Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #2 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 2)”

* Part 2 of 6 of the Rules of Engagement storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #2 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Batman chases down a killer who ends up getting vaporized with an energy weapon from across town. A quick pow-wow with one of his engineers reveals NO known portable energy weapons currently exist in research and/or development anywhere in the vicinity of the government or, like, anywhere!

Bruce and Lex Luthor are in attendance during a government contract bidding session where WayneTech unveils plans for disaster recovery armor called “O.G.R.E.”, which Lex is sneery and skeptical about. Outside of the building after the meeting, O.G.R.E. armor suddenly blasts up from the ground and starts attacking civilians! So that’s pretty hilarious.

It’s a good romp so far! Let’s romp on.

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #2 [March, 2007]
Written by: Andy Diggle
“Rules of Engagement (Part 2)”

DARK KNIGHT VS. WAYNETECH. You fight those robots, sir. Destroy your own company from within if you need to. Eat the rich!

These illustrations make it look like Alfred Pennyworth is suffocating under a thick, rubber mask. We pick up right where we left off: Alfred rolling by in his whip and saving the billionaire from his own company’s invention. Batman suit is at the ready, all nice and folded and tucked away within a secret compartment that takes seven minutes to open. Time to do a loop around the block and the come back to throw a batarang at a large hunk of metal.

Meanwhile, sunken-eyed Lex Luthor piles into his own ugly car and tells his driver to step on it. One of Luthor’s men assures him that the armor plating on their ride is strong enough to withstand Tiger Woods’ various woods and irons, but the O.G.R.E. armor crunches through the roof of the car like it was Tiger Woods’ shaking, flabby ass.

At this point, Lex tries to schmooze the robot. All sorts of “we can make a deal” like he’s negotiating to trade blowjobs. Batman shows up to “save the day”, as it were, and narrates all his actions so that we the readers can understand whatever completely unbelievable tactics he employs to stop the machine in its tracks. “Flash-grenade. Blinds its sensors – buys me a couple seconds. All I need to plant is this broad-spectrum jamming device. Designed to block police-band radio – but I’m improvising. The O.G.R.E. system is remote-operated. Block the control signal and it becomes the world’s most expensive paperweight.”

Here’s a deal: my ass in your face. Or your ass in my face. Or we can touch asses too. I’m very flexible.

Sounds like a tight strategy, Batman. Jam the works. I’m right behind you on this one! Now all we need to do is throw the batarang and hit a large hunk of metal and then it’s bing bang boom let’s go home to our Hungry Man TV dinners!

It doesn’t work.

So now he tries to distract it with nude photos and shadow puppetry. Lex Luthor and his cronies have exited their wrecked vehicle. Lex stands hunched over like a doofus while his men shoot their guns at things. Lex Luthor, DC Universe’s most brilliant mind, always stoic under pressure, opens a manhole cover and lands back-first into a pile of sewage.

He scurries away.

Now Batman decides to try wrapping the robot with his grappling hook cord. Multi-walled carbon nanofilament with fifteen-ton breaking-strain, which isn’t even a thing, and the robot snaps it like it was a twig made out of shit. The O.G.R.E. system decides it had enough of this fuckery and it blasts off into space. Batman dusts his hands off and pats himself on the back, celebrating a job well done. He decides that the thing was after Lex Luthor, and with Luthor out of the picture it had no other desire to stick around. That’s ok, though. It’s Salisbury steak time!

The smelly face of defeat.

Bruce Wayne returns to his WayneTech research and development center where Bruce and his engineer buddy Lucius attempt to describe a sensory deprivation tank to Captain Jim-Jam Gordon. “The pilot hangs suspended in this body-temp saline solution while the neural-link system replicates and transmits his brainwave activity to the O.G.R.E. unit in real time.” In short, some fucker in a tub controls the big mean robot.

The problem is, you see, is that the pilot died in the tank. Doctor Eugene Underhay, single-handedly responsible for turning downtown Gotham into a war zone! Allegedly!

Captain Jammy Gordon has a theory: Underhay tried to murder his smug boss *points to the jerk over there* Bruce Wayne! But then what? How did he die? Was he strangling himself while jacking off in the tank? Nope! The readings indicate he suffered a major cardiac arrest whilst in the tank. Dead before he got pulled out. “Natural causes, eh?” Captain Gordon raises an immaculately well-groomed, red eyebrow. “You’d better hope so, Wayne, or I’m holding your company responsible for this man’s death. Corporate negligence.”

Gordo means business! He’s a cunt hair away from throwing Bruce Wayne into the clink! “Don’t leave town,” he warns as he walks away from the scene of the murder crime. Bruce glares at Lucius with those fiery, sexy eyes of his. Lucius offers to take full responsibility for the disaster and offers an eventual letter of resignation. Bruce slaps him silly. “This man was a WayneTech employee. If his death was an industrial accident, the buck stops with me.” That’s awfully altrustic of you, sir. Thank you for falling on the sword, sir. Your benevolent company continues to provide, sir. All hail WayneTech and its Glorious Leader.

Bruce is still confused as to why Underhay tried to kill Luthor, which is a weird thing to be confused about since any glance at his bald direction would fill anyone with uncontrollable feelings of piping-hot malice. Lucius has a twist for Bruce W.: UNDERHAY WAS ALREADY DEAD WHEN O.G.R.E. ATTACKED! Just check the records! *throws a pile of Arby’s receipts on the desk*

Bruce boggles like a Venus flytrap just clamped down on his soft, little glans penis.

I’m going to kiss this corpse so tenderly…

Because Bruce Wayne isn’t above stealing murder weapons from evidence lockers, he sees fit to smuggle the dead body of Doctor Eugene Underhay down to his plague-infested Batcave. Alfred joins him in this crime of decency. “So, having adjusted to a nocturnally troglodytic lifestyle… are we now stooping to grave robbery?” Alfred asks politely. I fucking love this guy, busting his boss’ balls at every turn. Alfred should be mayor.

While Alfred was under the impression that this cat had died of natural causes, Bruce has a different theory altogether: coroners can be bought off! Clearly this man died of bullet poisoning to the brainal cavity. Barring that, other theories may present themselves…

“Last week, I saw an assassin vaporized by some kind of particle-beam weapon… which may well have been an experimental WayneTech prototype. Now the O.G.R.E. tries to murder our main rival outside the defense review board hearing! It’s all connected, Alfred. There’s a pattern at work here.”

Clearly, Lex Luthor orchestrated the whole plot in order to eventually gain a monopoly over magic bean production and distribution. But until Bruce gets his head out of his ass four issues later, we’re going to spin our wheels for a bit here.

Bruce discovers an implant lodged within the dead guy’s heart. An injectable pacemaker designed to correct cardiac arrhythmia with electro-stimulation. However, when applied to a healthy heart, the effects could be disastrous. Heart-attackly speaking. Bruce knows this because he got his medical degree through Balloon Animal Art College.

And he knows just who designed such a nefarious device…

He looks to the camera with a feral monkey-face. “LEXCORP.”

So Lex Luthor was trying to murder himself! The plot thickens into a rich, diarrhea-like gravy…

Wernstrom!

Bruce puts on his Batman regalia and heads over to the Lexcorp nuclear waste disposal facility in the dead of night. He discovers his pet O.G.R.E. robot smuggling cans of radioactive waste, which Bruce wags his finger at. “Your reactor runs on low-grade radioactive material. You need to feed if you’re going to track down the man who had you murdered. I understand that now…”

What the fuck are you talking about? Have we already jumped to hella conclusions within the span of three panels? “What matters most is that he had you killed. But he couldn’t have known that something would survive, some spark of humanity, trapped within the O.G.R.E.’s neural-ray cortex. A ghost in the machine… and it wants revenge.”

Take your pills, grandpa. How did you gather all this from a pacemaker in a heart? What kind of pseudoscience voodoo are you jibber-jabbering about here? This cockamamie lunacy. Bananas.

So Bruce extends an offer: help him help him help Luthor help him help Luthor help Luthor help him to make Luthor pay for what he’s done. No killing necessary, just some good old-fashioned scare-the-pants-off-him tomfooleries!

Nope. O.G.R.E. fights Batman back.

Batman isn’t going to fight this time. He doesn’t wanna. He pulls out a garage door opener and points it at the armored beast. “Eject cortex.”

The robot stops in its tracks and opens up its mouth to release an object like it was a DVD player. Batman removes the object. “Whatever is left of Doctor Eugene Underhay is encoded onto this memory cortex. Perhaps one day we’ll find a way to bring him back… so why do I feel like I’ve just killed a man?”

Batman pushes that thought out immediately like it actually doesn’t matter to him, like he was just kind of curious. He hops into his Bat-a-ma-mobile. “Time to pay Lex Luthor a visit.”