Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2) Issue #3 – “The Thirteenth Hour”! In the previous installment, a mysterious assassin with owl knives seems to have hella murdered mayoral candidate Lincoln March and kicked Bruce Wayne out a glass window at the top of Wayne Tower! But then Wayne landed on a super secret gargoyle and the assassin landed on a parked car! But he didn’t die! MYSTERY! What will Bruce Wayne do now? Will “Flaccid” Dick Grayson finally admit to committing the murder crime? And is Commissioner Gordon still eyeballing that sexy corpse at the morgue?! Read on, gentle reader. Read on.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“The Thirteenth Hour”

Issue #3! We begin with a flashback to a harsh 1922 Gotham City winter, where some sort of raving lunatic is running through the mean streets. It is revealed to be Alan Thicke! I mean, Alan Wayne, the guy who oversaw the construction of Wayne Tower! But he’s ranting about the “thirteenth hour” and “nests all over my home” like Grampa Simpson forgot his medicine. The police recognize him and are befuddled, but Alan Wayne falls down an open manhole nearby before they make a decision about the situation.

Flash forward to the current day, where Batman is holding some poor sucker over the subway tracks and demanding information before the train blasts on by. I’m beginning to think that this Batman guy means business! It turns out this guy is named Luka Volk, a Ukrainian mob boss, so you’d better believe that not only am I excited to have to keep track of yet another new character, but now the whole damn country of Ukraine is apparently involved in this shifty business. Since the Gotham chapter of the Ukrainian Man-Boy Love Association smuggles a lot of their goods through the railways, and because Batman suspects that the mysterious assassin who tried to kill him…uh, I mean Bruce Wayne, heh heh…came in through the rail lines, Batman wanted to hammer some tough love into Volk and get him to spit out some INFORMATION.

So they start to go into detail about all the gangs and how all the rails are controlled by each gang and that they cooperate and have love-ins and how the Ukrainian gang is the toughest because they force their recruits to wear iron masks for a year and oh man they’re so tough. But Batman is tougher, you see, so the Ukrainian mob boss is scared of the scary man with the cowl and he pleads Batman to let him off the hook because he knows nothing about anything. Batman’s super-duper lie detector contact lens plugin tells him that Volk is telling the truth about his ignorance, so he lets him go. For now.

“I’M THINKING ABOUT BECOMING “OWLMAN”. HOOT!

Back at Wayne Manor, a haggard and stubbly, yet artfully disheveled I must say, Bruce Wayne is using his voice recognition app to try to figure out the assassin’s identity to NO AVAIL! Wayne has a bee in his bonnet about owls, thinking that the existence of the fabled Court of Owls might not be such an outlandish idea after all. He tries to elicit some insight from his butler Alfred, who is 900 years old and probably was born before the childhood Court of Owls nursery rhyme was even written. Alfred has some information about Alan Wayne’s senility and his obsession with owls and the nests that he thought were all over his house. They go nowhere with this and we all move on with our sad lives.

Bruce Wayne steps out for a bit to get a little fresh air and to visit his twin Lincoln March in the hospital, where he’s recovering from the stab wound inflicted by the mysterious assailant the night before. I’m still stunned that the comic book artist drew this guy and was like “yeah, I’m happy with how this guy looks”. March tells Wayne about getting hassled by the Court of Owls himself, thinking that maybe their efforts to shake up Gotham is causing unrest within this secret order. Bruce Wayne is getting FUCKING sick of hearing about owls, man, let me tell you, and he’s wondering why a guy like him, who is so connected to the city and so dashing in a reflection, could have lived his whole life not knowing about them. March ominously tells him that maybe they didn’t want him to know…until now. *lightning strike* *shrieking cat* *foreboding musical cue* *fart*

Bruce Wayne is a single-issue voter, it seems. Also, using phrases like “old birds” certainly won’t get March the Golden Girls demographic.

Next Batman schools us with more owl facts, just in case you wanted to be tricked into learning something while reading superhero comic books. In the midst of this fascinating lesson he talks to us about superstitions and how Alan Wayne was susceptible to them, even going as far as to remove the 13th floor from his buildings. It was standard practice to leave a little space between the 12th and 14th floors in order to “trap the bad luck”, so Batman now suspects his owl-y nemesis was hiding there. You know, for fun. And he’s right, because he checks up on it and finds all sorts of trinkets, knick-knacks, paddy-wacks, kettlebells, owl suits, photos of owl-masked individuals dating back to the late 1800’s, possibly some sexual apparatuses, who knows what else? Batman gets addresses from Alfred to other buildings designed by Alan Wayne and the all have the same 13th floor gap with a secret owl hideout! Batman then tells Alfred to dig up ol’ Alan Wayne’s bones, and then the building he’s in explodes in a fiery “KRABOOOOM”. Yes, you read right. Kraboom.

Kraboooom.

Final Thoughts

OK, shit’s starting to get legitimately interesting here! After three issues I can honestly say that I’m into this story, and my desire to be snarky throughout my commentary seems to be waning a trifle. BUT I HAVE A JOB TO DO, DAMNIT! Who are these mysterious members of the Court of Owls? Why are they squatting in all the Alan Wayne buildings? Why do they want to kill the entire Wayne family for good? Is Alfred gonna fuck that corpse after he digs it up? Is Batman dead this time?

All will be revealed in the next exciting chapter of the saga!

But no.