Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #618 – “Chapter 12: The End”! The end, indeed. In the previous installment Batman fights a fake Jason Todd who turns out to be Clayface in a crafty disguise, so Batman continues to be completely befuddled as to who is actually pulling the strings around here.

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #619 [November, 2003]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 12: The End”

Some inconsequential guy named Harold, whom Batman visits on the Gotham City Bridge, gets shot by a dual-wielding gunman. It looks like it might be Harvey Dent, but that’s weird, right? I guess we’ll find out soon enough…

Pour one out for Harold, my good man.

“You’ve murdered him.” Batman clenches his teeth menacingly. The mysterious man wrapped in bandages WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE TWO-FACE aims his two guns at Batman now.

Batman reminisces about our dearly departed Harold. He used to be mute, his body misshapen, he wandered through life as a victim. He could speak to machines and electronics, and therefore was very good at cyberchips and internets. Batman thought he did good by him by allowing him to work in the Batcave. Oh well!

The murderer starts quoting Aristotle, which confuses Batman. None of his enemies are well-read! What gives??

The maniac starts shooting and Batman starts dodging. Remember Harold? Batman’s back on Harold. You see, the Penguin found Harold wandering the streets once. Penguin took advantage of him and helped him do serious criming until Batman scooped him up and subjected him to Batcave slave labor. Someday, Batman had hoped to restore his voice. Until then, a fancy kazoo was utilized for communication. Just kidding! Or am I?

“Harold’s death is meant to keep me off balance. His betrayal leaves my attention unfocused. I have to shut all of that out.” So the ever-calculative Batman attempts to figure out who his assailant is. A shooter who quotes Aristotle, for starters. Generic trench coat. Gun specs that prove inconsequential. “When this… all began, someone severed the Batline. I fell, fracturing my skull. Since then, I have been searching for that individual.”

Oh, I get it. This issue is going to be 75% rehashing of previous events while a gunman keeps aiming poorly and shooting at Batman! Fun! Is this for everyone who jumped into the Hush storyline in the last issue. Because fuck them.

“THE GAME ENDS TONIGHT!” Batman yells, kicking tha bandaged man with one oversized boot.

When he caught Bruce Wayne jerking off in a tuxedo in the bathroom during the most lavish ball of the year.

“Where did you get this?” Batman asks, ripping off a green pendant from the man’s neck. The pendant that Harley Quinn tried to steal from Thomas Elliot at the opera. The one he was buried with.

The bandaged man calls Batman “Bruce”, spooking him a little bit. Batman is starting to think that this is Thomas Elliot back from the dead, but that’s plumb impossible! “WHY hide your face? WHO ARE YOU?!” Batman screams while bleeding all over the damn place. Again. The bandaged man just stands there, asking Batman if he thinks it’s a coincidence that they’re both here on this bridge on a rainy night. The same kind of night when Thomas’ parents had that car accident…

“I do not know how you could have heard these stories – but Doctor Thomas Wayne did everything in his power to save the Elliots.”

Well, he didn’t, did he? And Bruce promised that he would. He promised.

“What is this all about? A child’s broken promise?” Batman punches the man again. “No, Bruce, I was never angry that your father let me father die on the operating table. It was that he let my mother live.”

Batman is confuzzled.

So fuck you. Sins of the father, and all that. Eat shit, cunt.

An explosion rocks the house, son. Batman gets blown toward the bandaged Thomas Elliot Zombie, who tells Batman that he was lucky his parents died and left him with an immense fortune while he had to wait years for his mother to die of cancer. He admits that he strapped the Batmobile with C-4 while Batman and Harold were chit-chatting. “I’m taking you to Arkham where everyone else gets the pleasure of unmasking–”

“PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!” yells Jim Gordon with a gun. “PUT YOUR KNEES IN THE AIR AND YOUR HANDS ON YOUR KNEES, AND DO A BACKFLIP AND LAND ON YOUR KNEES WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND YOUR KNEES ON YOUR HANDS!”

“NOW.”

Thomas Elliot grimaces. Jim Gordon to the rescue, eh? Batman, getting half-Nelsoned by Thomas, tells Gordon to take the shot, but Batman and Thomas are too close together for a clean hit.

Harvey Dent emerges from near the smoking Batmobile. He’s not afraid to take such a risky shot! BLAM BLAM, right in the shoulders. Batman waxes nostalgic about his former good friend Harvey Dent, who got acid splashed in his face and became Two-Face. His face looks better now, and Batman wonders of this friendship can now be rekindled?

Thomas falls off the side of the bridge, and Batman follows him. He must know if it’s actually him underneath all those mummy bandages.

“Look,” Dent turns to Gordon,” I shot ‘Elliot’ in that alley. It’s how I knew the Joker was innocent.” Turns out that ‘Elliot’ was Clayface, too. Always with the Clayface. “You’ll be charged for this,” warns Gordon. Dent just smiles. “I’ll take my chances with the courts.”

Batman comes back up out of the water and onto the bridge, wondering who did Dent’s plastic surgery. “You’re kidding, right? You just saw him take a header off this bridge. Friend of Bruce Wayne’s. Elliot. Doctor Thomas Elliot. Did the work in Philadelphia.

“Thomas Elliot is dead,” says Bruce, but Dent tells him to dig up the grave. He’ll find clay residue.

Have you ever seen a more beautiful sight in your life, Jim? The terrifying flames are like a serene sunrise…

Two weeks later, Huntress stands atop a tall building posing like a badass on top of a bust of a gothic, uh, bird. Catwoman shows up to give her shit about being affected by Scarecrow’s fear gas. “You’re angry with me, Batman, everyone… but mostly you’re mad at yourself.” Catwoman smiles. Huntress tells her to go to hell. You know. For her sins.

Huntress asks Catwoman if it’s worth it to keep changing costumes and switching sides on the good vs. bad thing. “…Yes. As long as you’re doing it for yourself… and not for what someone else thinks of you.

Superman meets up with Batman in the Batcave, where bats come to play. Batman is beating himself up for taking so long to crack the case that he pretty much failed anyway. Superman tells him that detective work is like finding your eyeglasses. They’re always in the last place you look! Heh heh. *avuncular clap on the back*

“How could I have not known what was going on around me?” Batman grits his teeth angrily. He pushes a button on his computer console and shows Superman how Thomas Elliot got to him: “Subliminals. Every time I used the computer, Harold’s hidden relay would randomly flash his image. When I fell… when I needed a surgeon… I only thought of Doctor Thomas Elliot.”

“Bruce, what can I do to help?” Superman asks. How about shutting up for starters, then going to hell.

Batman wonders how Thomas Elliot found him in Metropolis. And everywhere else for that matter. Superman uses his x-ray vision and discovers a chip – a homing device – implanted in Batman’s skull. Damn you Thomas Elliot and your incredibly invasive surgery!

“Burn it,” says Batman.

“I could hurt–”

“Do it.”

So Superman fries Batman’s brain like an egg. He stands up and decides that Thomas Elliot did not work alone. The detective work continues…

*intermission*

*dancing popcorn tells you to go to the lobby*

Batman travels to Arkham Asylum and becomes very wordy at whoever is there listening to him. We don’t know who it is yet, but rest assured that it’s probably Jermaine Jackson. Batman surmises that it all began with Killer Croc kidnapping the kid for the ransom, but the man he’s talking to didn’t need the ransom. Thomas Elliot financed all of it. Then he got Kryptonite for Poison Ivy’s lipstick. He promised he could surgically fix Croc’s mutation… for a price. Scarecrow did the evaluations. Poison Ivy was involved because of the money. Harley Quinn? She’ll do anything the Joker wants to do. The Joker? Hmm… he was promised butt stuff? Maybe the whole Jason Todd thing piqued his interest. And Clayface? Money! It all comes down to money in the end, does it not? Ra’s? Not really in the game, was he? He just wanted to know who was using the Lazarus Pits.

The thus-far unseen man is doing a crossword puzzle. “How do you know it was me?”

Now for some dumb shit! “Elliot’s medical records are in storage in Philadelphia. You didn’t use your real name. But… ‘Arthur Wynne’. The man who invented the crossword puzzle. That was the missing piece.”

Final Thoughts

Just kidding! Would that be funny if I just ended it right then and there? 12 issues and then anticlimax? What an lol that would be.

Terminal Riddler! The perfect criminal. Bask in his glory.

It was the Riddler all along! “You were diagnosed as terminal. When you came out of the pit, you must’ve been quite mad.”

“Not mad. Angry. I used to be somebody in this town. Now, everybody has a gimmick. I was going to show them all. And I did.”

Riddler thought he had a gambit: a cure for cancer. Thomas Elliot’s mother died from it, he would have done anything to help cure it. “Turns out, he wanted something more.”

So Riddler came up with “Hush”, the bandaged man in a trench coat. It started as a funny ha-ha-type joke! “Then, Scarecrow started singing the song. ‘Hush, Little Baby…’ It’s about a kid who can’t be satisfied. And it stuck.”

And now, somehow – I don’t know how because I’m not paying much attention! — Riddler knows Batman’s secret identity: Jermaine Jackson! Barring that, Bruce Wayne.

Batman has his own gambit. He knows Riddler better than he knows himself, for serious. Just a man made out of riddles and nothing more. Edward Nigma. Yeah, that’s right. Fuck you, too. “In case you ever again do decide to trade on my identity… keep in mind Ra’s al Ghul is still looking for who used his pit.”

Riddler buries his face in his hands, defeated! “Get out,” he mutters.

“One last thing.” Batman turns around. “Why Jason? Why bring the boy into it?”

It’s because Riddler lost so many times to Batman that he wanted to really hit him where it hurt, that’s why. Fucker. “His grave is empty. Where is Jason’s body now?” He smiles. “That is a riddle, isn’t it?”

Right in the face! Punch! Riddler gets his nose bloodied! That’s the shit that’ll get you owned, sir. A guard comes into the cell to see if everything’s all right. “He fell,” replies Batman, and then he takes his leave.

Later, Batman stands in the graveyard where he buried Harold. Catwoman watches from the branch of a tree. She can’t believe it was the Riddler all along.

Now there’s the situation where both Batman and Catwoman know each other’s secret identities. Batman claims that he’s not very good at having partners or opening himself up to anyone, but Catwoman reminds him about fuckin’ Nightwing, Robin, Alfred, Oracle, et al.

When Catwoman tells Batman to “hush”, he gets all mad at her and grabs the fuck out of her wrists, hurting her. “What the hell is wrong with you, Bruce?” And now Batman wonders if she can really trust Catwoman. He wonders if she may have been part of all this… and they both wonder when they can really trust each other.

Anyhoo, show’s over, folks.

Final Thoughts (For Real This Time)

What a ride! Another epic Batman story in the books. What’s next for the caped crusader? Will he help Nightwing with his homework? Will he give Robin a spanking? Stay tuned for the next storyline: “Daddy Batman”.

On second thought, kill me instead.