Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #939 – “The Thin Red Line”! In the previous installment, Batwoman’s crew successfully infiltrates and neutralizes the Colony and their efforts to install an army of Batmen. However, Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong has a backup plan involving the drones. So we have two more issues of “THERE’S A SUPER SECRET LEAGUE OF SHADOWS THREAT IN GOTHAM” while Batman goes “NUH-UH”. Enjoy it.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #939 [October, 2016]
Written by: James Tynion IV
“The Thin Red Line”

Feast your eyes on that cover! Red Robin crotch right in your fuckin’ face! It makes me want to just take a bite out of its succulence.

Heh. Um. Excuse me. Many years ago, Col. Kane and Wifey Kane attend the funeral of the Wayne parents. “I swear, I’d hit him if I had the chance. Walking down a back alley in this damn city, in that part of town? What the hell was he thinking?”

Here’s what he was thinking: la dee da I hope I don’t get shot today, whoops! *guns*

“Thomas never thought about anybody except himself,” Kane continues. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your sister’s dead because of Bruce Wayne’s dumb father. Join the club.

Lil’ Bruce sits in a front pew crying. Lil’ Kate comes to visit. She asks if she can sit next to him, but in a bout of petulance, Bruce tells her that Alfred made him sit by himself. She pauses. “Remember last summer? Beth and I stole your truck and ran through the yard. You cried and called us big jerks.”

“No I didn’t.”

*awkward silence*

“It’s ok to cry if you want,” she smiles. Then she says their dads hated each other, but they’re cousins and family is important. And she’s going to sit there if that’s ok. Or else.

Flashforward to the present where Batman is in Batwoman HQ talking to Alfred on the big ol’ screen they got in there. They might get Superman involved, but since this isn’t his fucking comic book Batman tells him to hold off. Clayface complains that the Batmen really messed the place up. Red Robin grins like a moron. “The belfry heals itself,” he says of smashed windows. “There are replacement panels in the walls that deploy whenever needed.” Again, this kind of technology doesn’t exist and Red Robin is just pulling their legs. They’re actually going to torch the place to the ground, so get the matches.

You can see the “oh shit” moment when Red Robin realizes that he is actually destined to become a carpenter.

“Is everything ok?” asks Slipknot, or whatever Stephanie Brown’s name is.

“I made my decision, Steph. Next semester I’ll be starting with the Ivy University special projects program. And I’ll be devoting myself full time.”

Yeah right, kid. It’s community college for you. You spent all your money on replacement panels.

So he’s hanging up Red Robin, eh? Good for you, son! Learning is important, etc. He and Stephanie hug. It’s a sweet moment. Too bad I’m blowing past all of it right now!

“And when will you tell Batman?” She asks. And he basically says “when this story arc is over”.

Meanwhile, Batman and Batwoman are having their own pow-wow. She wants to know why he lied to her. He knew that Col. Kane was involved in all this from the beginning! Batman merely says that he suspected, but he didn’t know. She tells him that his suspicions are right 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time it’s termites. But she’s pissed off all the same.

“All right. I knew. There was a fleet of a hundred drones in this city, monitoring all vigilante activity, but twenty of those were dedicated exclusively to you. Whoever was behind those drones had a vested interest in you, and a clear objective in mind.”

“So you thought you’d recruit me before they did.”

“Yes.”

Then there’s a back-and-forth about trust and how Kate would react and how her father would react and all sorts of sticky shit. It always disturbed Batman, too, that Col. Kane had access to everything the military could throw at them. Plus poor judgement. And a hate-boner against the Wayne family.

Kate is still stricken with the feelings of betrayal. “It just feels… it feels like I have no family left.” She hangs her head.

“You do, Kate.” And he’ll never lie to her again! *snicker*

It’s Marilyn Monroe! ♪ ♪ Happy Birthday, Mr. President… ♪ ♬

Alfred interrupts on the screen by telling Batman that “the Black Line” is ready. Time to dismantle the Colony from the top down! He gets the president on the horn and briefs him on the goings-on of a covert branch of his military. And Trump’s response to this is “durrrr” before he diarrheas himself into a permanent coma.

Meanwhile, Red Robin is at the computer console trying to figure out how to override any of Ulysses Armstrong’s programs when he discovers something sinister. “They have a secondary drone fleet,” he reports. “Heavily armed. It’s en route to Gotham. Minutes away.”

“Can you shut them down remotely?” asks Batman, always with the good ideas.

“No.” Red Robin answers, slapping his silly goose mentor. “I’m trying to see if I can rework their code on the fly, but that will take time. Too much time.”

Red Robin believes that they themselves aren’t the targets, but it’s the mythical League of Shadows. He looks at the screen and finds ten areas in Gotham that are targets of interest for them. Think of all the innocent lives that might be lost if all ten areas were targeted! After counting on his fingers, Red Robin decides that it might be hundreds!

“Nobody dies tonight,” Batman says even though, statistically as of 2025, 106 people die every minute. Batwoman tells everyone to be on high alert. Order a pizza and put on a pot of coffee. It’s going to be a long night.

Elsewhere, Kane is in some sort of military aircraft entering the city limits now. “We only have one shot at this, people,” he says. “We need to do it right.”

“Never been much of a religious man…” he continues. “But God, if you’re watching… know that what we’re doing is just. We’re saving lives tonight. We’re just being messy about it.” And also, just keep Kate safe amidst all this needless death and destruction! Somehow! Col. Kane is just going to drone strike to the whole damn city, so that part is in God’s hands now.

Hey! Uh… you’re gonna pay for that window!

Batman crashes the fuck through a window of a building and tells its inhabitants to get down to the basement before they get blasted to oblivion. The people just stand there petrified as if some crazy guy in a Batsuit just crashed the fuck through their window. The others are also having similar trouble as they crash through other locations and tell the people to get down.

I guess it works eventually, but they don’t really show that part.

“How did they know we were striking first?” Col. Kane yells.

“Red Robin,” responds Ulysses. “He’s in the system. Not sure what he’s up to…”

“Well, then get him the hell out there!”

Easier said than done, Colonel Sir. One of his team wants to put Batman and Batwoman on top of the target list, but Kane says “NO!” Move onto other targets, gawddamnit!

They start with where Spoiler crashed into, so she contacts Red Robin who is going to try to reroute the drones. This scares Spoiler, wondering what he actually has in mind when he tells her that he’s going to try pushing them to a single target. Ulysses is freaking out that his drones are getting overridden to high heaven.

Spoiler’s stomachache was justified. Red Robin rerouted all the drones to strike him at Batfuck HQ.

“Rewrite the damn code!” yells Col. Kane.

Ulysses frowns like I’ve never seen anyone frown before. “I’ve never seen an encryption like this…”

Spoiler tells Batman that Red Robin reprogrammed all the drones to strike his scrawny little butt, which gives Batman a stomachache. Now everyone has a stomachache. Batman leaps away while Batwoman stays put, intending to have a word with her meddling father.

If you can’t handle this then it really will be community college for you, sonny.

Batman has ideas! “Scramble the Batwing. Full jet, I don’t care if we break the sound barrier too low to the ground. Get it here. Fire them down.” Alfred tells him that it will take at least ten minutes from the manor. “JUST DO IT!” Batman snarls, a hair away from firing Alfred and throwing him out on the street.

Red Robin figures out the math and now the drones are chasing him down. He smiles wryly like he didn’t do something dumb.

“Okay, Bat-Drones. Let’s dance.”

Final Thoughts

Red Robin is going to die and no one will go to his funeral.