Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #609 – “Chapter 2: The Friend”! In the previous installment, Batman saves a little kid being held hostage for ten million smackeroonies. But before the F.B.I. shows up to collect the ransom money back, Catwoman steals that shit and gives it to her client Poison Ivy.

Will this issue be similarly as short? Will the whole Hush story amount to 500 total words? If I wanted to be amazed by a story called “Hush” I’d watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which I will, now that I think about it!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #609 [January, 2003]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 2: The Friend”

Oracle (Barbara Gordon, which I only know because I’m playing some hella Batman: Arkham Asylum on the Xbox these days) is trying to contact Batman via the chip in his dumb ol’ brain, but he is unable to respond. We last left Batman about to get his ass completely obliterated by a bunch of street toughs carrying items like knives, crowbars, pipes, and Hello Kitty stuffed animals.

“You think he’s dead?” asks one guy.

“I saw him fall outta the sky,” says another. “Like one of them pigeons with a busted wing. I hear he ain’t even human.”

“What’dya mean ‘ain’t human’? He’s bleedin’!”

“How do ya know it’s human blood?”

Batman is totally splayed on the pavement dying of blunt force trauma-related injuries. One guy bends down to reach for the mask, but then green gas ekes out of little holes in Batman’s cowl. Chalk another one up for equipment that I didn’t know Batman had and will never have again. The guy reaching for the mask has been temporarily blinded, and this pisses off the rest of them. “That’s it. I’m gonna bust him up–”

He readies his pipe, but suddenly some fucking electric bolts shoot out of Batman’s tights and electrocutes the guy, I guess. Things are stupid so far, but they can’t be stupid forever, right? The third guy pulls out a gun. “Human or not, he dies now,” he says, pulling back the hammer. Batman is so paralyzed that he can’t even move his arms at all, let alone all willy-nilly.

But that’s ok, because Huntress appears on her motorcycle to kick jerks in the face with her big ol’ boot. “Step away while you still can,” she says, revving up her hogg. What ensues is four pages of grrrl power and ass kicking.

I will make you eat your own pipe, Petty Criminal #5!

BRAK! TAK! TOK! HAMD! KRAK! BAX! FAP! DAP! FOK! SWAG! GAH! I’m not kidding about any of those, especially not “hamd”. But, eventually, Huntress makes short work of every asshole prowling around the discarded Batman. Meanwhile, Oracle has turned on the Batmobile’s autopilot and the thing literally drives itself to the scene to pick every up. Going against actual logical medical practices, Huntress hoists the broken and possibly dying Batman by his ears and throws him in the car like this: *fling*

The car peels out by itself and drives Backseat Batman back to his cozy mansion while Huntress is left in the lurch! “I’m sure when he can… he’ll want to thank you himself,” Oracle tells Huntress as the Batmobile drives off the nearest, highest cliff.

Later, Poison Ivy has a briefcase full of cash that she’s taking to her… ahem… business partner. It’s his/her half of the bounty that Catwoman stole. She’s just about to tell the unknown person that Batman might be a problem, but the lights come on and Poison Ivy stands there alone. All poisonous and ivy-like.

Bruce Wayne knows that he’s back in the Batcave. How he got there, he has no idea. But he can hear Alfred chastising him as he bandages up his completely banged-up body. Even Alfred, a man of jeniusness, cannot patch Bruce up with the skills he knows. First of all, Bruce has a fractured skull. Second of all, Bruce pooped his dumb pants and Alfred doesn’t get paid enough to handle that one. Oracle has contacted Dr. Kinsolving, who may be able to fish Batman’s broken back.

Bruce’s hand starts a-twitchin’. At first it seems involuntary, but locked-in Bruce Wayne is hella trying to communicate with Morse code. Alfred understands right away: Bruce taps out “Thomas Elliot”, to which Alfred literally says “Good show, sir.” I guess this will be a big breakthrough in curing Bruce’s haggard condition!

The papers the next morning display the big, fat headline “PLAYBOY WAYNE IN NEAR-FATAL WRECK”. Oracle had “Wet” Dick Grayson crash the Porsche, making it look like Bruce had a blood alcohol level of 1.4. The talking heads are all over this shit, speculating on Bruce’s condition and whether or not THOMAS ELLIOT, FAMED SURGEON will fly in from Ghana or Papua New Guinea to operate on the man.

“In a fog of anesthesia, I remember one particular Halloween,” Bruce ruminates silently. “My father had promised to take me trick-or-treating and, as usual, was held up in the hospital.” Surgeons wonder where Dr. Thomas Elliot is while they fail completely at operating on the man. “My mother, always well-meaning, suggested I call a classmate and go out with one of them instead. Angry, I told her I had no friends at school.”

Dr. Thomas Elliot makes a grand entrance by inappropriately busting open the operating room door. “Why does everyone look so serious? This is just brain surgery, folks. I’ll have us back out on the golf course before lunch.” This is sort of the levity that gets people killed, sir.

Right. No piece of ass is that high of a price.

Bruce had lied to his mother about not having any friends. “There was always Tommy Elliot.”

There’s an artsy flashback of Bruce and Tommy playing a game that either looks like Risk or that other game with the motherfuckin’ — Stratego, that’s it. They’re all like “I’ve got you cornered” and “You’re dead” and “You haven’t killed me yet” and “I’m six moves ahead” and “I’ve got my general guarded” and “Let’s try kissing each other’s penises”. The Waynes watch their son and his friend play civilly. “It’s like they’re brothers,” says Martha, even though Thomas Wayne points out that brothers argue all the time. “Barring some sort of unforeseen disaster, I think our son has finally found a best friend.”

I love when people say “barring some unforeseen [noun]” because it always ends up happening! And in this case, I think Bruce Wayne’s going to die on the operating table of AIDS.

Or not. The operation was a boring success.

“I barely survived the fall,” Bruce thinks as an unknown enemy reads the next day’s paper. “WAYNE OUT OF DANGER” the headline blares. “Had it not been for Tommy. Had it not been for Huntress. Had it not been for Oracle. Had it not been – that someone cut the Batrope.

The unknown enemy slices Bruce’s picture out of the paper with a very sharp knife. “We make war… that we may live in peace,” he mutters insanely.

Final Thoughts

Things are getting good! And by that, I mean I’m still unimpressed! One of the best stories ever? Pah! I’ve seen better stories on Stargate SG-1, and that’s saying a lot!

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #608 – “Chapter 1: The Ransom”! I heard that this is one of the best Batman stories you can find in comic books. So good, in fact, that it should be a crime that it took me this long to get to it. What am I, an idiot?

Well, let’s not dilly-dally any longer!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #608 [December, 2002]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 1: The Ransom”

Gotham City shipyard, just shy of midnight. Batman has one minute and thirteen seconds left to find the hostage or else it’s hella curtains. “The F.B.I. and D.E.O. cut the power,” Batman thinks. “That will either make my job harder or easier. I’ll know in the next few seconds.”

Batman uses his Super Scope of Endless Information to gather intel on a few grunts in the warehouse. I won’t bother naming them; they have names like “Carlos” and “Spider” and Batman takes them all out with immaculate ease!

“I have to make it clear to Hancock that I do not have time for a long discussion,” he continues thinking. Batman thinks a lot. That’s part of his problem. “Where is the boy?” That one he said out loud to a guy he wrapped up in cord and hung upside-down. The guy swears he doesn’t know, but Batman doesn’t have time for “doesn’t knows”. “You’re lying,” Batman says astutely.

“Fear is an excellent motivator,” he thinks (again) as he reaches for the guy’s face with his hands. I guess the guy gave up the goods, because in the next panel Batman finds a hunched-over crying kid locked in a room that looks like it’s closed with a submarine door. Batman blows it open, killing the kid inside instant and ending the issue.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Batman says to the actually-not-dead kid. The kid has giant glasses and he looks like Jonathan Lipnicki circa 1996. “Y-You’re… Batman,” he says dumbly.

There are only 37 seconds left. Batman notices that the boy is not much older than Bruce was when his parents got shot and killed and died forever. “It makes me think about Clark and how he’d handle the situation. Not just the bending steel and flying out. Clark could smile. That Boy Scout thing. And then say something homespun to put the boy at ease. But the boy doesn’t have Clark. He has me.”

And that’s quite sad, because Batman has the bedside manner of a prickly porcupine dunked in hydrofluoric acid.

This kid is Edward Lamont IV, heir to the Lamont chemical fortune. A subsidiary of LexCorp that created a substance that makes “napalm look like lipstick”. Little Edward was kidnapped by Killer Croc, and not a moment too soon! Speaking of the devil, Killer Croc has finally emerged all giant and going “ROARRR!” “You shouldn’t have come here,” he growls at Batman. “This doesn’t involve you.”

The ransom was for $10 million. The family, the police, the F.B.I., they all wanted to pay the ransom. Batman did not.

So help me god I will keep whaling on you with my special Samsonite briefcase!

Batman bleeds all over the place as Killer Croc punches him with onomatopeia like “BRAK”, making me think about Space Ghost. “I was off by eleven seconds,” Batman says, as if that would have made a world of fucking difference.

“I’M GONNA EAT YOU ALIVE,” shrieks Killer Croc. They keep fighting while Batman muses about Killer Croc’s modus operandi. For one thing, he’s not a kidnapper. He’s not smart enough to be a kidnapper. Someone else was involved here…

Batman remembers that Killer Croc has a vulnerability! Hypersonics! Batman faps a button-shaped device on Killer Croc’s neck and loads him up with vibrations, causing Killer Croc to howl with pain and agony. 1000 decibels! Dude, that would hurt anyone. Nothing special about that.

“YEAH!” yells Edward with joy. Batman tells the kid to stuff it.

Soon, the F.B.I. shows up fashionably late. “Not how we would have handled it–” says the sexy F.B.I. lady. “This is my city,” responds Batman. Like a pompous assjerk.

The Samsonite briefcase, containing all the dang money, disappeared during the fight. But that’s impossible! The F.B.I. had scoped the perimeter and decided that everything was nice and secure as the dickens. So what happened?

Doesn’t matter. Batman chalks this one up to “not my fucking problem” and Bat-grapples his way out of there yelling “CATWOMAN!” Ah, I see, he saw her in the distance and started chasing her. It would be funnier if Batman just fucked on out of there for no reason, but comics can’t be funny all the time.

“What took you so long?” she purrs as they swing across town. It is noticed that ripping off someone else’s ransom is not Catwoman’s style, but she did it anyway. Lots of stuff happening today that isn’t anyone’s style. “I have known Catwoman – Selina Kyle – for years. It seems like each step we take toward each other… we only get further apart.

I guess comics can still be funny after all!

Anyway, something fishy is going on and it’s not just Catwoman’s cat food breath. Batman starts plummeting after someone cut the line on his Bat-rope. Catwoman looks behind her with hesitation and trepidation and other words that end in “ation”. Batman’s shoulder plows into a stone gargoyle on the way down, busting it all up. He crashes onto the street in a manner that would kill literally anything, but he’s pretty ok. Except for the street toughs descending upon him with knives. Oh well, that’s a story for another issue!

Because we end with Catwoman bringing the briefcase to her client.

“Any problems?” asks the unknown client.

“Batman.”

“And…?”

“He… couldn’t keep up.”

“You sound disappointed…”

“Would that matter?”

“Not really. As long as you have the money.”

It’s Poison Ivy.

Final Thoughts

That was short! Nothing much has happened yet to make me impressed with Hush, but the story is still young, isn’t it?

Poison Ivy needs to put on more clothes. Or less clothes. I haven’t decided yet.