Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1 – “Detective Comics”!

I didn’t get enough of a Batman/Joker fix with The Man Who Laughs, so I’m continuing my New 52 adventure with the big, fat Detective Comics reboot! I’m sure it will be lukewarm and disappointing, but you get what you sign up for.

Detective Comics are to Batman as Action Comics are to Superman. I still don’t know why exactly there are 1,500 Batman-related series with “BATMAN” in the title and, yet, Detective Comics still continues to churn out Batman stories as well. What distinguishes the Detective Comics stories from the rest? Is there more of an element of MYSTERY and CASE-SOLVING involved? I’m already quivering with orgasmic anticpation!

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1 [November, 2011]
Written by: Tony S. Daniel
“Detective Comics”

Cool! A bloodied Joker feasting on a pile of severed doll heads. What’s not to enjoy already?

“One-hundred fourteen murders over the past six years. That’s nineteen murders a year. And I can pin them all on him, even if the courts can’t,” speaks a voice (possibly Batman, or Stevie Wonder!) while we see what looks like a lifeless, bloody visage of the Joker himself supine on the ground, mouth stretched into a grinning rictus. “His modus operandi changes with the wind…and it’s been windy in Gotham City.” OoooooOOOOoooh, poetry! *fart*

Usually, his murders are haphazard and patternless, but in the last month there’s a been a string of homicides wherein the the bodies were mutilated, and the organs and parts of their faces removed. Some had even been old acquaintances. Some victims received calls from the same room in a transient motel in the lower east side before their deaths. That phone was just used again 15 minutes ago! Batman on the prowl! Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na segue!

And the Joker’s not lifeless and dead! Quite the opposite! He’s alive and trying to fight some large, bald guy with a torn-up eye mask garment that is either made of leather or, possibly, human skin! “Mr. Joker, I know you weren’t expecting me, but I was given orders! You were supposed to be in the loop!” This large guy knocks the clown all around this industrial basement, crashing into walls and boxes, emptying his face of precious, precious blood with each successive punch to the fuckin’ jaw! ACTION! ACTION, BABY!

He’s really letting this green-haired bitch have it, but then Joker cracks him back with his own face.

You hear that? That’s the sound of me breaking your skull with my own teeth, Daffodil!

Against the wall, Skinmask tells Joker that he’s his biggest fan. Joker brandishes a knife and thanks him profusely. “Allow me to sign my name for you, then…” and he starts stabbing the unholy piss out of him “…over and over and over and over and OVER AND OV–” Joker is distracted at this point by a flying bat-shaped surveillance drone.

“A man should be able to slaughter in peace!” Joker cries while this drone hovers ten inches from his face. I suspect that, any second now, Batman is going to present his trademark complete disregard for finely-festooned, artisan windows with delicate–

Yep, there he goes, crashing into the motherfucking place, scattering glass everywhere like a complete asshole. At the same moment, a bag that Joker hurled toward the window explodes in a fireball. Doll heads scatter around the room. Looks like it’s gonna be one of those comics. One of those exploding bags full of doll heads comics.

Joker leaps out the window and runs away. Savoring the moment, Batman finally knows he’s going to nab this sucker…and then the PUTRID voice of a SNIVELING CHILD behind him interrupts his good time. A little girl hides under a crate, crying. “Please don’t let the Joker kill me, too!” she whimpers, unaware that the fire is now an even bigger threat. Also, she’s lucky that the caped crusader didn’t just say “fuck it” and start following the clown around town.

But perhaps he just should have! Armed Gotham City police break down the door leading into the room. “STEP AWAY FROM THE GIRL, BATMAN! HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM! NOW!” The girl coughs in the smoke while Batman starts pummeling the police while shouting “ACAB! ACAB!” loud enough to start car alarms on the street. These bitch-ass police don’t even try to stop to help the girl, so Batman has to instruct a detective named Barnes to take the girl out of the building. Then, Batman starts heading down the stairs baiting the police into leaving the burning building as well.

Finally, all that “shooting-bullets-into-civilian-buildings” training has paid off!

A hovering helicopter spots Batman running down the stairwell. Needless to say, they find this man running around in tights a big enough threat to completely obliterate this building with semi-automatic fire. The bullets go “BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA” as it punches through concrete. Oh he’ll be praying to Buddha all right.

“Who told those morons to open fire?” asks a sexy Jim Gordon, red-mustached as ever, on the building’s ground floor. Why, it was Mayor Hady! Gordon’s gonna have words with that fat cat. Why are we blowing up buildings in pursuit of Batman in the first place? We’re supposed to be better than Detroit! In Detroit, the mayor orders the police to kill little kids who are holding too many hot dogs.

Batman’s booking it back to Wayne Manor in his Batmobile. It must’ve broke its wheel, ‘cause, you know, the Joker got away. Batman’s trying to process the events of the evening, mostly this one: why was the Joker completely naked? Ha! Was he? Here, let me go back and check…oh baby…yeah, that’s the stuff.

But there are other things that are more important I GUESS. Who was that skinmask guy dead against the wall? Even the cowled one couldn’t tell if it was made of meat or skin or something equally weird and gross. He plows his Batmobile right into the side of a mountain, but it’s a hologrammed doorway. He plows his Batmobile right into a cave wall, but it’s a hologrammed doorway again. Alfred appears in this part of the underground cavern. He’s the third hologram, but Batman doesn’t plow into him. Maybe he will later after a lovely candlelit dinner.

Alfred informs him that a certain MISS RIVERS is frazzled. She rang for the young buxom Bruce Wayne twice already. He mustn’t keep his date waiting. *wink* But Batman has no time for dates with women named Charlotte Rivers! That’s a bastard name if I’ve ever heard one, over by the House Tully neck of the woods! Bah! “Send her something nice from me. Write her my deepest apologies,” Batman demands aloofly of Alfred. Alfred’s gonna draw penises in the margins of the letter, I’m sure of it.

Yuck. Spray it with Lysol.

Some back and forth ensues about how Bruce is a shitty romantic partner, then it’s onto business: “Right now my problem is the Joker. He’s added another victim,” Batman whines as he puts the Joker’s big, ugly, gross, herpes-riddled face onto one of his many BatConsole Windows 3.1 computer monitors. If he doesn’t figure out what the FUCK the Joker’s doing this time, or why or how or FROM WHENCE, then “the blood is on my hands”. Pffft. Whatever. Move to Florida or something, Brucey.

GOTHAM CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT! Jim Gordon doesn’t want to convince his men to stop hunting down the Batman again! It’s like, what the hell, comrades? I’m in charge! Listen to meeeeee! Plus, Batman’s the only knucklehead in the city who actually helps Gordon solve cases in the first place! Gotham’s police force is full of a bunch of doorknobs.

Gordon has been shooting the big, bright Bat-Signal in the sky for at least 44 hours. “What took you so long?” he gripes when Batman finally graces him with his presence. Gordon’s not happy, these murders don’t look good. And usually murders don’t look good anyway, but these really don’t look good. The mayor is extra ornery about these murders since it’s campaign season in about six more terms, so they need to fix this shit quick or else they’ll elect Donald J. Trump Jr. in a landslide.

Batman isn’t worried, the city needs him. No one is going to get rid of Batman! Except that the police destroyed a building with helicopter bullets trying to kill him two hours ago.

Gordon’s got some info on the girl: Olivia Carr, 11 years old, and she was with her uncle tonight. The unnamed uncle was Meat Face. Batman wants to interrogate this kid, but Gordon won’t allow it. “She’s already been picked up by a family member. She was helpful, surprisingly. Says she overheard something about the Joker staying above the Roscoe Pharmacy…” Gordon keeps talking but Batman already fucked off into the night.

LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A DETECTIVE MYSTERY ON OUR HANDS, FRIENDS. GOOD THING WE’RE READING DETECTIVE COMICS!

Swinging around the city, Batman airs his befuddled concerns. Why would the Joker just throw out his location all willy-nilly? Unless he wanted to trap someone! Ha ha, not Batman, though. He’s wise to ALL traps. Can’t rule out the possibility that the Joker’s using Olivia Carr to misdirect anyone who asks her questions. Can’t rule out the possibility that Olivia Carr is a hand puppet stuffed with plastic explosives and large cartoon anvils.

Outside the Roscoe Pharmacy, a team of armed Gotham Bulls in a China Shop are ready to break into the building and smoke this clown out without any real proof that he’s there. Harvey Bullock is leading the raid! He looks fat and unwashed and stubborn. I think we may have seen him during the Court of Owls storyline. Gordon tells him to take the Joker alive, and Dent promises that maybe he might possibly be alive when they’re done with him. Tee hee.

He giggles, talks, AND poops!

Batman, on an adjacent building rooftop, turns on his “binocular thermo-imaging lenses” (*jerkoff motion*) and sees the Joker through a window giggling. He’s sitting still. Unnaturally still. Like a big exploding puppet stuffed with plastic exp- SKABOOM!

That’s the sound of the fake Joker going off, killing all of Bullock’s men and destroying the building. Batman leaps from his post and crushes a cop car upon landing! Take that, Popo! In the crowd, he notices a purple-garbed individual faced away from the scene.

Batman drops some fun facts on us. During a crisis, an innocent person will immediately a) verify his/her own safety, b) become curious about the crisis, and c) rubberneck like the dickens. This purple guy ain’t doing none of that. This purple guy looks guilty. This purple guy is trying to run away.

The purple guy is the Joker. He’s the Joker. I solved the mystery.

Joker boards a train. A little girl asks her mom why there are so many strange-looking people on the train today. The correct answer is “because it’s Gotham”, I don’t even know why this girl is even asking. Joker thinks she’s talking about him, but she calls someone a “giant Bat-Monster”, which causes Joker to look toward the door at the end of the train car.

It’s Batman. I solved the mystery.

Batman warns the riders of the train to leave immediately, but the Joker is already 90 steps ahead of him and unleashes some gas from an unknown source. “We should share a laugh or two…hehehe,” he says like a smiling…pun…guy. Batman tries to fan the fumes away from everyone, but the toxin has already started making him dizzy. “But I can take it. I’m Batman,” he tells his reading audience, insulting everyone’s intelligence.

Except he’s clearly addled as he tries to fight Joker on top of the speeding train. Joker sticks two knives in him before Batman cracks him in the jaw.

Batman ain’t smart! He hasn’t even picked up on all of Alfred’s obvious advances!

“Anyone else would kill you.” Batman grimaces at Bozoface.
“That’s your problem. No guts.” Joker responds while whipping out a joy buzzer and electrocuting the pus out of our “hero” over here. “I, though, don’t have that problem. Which shouldn’t come as a shock to you!” Did you hear that sound? That was the sound of me groaning all the way from Chicago.

Batman’s all kinds of incapacitated at this point. “There’s a bigger problem than me in Gotham City, Batman. Haha,” says Joke Boy as he lunges at Bat Boy with a giant kitchen knife, “But your tunnel vision’s kept you from seeing the bigger picture!”

At the last second, Batman grabs the Joker’s knifin’ arm and flips the bitch off the roof. He wouldn’t have done that if wasn’t 100% sure he would live, certainly, but Joker fell pretty far. In real life he’d be dead as shit! But this is a cartoon! And cartoons are for babies. Listen, the Joker falls and crashes and he’s not dead. That’s all you need to know.

Joker wakes up, so to speak, bound in a straitjacket within the hallowed halls of Arkham Asylum. The police want to pull his ass out there and transfer him to Blackgate Penitentiary. “Tell them there’s not a snowflake’s chance in Lucifer’s toilet. He’s my patient,” says Dr. Arkham, who I never actually knew was a person before. Also, I bet Tony S. Daniel thought of that “Lucifer’s toilet” line when he was 16 years old and he finally had a chance to drop that puppy in!

After Dr. Arkham makes his point that the Joker is just sick, not evil, and Batman did the right thing by bringing him to Arkham’s Shitty Asylum, the dumbass shows Clown Boy some kindness and leaves him alone.

No rest for the wicked, Chief.

Darkness. And then a knock on the door. “You made it,” says the unknown visitor. “I said I would be here,” responds Jokey Jokester.

Then they exchange a rather confusing dialogue that, I assume, we are completely not at all supposed to know the full details about whatsoever. The unknown man claims to be the father of the guy Joker killed early. So he is Olivia Carr’s uncle’s father. This guy, “the Dollmaker”, wonders why Joker wants him to perform this ensuing procedure instead of his son. After all, Sonny Boy was the best in the biz. Joker is all like “DON’T QUESTION MY METHODS! YOUR PUNY LITTLE MIND CAN’T EVEN BEGIN TO FATHOM THIS WHOLE PROCESS. GET ON WITH IT, DOLLMAKER”

So the guy is like “fine” and he literally slices off Joker’s face with a knife. The final panel is a large, bloody, sliced-off mask of a disgusting Joker face. Off-panel, Joker describes the procedure as “fangasmic”. A rebirth is celebrated.

Final Thoughts

What the ungodly fuck? I love it! Sounds like this will truly be a wild ride!

I already enjoy this more than the Batman Court of Owls storyline. Don’t disappoint me, Tony S. Daniel, if that is your real name. The “S” stands for “Suckin’ muh dick”.