Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Wheel of Misfortune” / “Russian Roulette”! That’s right, you get two wheel-themed stories for the price of one this time around. In the previous installment, Batman fights the Joker Impostors for a bit, but then is able to cut himself loose from his chains and start kicking some asses. Dollmaker gets away, though, possibly aided by the police? Hard to say. Detective Comics!

In the aftermath, Bruce and Charlotte Rivers canoodle in Colorado, Commissioner Gordon is still recovering from having a kidney stolen from him, Olivia Carr is getting transferred from juvenile detention to Arkham Asylum, and the Joker is still out there ain’t got no face! Still out there ain’t got no face!

So we still have a mystery on our hands, ladies and gentlemen and non-binary individuals. Hopefully we solve this mystery by dinner, because I’m having duck fried rice.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Tony S. Daniel
“Wheel of Misfortune”

“Batman…Penguin… …only one controls Gotham!”

Yeah, and the twist will be that it’s Jermaine Jackson!

“They think I’m the one responsible. That I took him. Tortured him. Mutilated him. Skinned him alive,” Batman thinks while doing his usual swoopin’ rounds across the city. Do they really think that? I don’t remember reading that! I don’t think anyone is thinking twice about it!

Ah, yes, I’m forgetting about the disaffected clowns. Batman arrives at Old Grant Park, where a gaggle of face-painted jobless bums are holding their anti-Batman rallies every night instead of getting laid or whatever else would be a better use of time. The mayor is pissed that these clowns are roaming the streets; it looks bad for re-election. Also, it looks bad to side with the clowns on a common goal of getting rid of Batman.

Enough of that for now. Our caped crusader has to intercept a deal going down between a dude named Axel Bellamy and a dude named Mr. Gorky! Witnesses caught Axel “Rose” Bellamy hijacking a truck of hazardous chemicals earlier. Looks like Bellamy is committing some good old fashioned extortion!

Oh no! How does it look? Does it look bad? Did it just graze me?

While Batman yammers on about the goings-on of Bellamy, and how Gorky is trying to be an up-and-coming crime asshole, Boris Gorky gets an eyeful of ninja star! Ha! No one expected that! Then a joker clown leaps out of nowhere with his Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sai weapons. He cuts all these fuckers down sai-style! I’m not sure actually what that entails, though. Maybe he pokes ‘em for a bit.

Batman compliments this clown’s agility, gliding gracefully down the alleyway like a preening swan! Must be either a master of jiu-jitsu OR a big fan of Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Either way: respect, brother. Batman tries to knock this guy to the ground, but Joker McFakey sprays the bat’s face with acid. Of course, Batman made sure to wear his acid-proof cowl today instead of his purple paisley cowl, so he should be ok, but his dang lenses are fogging up! And the (fake) Joker got away (hey!).

Unrest bubbles over in the clown crowd as Smarty Man Batman pushes through the throng. “Wrong costume, moron!” they say, with varying degrees of sentence structure, as they laugh at this dumbass who showed up to a Joker rally wearing his Bat Hat. lmao.

The clowns try to kick this fool’s ass. It doesn’t work. “Out of my way!” Batman yells while punching a clown. The punch sound is “baff”. He tries to baff a few more, but they outnumber him! Batman didn’t think this one through, he should’ve gone around the clowns! Or over the clowns! Through the clowns? The worst way to navigate the thicket of clowns!

“Hey, I think that guy was the real deal,” says one.
“Naw, we’re still breathin’,” says another.

Eventually, the guy who wore bat clothes to a clown parade escapes the crowd, but he wishes he were quicker. Speedy jiu-jitsu man lept in a boat from the pier and is motorboating his way to freedom. And, you already know that by “motorboating” I mean rubbin’ his face in some titties. To freedom.

Are you sure that’s the boat and not the guy going “VEHHHMMMMMBBBBB”??

He left his clown mask on the ground near the water. Perhaps a DNA test back at the Bat Cave is in order as long as there’s not about 30 other guys’ semen on it. Who knows where that mask has been? Clown gangbang parties are likely a nightly occurrence on every block of Gotham City! It’s like a regular GOP get-together.

For now, he pockets a $1000 Iceberg Casino chip that was also left on the ground. Way to go, master of jiu-jitsu and getting away silently, for leaving stuff behind that are actual clues. Even I wouldn’t have accidently left behind something like that. Maybe a $5 chip.

Awaiting on the other side of the…body of water…a corpulent man with wonky eyeballs and festooned with boils, named Mr. Mosaic, is enjoying a drink in his fancypants limousine. ”Where the hell is that thieving dirtbag?” he grunts to his driver, who is probably welcoming every moment of silence between the two of them. How dare this jiu-jitsu motherfucker keep a man of Mr. Mosaic’s ample stature waiting? Very busy tonight! A man raps on the window just as Mosaic gets ready to leave. “You made it. ‘Bout damn time, too. And what’s with the wet briefcase?” he whines, “Wait–this doesn’t look like 20K! What do you take me for?”

Ahh, now there’s some currency that speaks my language!

Mosaic gets a gun to his temple and starts whistling a different tune. Now he insists that they’re square, and even offers the guy his gold VIP pass to SOMEWHERE WE DON’T YET and then leaves the limo so that the assailant can get a ride into town as well. This Mosaic guy, nothing like the business end of a pistol to shut up his fat, boil mouth.

Let’s go to the Iceberg Casino, where business mogul and rock climber Hugh Marder meets with Charlotte Rivers. She apologizes for Bruce’s absence, but Marder pays no mind. He’s a busy guy! Probably off fucking some other broad! But hey, maybe he’ll show up later! After all, he needs to come here anyway since he found that one poker chip! Here, have a drink.

** HUGH MARDER IS GONNA BE THE CRIMINAL ** there’s your Tom Wonders About Stuff exclusive.

Marder introduces Rivers to his “friend” Sophia Lake, and the two become fast buddies already. She excuses herself and slips away to the bathroom. “It’s probably better Bruce bailed on me anyway. I won’t have to explain my absence tonight,” Rivers muses as she dresses up incognito as a SEXY MAID, hoping to…I don’t know, find some drama to report from the casino’s sexy maid quarters?

Unbeknownst to Miss Rivers, she’s being watched by the cameras.

“Isn’t she a clever little bird? All dressed up and nowhere to work…Lark, see to it that Charlotte Rivers, the world’s nosiest investigative journalist, gets the story to die for,” orders a particularly ugly, stout, monocle-wearing, cigarette-holder-smoking, pants-pooping penguin-looking businessman penguin-type.”

“Your wish is our command, Mr. Penguin.” says his three buxom Charlie’s Angels.

AND THAT’S IT! We get to see what happens next in Issue #6. I wonder who this penguin-like man is! I can’t for the life of me figure it out!

For now, onto the back-up.

“Russian Roulette”
Written by: Tony S. Daniel

“To say that I’m disappointed in him wouldn’t be completely accurate,” The narration describes a man named Eli who showed up at the narrator’s doorstep for the first time in sixteen years. Sopping wet from the rain, Eli looked like a drowned kitten, see? A real curtain-scratcher. Curtains, that’s right. It’s curtains for Eli, see? Even if he IS flesh and blood.

A man gets thrown through a doorway to the outside. “Took my stinkin’ Rolex! Dirty, filthy dogs!” the man yells, keeping the language PG for the kids. Another man, presumably drowned cat Eli, buzzes the doorbell. His turn to get thrown onto the street! “Boris Gorky said to ask for the ‘Mad Russian’. He’s– He’s expecting me,” he stutters. Get me a White Russian while you’re at it.

♫ ♪ Guess who eats together at the Carnegie Deli? / Bowser from Sha Na Na and Arthur Fonzerelli ♪♫

Eli looks like Adam Sandler or something. A real New York Jew.

The “Mad Russian” introduces himself as Leon. He’s got a poker game going with all the fellas! Leon invites him over the table. “So…does it buy me in?” Eli asks him, flashing a heart-shaped locket on a diamond choker. Nah, kid, fuck that. Let’s get to know each other first! What’s your last name, Whitney? Ha! Manning? Ha ha! What, Strange? That name’s a little, dare I say?…weird…

Eli would rather not talk about where he comes from. Being the son of Benedict Cumberbatch brings a lot of baggage along with it! Leon calls for a pile of chips for the kid: $200,000. One of the Mad Russian’s buddies, let’s just call him Paulie Walnuts, asks with a snort where the kid got that choker. “You rip off your mother or something? Eli merely tells him that he found it, none of your business the circumstances, and there’s plenty more where that came from…if he even likes playing poker with these chumps in the first place!

“Jokers are wild. You a fan of the Joker, Eli Strange?”

Eli Strange doesn’t like these mass murdering types. Killing women and children? Ehhhh…it’s unsavory. “I just don’t see the point. What does the guy want? What’s he after?” the young lad asks inquisitively. The Mad Russian knows! Money and pussy, son! Just like the rest of us here at the table, heh heh heh! *cough*

We see shots of other hands at the table. One guy is aces full of jacks. Another is twos full of fours. Eli’s full of shit! I can tell! Look at him, he’s all “OPERMAN, BYE-BYYYEEEEEE!!”

“Word on the street is the Bat killed the Joker!” says one guy before folding.

Leon raises an additional $50k on top of the $100k in the pot and motions to Eli. The implication here is that Eli wins this hand, and many other hands, because a “lucky streak” is commented upon. “But you got some brass ones, I’ll give you that, kid,” says the Angry Russki. Eli drops his monocle and BEGS’S LEON’S PARDON, who sets down aces full of jacks. Eli counters with his own ace-high straight (only one card in the wrong suit for the royal flush).

Yeah, that’s not really the badass effect you were gunnin’ for, buckaroo.

“Good gamesmanship, gentlemen,” Eli smiles while collecting his chips, “Now I have an engagement to–” but, obviously, he doesn’t get to finish. He just pissed off a guy with “Mad” in his name! “The host always gets to win back his money. House rules,” Leon says with, what I can only imagine, the cold sharpness of his Prince Albert dick piercing. Eli hesitates.

“I like you, Boy. I told you that already. Let’s play another game…” Leon steeples his fingers. Eli looks like he swallowed a cactus.

“…Let’s play, Truth or I-Start-Cuttin-Off-Digits!” Leon shouts while his muscle pushes Eli’s dumb little Waterboy face straight down into the table with enough force to crack the wood. They lift his sleeve, revealing a contraption BUILT FOR CHEATING AT CARDS! And you know what tipped Leon off in the first place? The choker’s a fuckin’ FAKE. Because he already HAS the real one! Show the kid the real one, Chuckie. Go ahead, Chuckie, show it to him… I’ll wait…hey, get a move on, Chuckster!

“Leon, we’ve been ripped off! Everything’s been taken!” ol’ Chucko brings the bad news. But lookee here, he found something in a car’s glove box: a little cat figurine with a tag saying “GOTCHA”.

Eli grins at the opportune cat-like burglary (from a Cat-type burglar, you might say!). And lo, the Cat-type burglar appears and kicks that cat figurine right out of this guy’s hand. “The money you boys were playing with now belongs to me. A fee for my trouble, mind you?” says Selina Kyle, as Catwoman, looking way more BDSM-y than the last time I saw her.

Leon tells this stone-cold bitch that she’ll wish she was dead in about a minute, but Catwoman rakes him across the face with her claws and kicks him down. She does the same with Leon’s goons. “This is Gotham City. Not Moscow. There’s a pecking order here. And you are worms that get pecked from the dirt,” she tells them all with the finality of someone who was able to CLAW her way to the top of the pecking order, you might say.

Yo! Pecking order! Didn’t you hear the nice lady?

Catwoman tells Eli to go back to his father, he’ll be safe with him. He asks if he done good, boss? She says, yeah, sorta, except for the nearly-getting-fucking-killed part. Now go home, kid, before you’re a witness to more of Catwoman’s brand of corporal punishment. Let’s just say, you’ll be seeing it in the next issue of Bumpaddle magazine!

The narrator speaks again. “You’re still alive, Boy. Every time I think you’re in over your head–you prove me wrong. Your brain works faster than the others. It must. You must be more like me than I dared dream!”

And here I’m thinking, why? Because he got caught cheating at poker and Catwoman saved his ass in the last minute? Anyone could’ve distracted them! Especially if you had a pair of titties to flash! God…

Anyway, Prof. Hugo Strange, the big mean Batman villain, wants to take his son under his wing now.

We’ll never see that happen.

Final Thoughts

Eh. The second story was way more intriguing than anything I’ve seen so far from the primary story. Batman chasing down the Penguin at a casino? So he can beat him at a game of Roulette? Is Batman going to drop his dick and balls on Red 7 and hope for the best? Pfft.