Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #657 – “Null and Void”! In the previous installment of the Prelude to Knightfall story, Robin trains a guy named Jean-Paul Valley, “Azrael the Avenging Angel” to be a Good Guy instead of a Bad Guy. In the process, they bust a WayneCorp employee who has been selling copies of sensitive documents to biker gangs! So Robin and Azrael beat up every jerk in the building and save the day!

And where was Batman during all this? Unconscious on his Batcave steps, of course! Exhausted, fatigued, sleepy, burnt-out, he tries everything except go to bed! So he calls a doctor about a physical exam because he’d rather have a finger up his butt than a pillow against his head.

This reminds me of a personal anecdote: One day I w–

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #657 [March, 1993]
Written by: Chuck Dixon
“Null and Void”

Batman has been so tuckered out lately! Alfred has found him asleep in a chair still in his Batman costume. “This will not do at all, Master Bruce. That costume is not to be worn in the upstairs rooms.”

Do you think Bruce Wayne gives a shit? Bruce Wayne does not give a shit.

Alfred drags Bruce’s 900 pounds of pure muscle over to his cozy pink four-poster bed. The butler suggests that Bruce sleeps today. Bruce doesn’t wanna, he’s got so much to do with so little time to do it! Like beating up bad guys. And knitting a sweater.

If Bruce doesn’t go to bed this instant, Alfred threatens to let Tim Drake know that Bruce was cavorting around the upstairs in the Batman costume. Something that Bruce himself scolded Tim for not one or two issues ago! Plus, maybe he should hang up the Batman thing for a couple nights anyway. Wayne Enterprises’ stock is tanking and it’s because no one has actually seen Bruce Wayne out in daylight in roughly seventeen months.

“Do you hear the music?” says a man sticking his head out a high-rise window.

“I do! I do!” responds a man standing on a ledge ready to jump.

“And do you feel the wind through the trees?”

“I feel it!”

“And do you see your one true love waiting under the elm?”

“I see her! Yes! Yes!”

“WANDA!” he screams as he jumps and falls to his death. The man in the window takes out a pad and crosses a name off of his list of three names. The third name is “L. Fox” (the “L” stands for “Luxurious”!)

The next morning, Bruce meets up with Lucius who tells him that he looks like hell and smells like the worst of three butts. Bruce asks his fine feathered friend for something he can do – anything – that’ll take his mind off of his life. Lucius throws the man a hard hat; he’s got a project at WayneTech that he needs Bruce’s advise on. It’s an AI sex robot and he’s concerned that it’s not doing enough sex. Let’s go!

Garth from Wayne’s World reporting for duty! Party on, sir!

Jean-Paul WhatsHisNuts is continuing to be a Good Boy at WayneTech with the whole security officer thing. He asks for a task more challenging than reviewing security tapes, but there are no tasks more challenging than that. Things are pretty boring around here. There are paper football tournaments!

“What about the break-ins at Wayne Plaza?” asks Jean-Paul.

“You know about that?” Sal asks.

“Only what I read in the daily reports.”

“You actually read those things?”

“You are changing the subject, Sal.”

Brrrt! Good point. Uh, let’s see… no, you’re not ready for Wayne Plaza break-in duty, son. Stick to the shit work and keep your fool mouth shut. Speaking of shutting up, here comes your boss.

Bruce and Lucius approach the kid with wide smiles! Bruce shakes the nerd’s hand and asks how the new job is suiting him. Jean-Paul doesn’t complain, he’s nice as pie. Sal is taken aback by Bruce’s familiarity with the little snot-nose. Now it all stinks of nepotism. Stinks to high heaven, and the stench is not Sal this time. He remembered his deodorant today.

Lucius shows Bruce the Echo Project. “It involves digital imaging and high-resolution video,” Lucius says proudly showing him the most pixelated JPEG that has ever been made. Lucius doesn’t know what this will all be for. All he knows that it’s a component of a much larger project, of which he also doesn’t know anything about yet. But that stuff doesn’t matter right now! What Lucius needs right now is Bruce’s help getting contracts for other components of this mystery job with the mystery components that even the guy who’s spearheading the project doesn’t know anything about, apparently. Please don’t fire me, sir.

One guy in particular needs sweet-talkin’, and Bruce can sweet-talk his way out of an orgy that he himself started. Bruce accepts the task.

Don’t let me interrupt your calisthenics, Robin.

Elsewhere, Jean-Paul aka Azrael meets up with Robin for some more of that training that Robin is so bad at. Azrael tells him all about the Wayne Plaza break-ins, so he wants to scan for weak points in the alarm systems. Robin lambasts him for wanting to do Security’s job, asks him if he needs the overtime. Azrael tells Robin to cork it and come on. So they do, all right. They do a lot of coming on.

Azrael has a cool idea on how to get past the security cameras! He has a giant 80-pound camcorder with an even bigger satellite dish that he will use to record boring footage and then loop it into the security camera so that all it shows is the boring footage (a bunny eating a carrot, for example). “The security men watching will see what is going on the tape rather than what is going on live,” Azrael mansplains to his dummy companion. Robin thinks it’s a good idea, but someone already beat him to it. That means someone’s already inside. Which means cake and ice cream has been delayed.

That evening, Bruce meets up with their government contact, Roth, to schmooze with a dinner of duck and a pleasant smile. Roth tells them that the project is so secret that WayneTech isn’t getting every component of the job. The work has been separated into the three sections and a different company is working on each one: WayneTech, GE Aerospace, and Burger King. And the end components will be assembled at a military facility where all personnel will chomp on cyanide pills and shoot themselves in the dick upon completion. Bruce chuckles at the wryness of the project! Bravo, sir! I salute you!

Robin and Azrael infiltrate the plaza and beat up some hooded bad dudes who are trying to do something unclear. One of them has a chainsaw, which is very loud and it’s waking up all the babies. Sounds like Robin and Azrael should be killed handily. Let’s return to the action in just a moment.

Roth assures Bruce that he wishes WayneTech could have taken on the entire project, but his hands are tied. They can’t take any chances. How are they supposed to blow up the moon with a moon laser if WayneTech knows it’s a moon laser? Whoops!

Like in a candlelit bubblebath with a good porn rag. They just came out with the new “Fuck Sluts” monthly.

Bruce sees Roth off and considers this a wasted-ass evening. He could have played Batman tonight! Such bullshit. Good thing Robin is out there at least, he thinks, not knowing that his ward is about to get decapitated.

Somehow, though, Azrael gets the upper hand! He has stolen the chainsaw and is threatening the bad dude with it. Getting it really close to his eyeball. “You want to kill me?” Azrael asks coldly. “Go ahead! Try! Come on! Try and kill me!”

Robin stops Azrael before he can fill the guy’s skull full of chainsaw. Too bad, too, because that would have made for some compelling comic book-writin’. Instead, Robin kicks the chainsaw out of Azrael’s hand even though that’s the most dangerous thing anyone could do in this situation. Jesus, kid.

“We’re not killers!” Robin reminds Azrael.

“Lost control… I was going to murder him…” Azrael says, rubbing a temple. He worries that his programming runs too deep and that he might not be able to change.

“You’ll get a handle on it,” Robin assures the dork. “Batman believes in you. So do I.”

OH, WELL! ROBIN BELIEVES IN YOU! THAT’S GOT TO BE WORTH THE TOILET PAPER YOU WIPED YOUR ASS WITH THIS MORNING!

Anyway, time to boogie. They hit the alarms and get out of there while all the bad guys lie unconscious like dogs.

The hypnotist guy from earlier, the one with the list, he knocks off the next name by convincing the guy he’s a schoolboy running off to class in the middle of traffic. “The mama’s boys are always the easiest. So eager to please,” he says as the victim gets creamed by a semi-truck. Only Lucius Fox is left on the list, and that guy is dispensable. Seriously, go for it. No one’s gonna care.

Joke’s on you, bud. School’s out for the summer. School’s out forever.

The ringleader of the whole Let’s-Steal-from-Wayne-Plaza-LOL plan gets interrogated at the 43rd precinct by Harvey “fat and unwashed” Bullock. It wasn’t Batman this time who administered the punishment beatings, oh no. It was Robin and some nutjob who swung a chainsaw around like he owned the place (and the place was the Chainsaw Store). And Bullock’s like “Some nutjob, eh? Sounds suspicious! There aren’t any nutjobs in Gotham!”

Meanwhile, an officer who is surveilling the interrogation shows Sal a bald, hypnotizing, list-having man checking into the building right now on another screen…

Bruce and Lucius visit the first guy’s grave. The guy who jumped out of the window screaming for Wanda. Something makes Lucius uneasy, but he can’t put his finger on it…

Oh yeah, he knows what it is now? Being played by Morgan Freeman in the movies? That dude is old as shit!

Final Thoughts

I don’t care much for Lucius Fox. I hope the mysterious hypnotist man throws him into a wood chipper.

And Robin’s a punk. Throw his ass in there too.

And Batman. Let’s just woodchip the shit out of the whole city.