Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #4 – “Face the Court (Part 1)”

* Part 4 of 6 of the Court of Owls storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2) Issue #4 – “Face the Court (Part 1)”! In the previous installment, Batman is struggling to admit that this legendary cockamamie “Court of Owls” nonsense is not actually a giant, steaming load of malarkey and horse-hockey! He creeps around his architect great, great grandfather Alan Wayne’s buildings and discovers secret hideouts by this mysterious order in every single building he investigates. He told Alfred to dig up Alan Wayne’s grave and then the building he was in blew up and he’s probably dead now. Is he dead? Do you think he’s really dead? Is Alfred boning Alan Wayne’s sexy corpse? Read on, gentle reader. Read on.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #4 [February, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Face the Court (Part 1)”

The building is blowing up because Batman accidentally set off a tripwire and we see an action sequence of Batman befuddlingly escaping near-death as he throws out more Court of Owls lore at us. The Big Cheese of the Court of Owls is named Talon, and yes, he has secret bases in secret 13th floors in Wayne-constructed buildings all over town. Batman ain’t havin’ that! This is his town, Owl Motherfucker.

Cut to Bruce’s pad, where once again I’m confused about the characters because they all have black hair and blue eyes like some sort of clone experiment gone sexy…er, I mean, uh, gone wrong. Alfred had dug up the ol’ bones of Great Great Grandpappy Al, and Bruce is trying to analyze his gross old skeleton for…I don’t even know, owl DNA? To prove that the Court of Owls is real? Ah, ok, Bruce calls the other guy “Dick” so he’s either Robin/Nightwing or he’s just a dick. But that means Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Lincoln March all look the same. I can’t get over this shit.

Oh Grayson. You coy little boy, you.

Anyway, Grayson is concerned because Wayne is even more ruggedly disheveled than usual (you can tell by the artful stubble on his face) and that means he’s too obsessed with his work to sleep. Wayne is still convinced that the Court of Owls is a hoax, despite the evidence piled up to Mt. Everest in front of him, and reveals that he investigated the Court shortly after his parents were killed in a murder. We flashback to a scene of an angsty young Bruce making sullen faces while present-day Bruce talks about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his parents’ murder death killing. He talks about when he had told his dad that he heard about the Court of Owls and his dad had laughed in his FUCKING face. He talks about when they had discovered an owl nest in the attic. He talks about how, as a youngster, he took it as a bad omen. We see a montage of young Bruce with his cute little camera, “looking for clues”. Soon he would start to distrust the family, friends, and business partners associated with the Wayne dynasty. “No one could be ruled out”, he says.

Bruce’s young and scrappy detective work brought him to a place called Harbor House, noting that each and every one of his suspects had been tied to the club at some point. After a little snooping he discovers a windowless room at the top of the Harbor House tower that was likely a secret meeting room, because why not, right? “I had found the Court of Owls.” he triumphantly declared, only to learn after actually entering the room that it was covered in a million years of dust and cobwebs. He was so disappointed that he didn’t notice that the door to the room closed behind him. “I was locked in there for over a week.” he moans. LOL! Now that’s hilarious! That’s the funniest thing to happen in the series so far! “When Alfred finally found me, I was already comatose.” LOL! We have a new winner!

The Court of Owls strikes again! Fuck you, Bruce.

At the end, after a three-week hospital stay (LOL!), his faith in the existence of the Court of Owls had been irrevocably shattered. Grayson encourages him not to give up, which goes against his concerns about how hard Bruce has been working, but hey we can’t let our emotions stagnate between minutes! Gotham City is old as shit, there’s hundreds of years of secrets to uncover, son.

Bruce puts on his Batman pants and plans to meet our favorite Gotham version of the Cigarette Smoking Man, Commissioner Gordon, in a scary spooky alley. On his way, though, he decides to play in the sewers for a bit. So, remember early in Issue #3 where they show Alan Wayne raving in the streets and falling down a manhole? The cause of the death was, presumably, death by manhole? Well, Batman has another theory! He found tiny punctures in the man’s fuckin’ BONES. He was killed by knives! Perhaps owl knives?! But wait, he also found residue on his bones. Alfred’s crusty semen? Close! Dust from a metamorphic rock! OK, that wasn’t close. Sorry, I got excited.

Before he could explain why this dust was important, Batman gets ambushed in the sewers by Talon himself! Talon sings him a cute little song about owls while he pummels him into the ground. Batman falls through some sort of sub-sewer and he sees three guys in masks welcoming him to the Labyrinth. And not the David Bowie kind!