Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2) Issue #5 – “Face the Court (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Batman is still being a really dumb dickwad about the legend of the Court of Owls even though some Court of Owls guy named Talon (from the Court of Owls) is exercising his Court of Owls agency by trying to kill Batman (as stipulated by the creed of the Court of Owls). Batman ends up in some place called the Labyrinth, where three dudes in masks are welcoming him to said labyrinth. Oh yeah, before Talon attacks him for a second fucking time in four issues, Batman was letting us, the loyal audience, know that he discovered stab marks and metamorphic rock dust on Alan Wayne’s dug-up bones. What’s going to happen next? Who cares! Read on.

Issue #5 is subtitled “Face the Court”, just like Issue #4, which means that there wasn’t any real “facing the court” happening yet. And if this particular cover is any indication, Batman’s gonna get some fuckin’ knives thrown into his neck! Oh boy! Is this the issue where he finally dies? Bye-bye Batman!

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Face the Court (Part 2)”

We begin with a real sad sack Commissioner Gordon trying to signal Batman, but unbeknownst to him, Batman took a detour through some sewers instead, so Gordon’s getting stone-cold stood up right now. Lieutenant Harvey Bullock pops in to tell him that Gordon’s going to blow out the damn lightbulb if he keeps the Bat-Signal on much longer, but Gordon is stubborn and he’s leaving it on as a symbol of hope for the city. Amidst this discussion we see a montage of other heroes in the Batman family such as, uh, Batgirl and, uh, Batwoman? Also Nightwing and Robin, because I guess there’s always new Robins running around once old Robins die or go through puberty?

Meanwhile, we see Batman lurking around some labyrinthian shadows in a fugue state of COMPLETE AND UTTER MAAAADNESS! His suit and cape are in tatters. He’s scrambling around the darkness muttering about owls and being scared of light, all in a very un-Batman-like way. He finds a well-lit room in the maze filled with hundreds and hundreds of time-lapsed portraits of handsome beardy men turning into old, insane beardy men, and young pretty women turning into old haggard, but not beardy, women. I suppose this indicates that this is some sort of game for some sort of puppet string-pulling Gamemaster, and Batman is the current player. How’s Batman gonna get out of this pickle, huh?

Those are some really nice photo frames! I’m gonna have to find out where I can get these photo frames once I’m out of here!

As Batman stumbles around, he comes across a group of chess nerd-lookin’ guys in owl masks (or at least he thinks he does). He gets all paranoid now, yelling stuff like “THIS IS MY CITY!” and “I’M THE BIG KAHUNA AROUND HERE!” and “I KNOW EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY OF THIS STUPID HELLHOLE BETTER THAN YOU OWL CUNTS!”, and I may be paraphrasing a tad. He’s getting all insecure now, tripping around the hallways frothing and spitting. It certainly is a sad state of affairs. Every so often we see a panel with a big yellow “POP” that took me a while to realize it was a camera taking Batman’s photo and not, in fact, some popcorn being made somewhere. I don’t know WHAT I thought!

Fuck you, Talon, I’m the one who is supposed to win around here! Not you! WAAH!

Eventually, Batman comes across another well-lit room lined-up with coffins featuring portraits of adolescent boys and girls with one of them open and empty, wondering if this room is another shrine dedicated to pissing him off. After much more rambling still about how these mysterious Owls don’t own Gotham just because they’ve been there longer than he has, Batman starts hallucinating his own parents down in the catacombs. A terrifying display of his parents bloodily ripping themselves apart into blood-soaked owls causes Batman to be a trifle spooked!

Ahhahaha, oh Ma, it’s exactly how I remembered you!

*yawn* Buh? Oh yeah, some other stuff is happening too. He thinks he finds a trap door in the floor that will lead to his escape, but he ends up back in the portrait room again. There he sees a rather deranged photo of himself on the wall that’s the latest in a line of other deranged photos of himself on the wall. He shouts “NO!” at it. Things aren’t looking well.

Suddenly, Talon (the bad guy!) emerges from that shadows and stabs through Batman’s abdomen with a goddamned sword or some shit.

Meanwhile, the lightbulb in the Bat-Signal has indeed exploded, because why not? A policeman, Gordon, and Lieutenant Bullock wonder what do next, and a scrappy young Robin kid tells them to get a new one. “I SAID NOW!” he says. And that’s the end.

Final Thoughts

Well now, this wasn’t a very uplifting issue! A thrilling mess of hard-to-read panels and swirly art storytelling!

Ok, that’s not fair. An issue showing Batman’s slow descent into insanity was a good idea, and ending with what looks like an actual death scene makes the descent all the more pitiful and undignified. Batman seems truly defeated! Too bad that seven million other issues of comics related to Batman came out after this, so the impact of a Batman death scene is kind of lost on me, you know? But shame on me from not feeling the right emotions I guess!

But still, shit’s confusing and, apparently, this story arc ends with the next issue. How the hell are they going to wrap this up? Or maybe it will spill into the giant Night of Owls storyline that crosses over into forty other titles in the Batman franchise? I’m thinking it’s the latter. I have a lot of work ahead of me…