Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #2 – “Shaman (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Bruce Wayne gets stranded in the Alaskan mountains in his underwear, essentially, and gets rescued by a tribal family who heals him with witchcraft bullshit. He returns home permanently for the first time in years.

Then he decides to become Batman. He thwarts a robbery at a free clinic in a bad part of town, but the young pregnant woman that was almost kidnapped and raped decides to stab herself in the chest.

It’s very uplifting so far.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #2 [December, 1989]
Written by: Dennis O’Neil
“Shaman (Part 2)”

All right, then! Issue #2! A man is tied up to a support of wooden sticks and placed nearly naked over a cauldron of steaming, hot coals. He is surrounded by a throng of people in black hoods. Either there’s some cult shit going on, or this another one of Alfred’s orgy parties! It’s going to take a lot of time to figure out the difference.

A Leader-type in warpaint, donning a bird skull with eagle feathers, holds a giant dagger. He approaches the man. He smiles. The man says “AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!”. The group smiles. Still unclear about the orgy thing! But we’ll get back to this.

Two cops sit in their car on a dead street. Al and Jimmy, a couple of off-duty knuckleheads, heard the scream. Al thinks it’s the wind, but Jimmy knows it ain’t no wind. The sound was coming from that building over there. *points* The deserted tenement! The one we just happen to be right outside, off-duty, hanging out together in a car late at night for no reason. Let’s bust into it and check it out!

Al, the more reasonable one, insists that if they’re going to nose around then they should call for back-up. “Look, you wanna keep poundin’ a beat all your life, fine for you,” Jimmy chides while he crams bullets into his ugly cop gun, “Me, I wanna make detective. And a way to do that is a big bust without anybody else around to take credit.”

Al, the pushover doormat, stupidly gives into peer pressure and follows Jimmy the Peer out of the car.

The only Voodoo Lounge these cops tolerate is the ‘90s Rolling Stones album. Hey, it doesn’t even exist yet!

These two bastards knock down the locked door and force all these hooded twerps to stick ‘em up!

“You should not intrude here,” says the calm, resplendent, and sumptuous cult leader bird skull chief.
“You kill them, Chubala?” asks one of the cult members. I think his name might be Skip! He looks like a Skip.
“I said…DROP IT!” shouts Al or Jimmy, it doesn’t matter.

Mr. Cult Leader starts swinging his blade.

“I WARNED YOU–” and then blam blam goes the gun. “I hadda do it. He was gonna stick me,” claims trigger-happy Jimmy, shooting first and not even bothering to ask questions later. Here’s the catch, though! Check this out, you’ll never guess, the–

Oh, you guessed? Yeah, you’re right. He didn’t die, but it looks like Jimmy died! It looks like Jimmy died of a “gonna stick me” from the still-alive magic cult leader. Al tries shooting his gun too, but that doesn’t kill anyone either. Now Al tries his last gambit: the running-away kind of gambit. That doesn’t work. He gets a knife thrown at his back on his way out of the building.

Sorry Al. Sorry Jimmy. Should’ve just continued giving each other handjobs in the car and minding your own business.

The next morning, Jim Gordon (that’s Captain Jim Gordon to you, dear reader) is present at the crime scene. He does what he does best: standing around and frowning. Bruce Wayne approaches, saying that he’s hanging around this part of town because, and I quote, “sometimes I just cruise the city, savoring its diversity”. Say what you will about Gotham City, but when it comes to the homicides, the victims are very diverse.

Gordon gives Wayne the rundown of the situation, which is fair. He’s not a cop or anything, but when you have all the money in the world… cops will just tell you shit. “Couple of bodies, both burned – and both mutilated. Hearts cut out.” Sounds delicious.

It sounds like Al’s dead and Jimmy’s still alive? Who gives a fuck. They found Jimmy wandering around with a knife in his back. Just aimlessly wandering for hours, muttering about the Chubala. I guess the other body was Mr. Ritual Sacrifice. Captain Gordon thinks this is all tied to the city’s drug problem! Too many damn drugs! Gordon smokes a pipe while saying this.

Ugh, really dude? Get the fuck out of here. No one asked you anything. Don’t you have a bible somewhere to attend to? With a hole in it to defile?

The ramblin’ reverend who shows up unannounced is Tobias Micah. Jim Gordon wastes no time introducing him to Bruce Wayne and telling him that he used to be Toby Michaels, pickpocket, who found his true calling while in prison. Sounds cool, sir. That probably isn’t a sensitive subject at all or anything.

Sometimes Gordon thinks this Micah Mikey Michaels is on the ball. With all the bullshit going on in Gotham, perhaps demons are to blame! Bruce Wayne wishes both of them the best of luck and fucks off in his limousine. “See you at the reception tonight, Captain?” Wayne asks. The answer is a hard maybe.

Bruce Wayne pats himself on the back. “CRUISING THE CITY, SAVORING ITS DIVERSITY”, haha, what a banger! Alfred calls him out on the lie that it is, but Bruce Wayne defends the statement. He does cruise the city, after all. Savoring diversity? Hardly! Boo to that. But snooping the police scanners, that’s always fun for a rich man with nothing else to do all day. So now he’s got something to chew on: Chubala. Hey, yo Alfred, that’s the same thing the pregnant girl said before she eviscerated herself. Remember? The pregnant girl at the clinic? Before she seppukued her guts all over the pavement. Remember that, Alfred? That was six months ago. That was funny, right?

Well, ok, no it wasn’t (*snicker*), but it still doesn’t make a lick of dang sense! “She was safe. She had nothing to fear,” Bruce insists.
“Obviously, she did not agree,” Alfred politely retorts, “Shall we continue cruising? And savoring?”

Ha! This fucking guy.

Bruce Wayne gears up for the big reception dinner, all tuxed up and ready to get his evening bone on with Vanna White over here.

Get a load of this ugly crowd. Is that Liza Minelli on the right? Andy Warhol next to her? Did someone dig up Lucille Ball’s corpse back there?

Who else is at this dumb party? Ah, is that Dr. Madison Spurlock? Something about research, right. Good to meet you, sir! This bald Spurlock guy sucks on Bruce Wayne’s date’s hand a bit while Bruce strokes him in front of everyone. “He’s just back from the wilds of Alaska–where he did what I’m told is some fantastic work on some of the local Indian tribes.” Cool, man, do some well-funded research on not calling them Indians! What is this, 1989? Oh, right.

Bruce asks Dr. Baldfuck if he heard any good tribal tales, but the good doctor is afraid not. They don’t like to tell stories to white losers. Bruce Wayne got special treatment because the young lady of the tribe wanted to bone him. This much I know.

Cool beans, Doc. I’ve got a bat mask too that my butler made for me.

BUT, Spurlock was able to buy a few trinkets and goodies. Masks, mostly. Here’s a creepy one! This thing right here that doesn’t look at all like a bat? It’s a bat.

Theodora Whatshername Bruce’s Date is like, lol! Healing magic! What a load! Durrr! And well, that’s the end of that. Another guy shows up with a Michael Jackson curl over his forehead and an orange sportcoat with dots on it. This suave piece of shit is Bennet Young, who accompanied Dr. Morgan Spurlock on his 30-day McDonald’s binge. I mean, Alaska trip.

Bennet gets a quick hello in before Spurlock curtly shoos him away to “check on the relics”. SUSPICIOUS! Total sus move, buddy.

Jim Gordon shows up! But Bruce Wayne wants to fuck, so he and his gal are on their way out even though it’s like 4:45pm. Total sus move here too. Gordon’s gonna look into that and maybe find out about Batman by accident?!?!

It’s actually Theodora who wants to bone, but Bruce Wayne “has the most taxing day you could imagine tomorrow” and he needs to turn in early. I hope you understand, honey. I’m sure your vagina is very nice, though.

He walks away. She looks horny and put-out. Put-out because she wanted to put out, you might say.

IT’S BATMAN TIME. IT’S BATMAN TIME. SOUND THE ALARMS.

He makes a stop at the Gotham Central Hospital, where he hangs outside to overhear a doctor and a nurse discussing Jimmy Knife-in-the-Back’s status. No improvement. Jimmy keeps babbling like a lunatic about Chubalas and human sacrifices. Batman finds the human sacrifice part interesting. He makes a point to let us, the reading audience know that he finds it interesting, by looking at us and saying the word “interesting”.

What? This comic book? Hardly.

Next stop? The top of the hospital, where Batman finds three seedy young men loitering. “Good evening, gentlemen. Come to pay a call on Officer Fong? Visiting hours are over,” he says, menacingly perched atop a stone pillar like he’s taking a painful dump.

Batman suggests, strongly, that these ruffians leave right now and turn themselves into the police. Or else! The three men take the “Or else!” option and attempt to simultaneously attack the Great Big Bat.

It doesn’t work!

So, fighting ensues. Mostly one-sided fighting. Batman doesn’t get a scratch on him, and handily wastes two of the men right away. The third one gets scared, poops his pants, etc., attempts to run away. “No…I’ll be next–” he says, and takes a leap off of the 900-story building. Batman saves his ass by grabbing his ratty ponytail. Instead of scalping him to death (after which he would fall anyway), this employs cartoon logic and it saves him instead.

“You won’t die tonight,” Batman growls, hoisting this man back up to the roof, “Maybe tomorrow.”

The police later find these three tied up to a street post. All cozy-like and unconscious.

Aftermath! Bruce and Alfred have a good laugh in the car. These three who attempted a cop murder, Bruce found a bunch of cool stuff after rummaging through their pockets. $80,000 in cash, packets of heroin, and an identification card! Alfred, you can have $30,000 and the heroin, but I’m keeping this ID card for sure! “Lukas Wilson”. Hmm… “Wilson”… like the volleyball. That’s the last name of the pregnant dumbass who killed herself. If anyone needs Bruce for the next three hours, he’s gonna spend some time in his sex dungeon. I mean, laboratory.

“It’s heroin, all right,” Bruce declares after lots of extended testing involving a spoon, a lighter, and a syringe. Alfred turns his nose up at Bruce’s heroin experiments, mostly because his lab seems to be in a room with a lot of fancy furniture. He splashed a bunch of sulfuric acid on a priceless antique Chippendale table! Is nothing sacred in this house anymore?

Bruce is inclined to barely agree! At some point he’ll need to make a bat-like cave for himself. For now, though, Madison Spurlock is on the tube. Be a dear, Alfred, and fetch the remote.

Ha, check this out. Dr. Spurlock is telling everyone the fable about the raven and the bat. The super-secret story that Bruce wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about ever. Way to go, brain genius. Now we know Spurlock can’t keep a secret. Maybe you should have started something a little more low-stakes, Brucey. Something like “I like to poop in a diaper”.

Elsewhere, these three mopes who tried to murder a cop are now standing in front of Cult Leader McBirdSkull.
“…Thank you for bailin’ us out,” grovels one of them.
“Yeah…that jail, man, was Bummer City,” mutters another.

I’ll tell you what else is “Bummer City”, maaaan. This magic leader is not happy. That shit’s more like Bummer Megalopolis. Heh.

Oh, the hubris of the Ponytailed Man. They never think their hairstyle will be their downfall.

Leader Man performs some more of his voodoo magic and strangles Thug #3 with his own greasy hair decision.

“He died quickly. If you fail again, you will not,” says Mr. Big-Shot.

Yeesh! That’s not very uplifting! Let’s get back to whatever shenanigans are going down in Wayne Manor. They’re spelunking! This huge, underground cavern just sits under the property, waiting to be utilized. This place is perfect for laboratory equipment, a gym, storage, abductees, and some very alone jerkin’ time!

“How long have you known about this cavern?” Alfred asks. Well, when Bruce was four years old, he fell through a sinkhole in the yard and landed here. “Bats, fear, darkness, my father…almost as if the elements beyond my control were conspiring to make me what I am,” Bruce muses. How very poetic for a place you’re just gonna spend a lot of time jerkin’ off in.

Anyway, back to the surface. Lots to do today, Alfie old boy. Scrabble tournaments and chuckin’ rocks and– hold on, the phone’s ringing. It’s Bennet Young, Spurlock’s lackey. He needs to talk to Bruce right away!

“Right away” means 3pm for Bruce. He’s got other shit to do first. Like cave jerkin’. Also, a stop at the police headquarters to talk to Gordie the Mustache.

Like any other day at the police headquarters, a millionaire playboy is masquerading as a homeless man ready to shine the Captain’s shoes and talk shop.

Oh look, continuity!

“What have you learned about the victims of the mutilation deaths,” asks Homeless Joe, face about a foot away from Gordon’s crotch, putting a real good polish on those $8 dollar shoes.

“What we know is that except for Al Kelly they were all from a Caribbean island called Santa Prisca,” says Gordon. Fact check: not a real fucking island.

“The Dope Capital of the Western Hemisphere,” says Homeless Pete with hazy fondness and a shirt covered in drool. It seems this island is where the three hooligans were also from. Drugs and ritual killings appear to be related. Oddly enough, though, these ruffians were terrified. Not of the police, though, fuck the police. They were afraid of something else. Some real Bummer City shit.

Captain Gordon’s flat top-haired female secretary tells him that he’s late for the commissioner’s meeting, so Homeless Jones leaves and heads back to his personal homeless guy chauffeured limousine. “Fear is the common denominator, Alfred,” Bruce declares while pulling off his cheap beard and his nose putty.

Tina Wilson was scared, so she tore into her own guts. Fear, human sacrifice, drugs, sexy Alaskan native women. It doesn’t add up! Not yet, anyway. It will eventually, because as Alfred points out, Bruce will make it add up! Now if you’ll excuse him, it’s 5:30pm. I’m exactly 2.5 hours late for my appointment with Bennet Young. Hope nothing happened to him!

Oops, he’s Bennet Forever-Young now, because he got stabbed with a dang flag pole or something and now he’s dying! Tears are running down his face has he sputters out his last words: “Buh buh bla bub lbub baublk blahb buebh ubahjub burhabhr butamr bramtnan baaaaat maaann.”

“He said Batman!” screams a woman.

“Yes. He did,” says Bruce.

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Final Thoughts

The star of this show is still Alfred. It’s like being a snarky little bitch after every sentence Bruce Wayne speaks is his only way of maintaining sanity during his sad existence of endless servitude.