Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #4 – “The Main Event”

* Part 4 of 7 of the Faces of Death storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #4 – “The Main Event”! In the previous installment, Jim Gordon is held captive at the abandoned Gotham Mercy Hospital by the Dollmaker, who uses Gordon to trick Batman into falling right into a trap! Now Batman has to fight five dirtbags wearing sewed-on Joker faces in some sort of enclosure while people watch.

It’s unclear to me how the whole Gordon-killed-Wesley-Mathis, Joker-killed-Dollmaker’s-son, Gordon-killed-Dollmaker’s-father thing connects together smoothly yet, so hopefully that piece of business didn’t get all twisted up into an accidental logical paradox while this story was getting drafted up. I’m looking at you, Tony S. Daniel. Thin ice, buddy.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #4 [February, 2012]
Written by: Tony S. Daniel
“The Main Event”

“Who pulls the strings of Gotham?” the cover asks mockingly while Marionette Batman snarls. If there’s one thing I know, Batman ain’t nobody’s puppet. EITHER HE RUNS THE CITY, OR NOBODY DOES! Not you. Not the mayor. No one.

Flashback to before Batman got caught up the little sociopathic girl who turned on the Bat-Signal. Deep in Crime Alley, 72 minutes prior to getting gangbanged by Joker clones (the dream!), Batman is shaking down a man named Raju, putting his head in the toilet, giving him swirlies, and demanding answers. He doesn’t like Raju very much, but since he works as a trusted messenger between crime families, Raju’s his only hope tonight.

So, one more plunge into the toilet and Batman confirms the whereabouts of the Dollmaker’s hideout, I guess. Raju mentions something about an auction, and it’s the only thing he knows, and I don’t think that really says anything! Maybe it’s a police auction. Maybe Dollmaker’s at the police station…where you’d least suspect…

On the roof of the police headquarters, Home of the Signal, discussions are rumbling about the dead cop that Olivia killed in the street last night. “I spoke to a couple of witnesses who can tie the bat to the scene of Officer MacAlloy’s murder,” says Detective Forbes of the Internal Affairs department, aka Cop Snitch. Det. Harvey Bullock knows Batman, that guy ain’t no Cop Killer like Ice-T. Forbes provides some useful information about Officer MacAlloy, such as “Gordon didn’t like him” and “Gordon killed him by summoning Batman to kill him” and “I saw it happen”.

Yuck, I can’t eat this.

Harvey’s got a mystery on his hands, that’s for sure! A guy like Harvey Bullock sure looks like he likes mysteries. As long as they’re deep-fried and coated in ketchup. While investigating the Bat-Signal itself, Harvey notices Batman’s message: unfolded, right-side-up, easily readable, near the center of the signal glass. You know, just like real life. Is Batman so careless that he wouldn’t pocket the message, or rip it up, or eat it, or poop on it, or anything? OR, perhaps, did he do that on purpose because he knew he was going to be led to the Clown Trap?

In any case, Harvey Bullock’s got a lead. Whew, that was hard work. All them stairs. Time to sit on the couch and eat Bugles.

Ahhh, now the good stuff. Mercy Hospital, circa right this moment. The four fake Jokers are cackling while Batman gets whipped around by steel cable puppet strings pulling him in every direction. It’s all very elaborate and dumb, but how dumb can it really get? That I’m excited to see.

Ah, the Jokers are on puppet strings too! It’s an even playing field. He kicks one in the face! BAFF! He knocks another’s knife out of his hand! HUFF! The crowd watches this display of…whatever this is. It’s stupid.

Elsewhere in some unknown room, Gordon sleeps shirtless in his cell, exposing his overly-hairy torso and his man nipples. Olivia approaches his cage and tells him he looks like shit. Gordon can hear the clown/bat fight racket, and he asks her if she knows that that sound is?

In true villain form, Olivia dresses up for some reason. “I have a confession to make. Dollmaker put me up to it. Figuring out a way to bring Batman here.”

Gordon’s all drugged and wonky-lookin’, eyes pointed in slightly different directions. “Saving you from this beast is all I give a damn about right now…” Hey, Gordo, weren’t you listening? Olivia and this beast are in cahoots! Cahoots, I say! Olivia brings out her shiny cop-killing knife. “I’m sorry, Commissioner,” she says, raising the knife, pointy side down, glistening in the moonlight, covered in the blood of *checks notes* 450,000 souls that came before it at its hand. Wow!

While watching the clown fight, Nurse informs Dollmaker that the Messenger has arrived. Dollmaker wants the Messenger to shove off.

The Messenger has been banned from all my personal MMA fights. He knows this. The guy talks too much, has too many messages to relay to everyone.

The Messenger has a new buyer willing to pay double the highest asking price…as long as Batman’s alive, of course. Now we’re talking! Money money money money money! Dollmaker instructs his one-eyed cymbal-clapping chimp, Sampson, to “subdue the Batman”. Sampson hits a couple of buttons on his remote control, and Batman is hoisted and held by cables many feet above the stadium. All four Jokermen look quite dead. Ah well.

Dollmaker is shrewd, and he’s not going to get ahead of himself with fevered excitement and clouded judgment over this offer. Too good to be true, as they say. When he asks the Messenger just who this buyer is, the only thing he’s told is “Let’s just say he Waddles to the beat of a different drummer.” Ah! Penguin! It’s Penguin! Danny Devito! Burgess Meredith! The Penguin is rich and stupid and hates Batman, no wonder he wants to buy him at an extravagant price. Who knows what fiendishly sexy things he’d like to do to him behind closed doors. Open ones too, for that matter!

The Messenger is revealed to be toilet-face Raju. Yeah, no shit, since Batman made a point to call him a trusted messenger. Dollmaker agrees to the terms of Raju’s client’s choosing, but he needs the body back in 24 hours…also, make sure he’s not dead longer than an hour before his return. For, uh, pickling reasons.

Batman, meanwhile, struggles in his constraints. He’s surprised to learn that the cables are his own magnetically controlled design! Buh! Whuh?!

“I will do your corpse justice, Batman,” sneers the Dollmaker with a sexual glint in his milky eyeball.

Dollmaker doesn’t have more time for elaborate fantasizing, because Batman hits the demagnetizer on his trusty Swiss Army Belt and frees himself. All of Raju’s henchmen are recognizable as Penguin’s bunch, and Raju has some nerve to show up here in the first place after what had happened earlier. Head in the fucking toilet, Raju! You’re gonna get yours again! He punches Raju in the face. The Dollmaker slips away, and Batman continues his fight with the gaggle of cronies and ne’er-do-wells. Ne’er-e’er-do-wells, you might say!

In another room, an unknown individual calls the Nurse and tells her, coldly, that he never approved of this stupid little wrestling match that she and the Dollmaker cooked up. “You’ve taken your eyes off what is necessary.” So kill the fucking Police Commissioner and get rid of the body post-haste, the police have been tipped off and are on their way to the hospital as we speak!

While Batman still fights, he decides that Gordon, if he’s here at all, must be held captive on the third floor in one of the operating rooms per the blueprints. Whatever. How the fuck would he know that? Gordon could be in a women’s bathroom stall of the hockey arena on the other side of town for all Batman knows. Gordon could be at the bottom of the Nile River in South Sudan.

Sampson the Cymbal Chimp and Bentley the…large skullface… are clearing out the freezer of organs and other body parts. Dollmaker said bring as much as you can. But hurry! They don’t taste as good when they thaw, you know!

These rubes don’t have enough time to collect all the organs. Batman busts through a wall with an onomatopoeic “KARASH”. Sounds like a vegetable.

But sir, your bedrest!

Some other patched-up pincushion enters Gordon’s quarters, where the Good Commish is lying comfortably in the hospital bed. “Ah, there you are. Still alive. Clinging to what’s left of your life.” says the patched-up pincushion to the very healthy-looking mustached man mere feet from him. Gordon bolts upright and trains his gun on the assailant. “STEP BACK, MOTHERCUNTER!!”.

But it’s not this that causes Pincushion to actually stop. He slumps forward, revealing a knife in his back and Olivia Carr behind him. “You didn’t have a chance. The gimp would’ve slit your throat,” she says with all the emotional energy of a piece of bread. Gordon still doesn’t see this for what it is. “Stop. You’re leaving with me,” he tells her. I think we can all guess how that plan will pan out.

He now has his gun aimed at Olivia, but she’s not afraid. It ain’t got no bullets. “I’m not afraid of anything. Not Dollmaker. Not Batman. Not you. Not dy–” Gordon grabs the kid and hugs her while she cries, “…not dying…”

Batman was able to hear the Commissioner’s howlin’ voice down the hall and starts a-runnin’. He hears Olivia too. And a two-way radio. And a bug eating lunch. And a small town in Cambodia. Out a window, Dollmaker’s car peels out and away before the coppers show up. Gordon and Olivia appear at the doorway; he tells Batman to get the hell out of here and follow the car.

“The last time I met a police chopper, it was firing bullets at me. Tonight, it’s a sight for sore eyes,” he says as he swings around town again. Don’t breathe sighs of relief just yet, Batty Boy, they’re coming for you next! Rocket launchers this time!

In literally no time, like two panels, Batman catches up with the car and lands on the roof with another sickening “KARASH”! More vegetables! The car is fucking totalled, son.

Thanks a lot, jerk. That’s gonna be another expensive paint job.

We are treated to a full-page spread of the car EXPLODING! From what, I don’t know. Batman’s rocket-fuel boots caused a spark in the gas tank? Cars don’t just blow up like that. This was an inside job.

“The car’s roof shielded me from the blast. Lucky,” thinks Batman, since the editor of <a href=”/loneliness-and-cheeseburgers/detective-comics-vol-2-issue-004″>Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #4</a> (don’t click that link, you’re already reading it) was like “this is really asinine, Tony S. Daniel. Does the ‘S’ stand for ‘Sucks’? I guess I’ll have to explain to the readers why Batman didn’t die. Again.”

A bunch of bodies fly out from the fiery wreckage, but they’re just plastic doll parts. The police helicopter, Batman assumes, secretly smuggled the Dollmaker and it flies away from the scene. Curious.

Welp, that’s the end of that for now! We cut to Colorado at a later time, where Bruce Wayne is cozying it up in some scenic cabin with whatsherface. Reporter lady. Cloris Leachman? No. Charlotte Rivers. They gaze upon the beautiful mountain scenery while Charlotte talks about how this place melts away all the work stress. “The Dollmaker story took a lot out of you, sounds like,” says Bruce, peppering in proof of his bare-minimum active listening.

You’re gonna get the back of my hand, lady, I swear to God.

“I found myself really worrying for Commissioner Gordon’s safety. And that young girl…Olivia. I- I don’t like stories like that. You always expect the worst outcome. At least now, with Gordon recovering in the hospital, I might be able to nail down an exclusive. Maybe I can even-”

Bruce tells her to zip the fucking lip.

The issue ends at the Gotham police headquarters, where the mayor and Harvey Bullock discuss Dr. Arkham’s decision to sic his lawyers on the department and arrange for Olivia to be taken out of juvenile detention and into his asylum. “I mean, sure, the kid’s probably messed up a little. But that place would only make her worse.” Mr. Two-Cents Bullock over here.

Mayor Hady doesn’t see the harm in it. After all, Gotham doesn’t have the dough or resources to cough up lawyers of their own to fight this case anyway. Dr. Arkham just wants to perform a two-week evaluation and that’s that. Bing Bang Boom. Enough time for a psychiatric evaluation, then maybe cuff the kid then if she turns out to be a genuine little cop killing sociopath! Let’s get a bite to eat.

On another note, there’s a slew of whack-jobs setting up shrines and wreaths and candles outside the police headquarters. Joker’s followers. What’s up with that, Bullock, you slovenly man you? And Bullock’s like “they’re poppin’ up faster than we can tear ‘em down, sir. Makin’ me all winded.”

This is all because they’re keeping Joker’s gross face in the headquarters as evidence. Evidence of what? Evidence that Joker no longer has a face? Commissioner Gordon was supposed to move the thing, but he got abducted and they stole an organ and wah wah waaah.

“…I’d like nothing better than to get rid of that thing,” Bullock mumbles, staring at Joker’s cryogenically frozen face.

He gets just a liiiitle bit hard, I think.