Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #615 – “Chapter 8: The Dead”! In the previous installment Batman confronts Joker about killing Thomas Elliot, but while Batman beats the living tar out of the clown, Joker insists his innocence! He didn’t kill this person, not today! And Batman, this fucking loser, he beats Joker within an inch of his life and doesn’t follow through. Because Batman doesn’t kill anyone. What a cuck, dude. Seriously.

So the Joker gets away just like in that Jingle Bells song, and meanwhile a spying man is flipping a coin repeatedly in his hand. Two-Face is at it again, it seems.

So many villains, so little time!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #615 [July, 2003]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 8: The Dead”

“Tommy Elliot is dead. I went to my first funeral at the age of ten.”

Already a strong start!

“As kids, to our parents’ horror, Tommy and I would play hide and seek among the gravestones.”

Snooze!

Bruce Wayne is at Thomas Elliot’s funeral, where he’s getting buried in the Gotham Cemetery (the largest cemetery in the world! Probably!). Dick Grayson and Tim Drake whisper to each other during Bruce’s eulogy, all like “I’ve never even heard of this Thomas Elliot guy”.

Bruce talks about how he and Elliot’s lockers were next to each other despite not even being remotely close to one another in the alphabet.

Bruce starts reciting “O Captain! My Captain!” to everyone’s chagrin. The crowd frowns with disgust. Soon enough, they’re lowering Elliot’s casket into the dirt where it belongs, and Bruce heads back to his Batcave. “I have been awake for fifty-six hours,” he points out to us. It’s not sleepy-time, though, it’s analysis-of-the-death time. The bullet was a bullet and Thomas Elliot was shot through the heart (and you’re to blame!). Joker has been detained. There’s really nothing else to say. Case closed, sir.

“Bruce…? Hello? I’ve been talking to you for about ten minutes,” says a voice near Batman. Batman grumbles and, at request, turns off the computer to talk to Fancypants Dick Grayson. “You’ve got two minutes, Dick.”

Dick Grayson, bulging with little boy muscles, hangs upside-down doing whatever exercise hanging upside-down is. He tells his mentor that Joker is caught and behind bars in Arkham where he belongs, so stop fretting and slap a pillow under your face.

“The Joker didn’t kill Tommy,” Batman says while Dick makes a “buhhhhhh” face.

Oh yeah? Then what’s with this giant pile of the Joker’s written confessions? *empties box full of condom wrappers*

“It involves the manipulation of Killer Croc, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn. It reaches as high as Superman. And as low as the Joker. It’s someone new. Or someone old trying something new.”

Dick tells him that it doesn’t narrow things down much at all, you silly goose. Batman takes this as a therapy session to start crying about how he could have killed the Joker but didn’t. He was just so out of control! Dick puts his poop-smeared hand on Batman’s shoulder and tells him that he didn’t fully act out on his impulses and yada yada yada blah blah blah.

Oracle butts into this friendly guy-on-guy lovefest over the comm and reports that the Riddler just hacked an armored car containing $11 million in cash.

Time to tear Jim Carrey a new b-hole.

Speaking of tearing ass, Batman screeches his way through Gotham’s mean streets. “So,” begins Dick. “Word under the street is you’re seeing Catwoman. Any truth to that?” And Batman punches Dick’s nose with brass knuckles and tells him to mind his own fucking business.

“I take it by your silence… it is true!” Dick jubilates. And Batman kicks Dick so hard in the face that he poops out his teeth.

Dick rightly claims that it’s none of his business, but wrongly continues to lecture Batman on dating super-thieves. Batman narrows his eyes silently while Dick keeps jibber-jabbering about it. How every single relationship he has ever had has tanked because he couldn’t give up his real identity in either direction. Tell her, man! I mean, she probably already knows unless she’s some sort of nimrod.

“You’re right. It is none of your damn business,” Batman glares while fucking Dick’s butt so hard he knocks the teeth out of his head from behind.

The batmobile catches up with Riddler’s armored car. And then, still angry at Dick, advises him to take off his seatbelt…

Who ordered the T-Bone?! AH HA HA HA HAAAA!!

So Batman’s plan was fucking stupid, and Dick is probably all mangled up, but it got the job done. Batman talks about Dick being the first person he had ever revealed his secret identity to, considering Dick went through a similar murdered-parents upbringing. The two of them leap out of the Batmobile and start kicking some goon ass.

While the fray occurs, the Riddler thinks he’s being sneaky and attempts to lift a giant sack of greenbacks from the tipped-over armored car. He gets away with it at first because Batman is thinking about Dick going from Robin to Nightwing and how this has caused a minor rift, but in the end, he’s happy for the kid. As long as he doesn’t talk about who Batman is currently fucking.

Riddler runs through the sewers with his sack hemorrhaging money everywhere. He huffs and puffs and climbs up through the manhole on another faraway street. Victory! Until Batman looms over the guy and pretty much teabags him. Riddler sweats while Batman takes him in one hand, the sack of money in the other, and drags both down the street. “Someone has taken the time to infiltrate the lives of Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Harley Quinn… even the Joker. And yet, the Riddler has apparently been ignored.”

Why was he ignored? Is it because he smells? A riddle in of itself, you might say.

How does 400 hours of community service twisting up balloon animals at the orphanage sound?

Meanwhile, orange-coated Joker sits in his cell in Arkham. An attorney tells him he’s free on bail pending a hearing to get the charges dropped. Batman works on telling Catwoman that he’s really Bruce Wayne in a crafty disguise! Joker finds out his attorney is Two-Face Magoo. Catwoman takes off Batman’s cowl, revealing the dashing Bruce Wayne.

“Harvey Dent is back,” Two-Face says, no longer Two-Face but indeed Harvey Dent I guess. “And I’m going to finish the job I set out to do as District Attorney when the law was on my side.”

Bruce and Catwoman hug it out. This is going to bite him in the ass something terrible.

Final Thoughts

For a story called “Hush”, Bruce Wayne sure is doing a lot of blabbin’ about being Batman. What an idiot.

Also, now that Joker is out again, who is he going to kill next? The smart money is on Dick Grayson. He was raised in the circus, you know. The stink of elephant shit lingers. He’s easy to find.