back the necklace. “No one takes from me. No one.”

Selina turns around to talk to Bruce, but he gone. Leslie thinks he stepped out to powder his butt, but in actuality he went to go dress up as Batman (after powdering his butt). Batman descends upon the stage, chuckling to himself that he didn’t actually make it to intermission like Alfred wanted.

Batman keeps the orchestra pit goons at bay with all manner of useful bat goodies: mace, smoke, flash grenades, batarangs, toothpicks, and bottles of sweet, sweet hooch. After the goons are rendered coughing and sad, Batman chases Quinn backstage. His cape is full of bullet holes, and he spends more time ruminating upon who orchestrated this stupid robbery instead of actually stopping the robber. Quinn shoots down a few sandbags, crushing Batman’s skull into pebbles. “Ugnn…” he says as if it barely hurts. Cool thing to happen following head surgery, but this isn’t the first time he should have died since the story started.

“Ivy and I had a sweet thing going before this whole mess got started – maybe I should go off-book and blow your brains out and end it right now!” she cackles. Oh, please do! I want to see that in the worst way.

But, unfortunately, Catwoman leaps onto stage with a roundhouse kick to Quinn’s face. Then she rips one of her stupid jester bells off, which makes Quinn sadface. Batman gets back into the fray, and between he and Catwoman, Harley Quinn is neutralized!

The crowd goes wild!

Catwoman is bleeding all over the place, so Leslie comes down to help with her trusty first aid kit that she happens to have on her person for some reason.

And a defeated Quinn escapes with Thomas’ necklace.

Get back here, you mentally-challenged chimpanzee.

Batman kicks the door leading to the rainy alley, but Quinn is now nowhere to be found.

But he finds someone else.

“No!”

“NO!”

Oh yes!

Thomas Elliot lies dead on the street with a bullet hole through the chest. Cackling above him is a maniacal clown kind of person.

It’s Joker Time, Babydoll!

Final Thoughts

Finally, we’re going to get some Joker action in this bitch. And not a moment too soon; all these C-list Gotham villains are really starting to stick in my craw. Harley Quinn?? Get the fuck out of my face with that shit.