* Part 1 of 5 of the Shaman storyline * Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #1 – “Shaman (Part 1)”!
If you’re reading all these comic book posts in chronological order (why?), then you’ll notice that I’m still in the middle of Superman: Birthright. Well, that shit is twelve issues long! So I’m taking a quick post-Crisis Batman break before I return to the second half of Superman’s origin story. Well, one of Superman’s origin stories. I’m sure there’s another 500 of them littering the endless comic book archives.
The original Legends of the Dark Knight series was intended to be a self-contained anthology publication that allowed a rotating chair of writers to craft short Batman stories that only span a few issues each. I think the main Batman line was doing that anyway around this time, but no one can have enough Bat Men. Plus, I need to start chipping away a little bit at the post-Crisis stuff. I started with Batman: Year One, the original Catwoman limited series, and the ultra-sized Batman: The Man Who Laughs. Now I tackle this 200+ issue series from the very beginning, and I’ll likely finish when I’m a wheezing old geriatric using an ancient version of WordPress on Web 15.0.
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #1 [November, 1989]
Written by: Dennis O’Neil
“Shaman (Part 1)”
We open with a couple of dudes scaling a snowy, icy, mountain crag. Looks dangerous. The caption says “Several Years Ago”, so what does that mean to me? 2018? This can’t possibly be, like, 1984 or something. That was way more than several years ago!
These two are tracking a killer, and one of them, Mr. Doggett, is SURE AS SHIT that the killer came this way! What, should they turn back? Sounds likw a good plan to me, climbing this rock is tough and really dumb.
“I’ll stick it out to the end, Mr. Doggett,” says the young companion. These two are going to fucking die and no one will ever find their mutilated bodies, parts all eatin’ by mountain goats and Yetis. “If you’re worried about the money you paid me, Boy, I’ll give half of it back,” says Doggett, who is obviously frightened and is having second thoughts about dying on some rock.
But this kid ain’t scared. Mr. Doggett is the best bounty hunter in Alaska. I’m gonna call Doggett “Dog” for short. So this Dog the Bounty Hunter, he probably has the only chance of bringing in Thomas Woodley alive! This kid just loves the opportunity to play fetch with Dog.
Of course, it’s not that easy! It’s not just about going up to a guy like Woodley and saying “hey there fellow Blood, come with me please”, no sirree. Hell, Dog may not even take him alive! Sometimes it don’t end up that way. Sometimes you got to stab the fucker with your can opener a few times before he stops squirmin’ enough to ride him down the mountain like a bobsled!
But here’s the lol! Dog barely finishes his thought when he catches a bullet in the forehead. What a loser!
Yeah, if you’re so great, how come you’re dead?
“He hears the snap–the mini sonic-boom a high-powered rifle slug makes as it breaks the sound barrier–and before he hears the shot itself booming through the mountains–he knows that Willy Doggett is dead and that the killer is above them on the cliffside and that the next bullet will be aimed at him.”
LOL
“You like that, Bruce Wayne? How I killed ol’ Willy?” laughs the gunman. The kid is Bruce Wayne! I figured it out. And this gunman guy is the gunman! Thomas Wooley, I reckon! “You a city boy. City boys die easy,” he says. Citation needed.
Bruce ran away, but now Tommy is tracking him down. “Gonna gut shoot you, city boy. You ever see a gut shot? Take you hours to die–”
Tommy Salami approaches an empty coat and pack, propped up against a cave wall as if someone were in it. Someone is not in it! Tommy is taken aback just long enough for Bruce, who is hiding while clinging to a cliff edge, to stab Tommy in the calf with an ice axe. Then he swoops up, does some gymnastics, kicks Tom-Tom in the face, does some more cartwheels, but Bruce gets knocked in the side of the head with the pulled-out ice axe.
More scuffling.
More scuffling…
But then Bruce throws him down the side of the cliff. Tommy-Tom-Tom grabs the coat and pack as he tumbles down, down, down, down. Dead.
“I didn’t mean for him to die. He didn’t scream. He fell without a sound.”
The forlorn figure of Bruce Wayne glances over the side of the mountain. For one thing, he’s on top of this dang hill wearing not much more than a sweater and jeans. No coat, no pack, no gloves, no hat, no thermals, no hot chocolate, no fireplace, no pussy, no nothing. It’s probably 50 below freezing with the windchill. And the nearest village is about a day’s walk away. And there’s a storm coming soon. Ha! Just try and get out of this one, dummy. Shouldn’t have followed the dead bounty hunter.
He can’t even go down the mountain anyway! Not without his gear. So he goes up instead and wonders if he should pray for a miracle. Like a plane crash right in his face.
But he’s not the praying type, and certainly not one for miracles. Dead parents put an end to that kind of optimistic living. Plus, it’s too cold to pray for miracles. Takes too much dang energy.
Jack Frost nipping at your nose…
He gets too cold and weak to move on, so he faceplants in the snow while thinking of his mom and dad getting killed. Only, this time, an evil, grinning, melting snowman holds the gun. His parents shatter into pink shards of glass while a young lad Bruce Wayne stares horrified.
“Dreaming. Remembering and dreaming and remembering,” he thinks, eyes all wonky, staring up into the sky. But there are four faces in his field of vision. Is he dreaming? Three are regular people, but one of the faces is the face on the cover art. I’m guessing this is the Shaman™ in question?? It gets right up in Bruce’s face: “Hear me, for now I tell the tale of the healing…”
So Shaman Magoo starts going into some Indigeous, possibly horribly racist, backstory mythology! Raven got sick and was going to die. Bat is Raven’s friend and didn’t want Raven to die, so Bat sought to help. Raven tells Bat he must cause a great wind to blow the sickness away. Bat doesn’t know how to cause a great wind, for he is only a Bat, and also what are you even talking about? Raven tells Bat that, ok, he’ll die then! Bat calls Raven’s bluff and decides to try this wind thing by forming wings and flapping them really hard. It works. The wind blows away the sickness. Raven is thankful, and as a reward, Bat gets to keep his wings. Congrats.
Bruce wakes up, looking like crap.
Honestly, we were deciding amongst ourselves whether or not to just leave you there. Just hours of rock, paper, scissors.
A group of fur trappers took him back to their cabin to tend to his various ailments, blemishes, maladies, and contusions. This lady looks like he’s going to fuck his bones the moment he fully recovers. Bruce thanks her, but she doesn’t want any thanks! She didn’t do nuthin’. Thank that old guy over there *points to a saggy garbage bag sitting in a chair and wrapped in a blanket*, the tribal shaman. Her grandfather. “Medicine Man” they call him. A regular Dr. Mehmet Oz. He healed his diseased near-corpse.
With drugs? With antibiotics? No no no, Bruce, you little slut. Magic!
This young woman assures the dashing Bruce Wayne that he should be ready to travel again in a few days, but a week goes by and he’s still moving slowly. He’s going to take a trip into town and insists upon doing it alone, but she won’t hear any of that nonsense! She’ll accompany him, maybe grab a little ass en route. Heh heh.
“My grandfather has a request to make of you,” she nudges, and Bruce is totally game for fulfilling a shaman request! Remember that story you heard about the raven and the bat? Her shaman grandpa told you that story while you were wacked out of your gourd, feverish with Mountain Syphillis? Well, don’t repeat that story to anyone! It’s a sacred healing story, one that shouldn’t have been told to any outsider such as yourself. So zip the lip.
Ever the skeptic asshole, tactless in the face of ancient tribal traditions, Bruce asks why a bright young woman like her would believe such bullshit fairytale idiocy! In nicer words, of course.
They get to the village, so she bids him farewell. She can’t go any farther. Bruce asks her to come with him to Gotham City! He’ll pay for airfare! There’s all sorts of stuff to do there. There’s this Sex Chair he bought on eBay for $6,500 that he wants to try out!
She declines. “No. I would not be happy there.”
She touches his cheek and walks away. We don’t even learn this woman’s goddamn name.
SCENE CHANGE! Bruce is back home, and I always imagine Alfred gets extremely annoyed whenever he doesn’t have the house to himself anymore. Alfie was probably hoping this mope fell down a mountain and cracked his head open. No more secret Wayne Manor orgies for the butler.
“How long will you be staying this time? Long enough to get our bags unpacked?” Alfred asks tartly! Ha! I love this guy. Bruce does too, his smile is as large as Alfred’s frown. “I’m back for good. Travels are done, at least for the foreseeable future. I’m ready to begin.”
Alfred doesn’t even want to know what that means. He informs Bruce that a shipment of books arrived from London. It’s a bunch of material on the study of criminology. Check this one out, Alfred! Gory pictures! That guy swallowed bleach! A seven-year-old girl with her eyes gouged out! This is some good shit, son.
This smells like leopard feces and Inuit pussy, sir.
Sounds like Bruce has been cavorting around the world for the better part of 12 years and is back permanently, placing this very near the beginning of Batman: Year One. Tonight, to toast the town, he will be dressing up incognito and roaming through the seedy downtown streets of Gotham’s red light district, where he will be punching pimps and whores, getting stabbed by little girls, and shot by police officers. These panels also summarize the end of Batman #404, where Bruce escapes from the cop car, bleeds profusely as he speeds home in his Porsche, and witnesses a bat crashing through his window as he sits in his father’s study.
Big Lightbulb Moment for our dude over here.
The next day, Bruce pumps iron like he wasn’t torn up by bullets 10 hours ago. Alfred gives him his day’s schedule: Wayne Foundation business matters, including recent funding to research in ballistics, bombs, nerve gas, poison, explosives, and Alfred’s favorite, assassination techniques of the Calcutta Thugees. “May I observe that unless you finance gentler pursuits, you will become known as Gotham’s answer to Attila the Hun?”
Alfred’s a fucking buzzkill, man. He suggests other options. Here are some good ones on the list: astrological volleyball, nude skiing, macrame spittoons, Indians of Northern Alaska…
Bruce stops him there. Speak more on that last one, you good old butlery butler you. Research by a Dr. Madison Spurlock of Gotham University’s Anthropology Department? Hell yeah, he’ll go talk to this geek tomorrow! Tonight, though, tonight Bruce has other plans. Other non-agenda plans. Bat-like plans, you might say? Heh heh…no, wait, forget he said that.
You look like that guy from that Adam West TV show.
Alfred helps Bruce shimmy into his new bat pajamas. Time to bust some nighttime crimes! “In the event that I have to blot you up from the pavement, where will I be going?” the dear butler inquires, and through some unnecessarily menacing gritted teeth, Batman tells him he’s going to stake out “Leslie Thompkins’ Free Clinic”. It’s been robbed three times in the last month. There will not be a fourth.
OK, sir, thank you. That sounds dumb. We could rent a movie instead?
Nope, he’s gone. And, lucky for Batman, Leslie Thompkins is getting robbed again at this very moment! A few local ne’er-do-wells are shaking this lady down for some good-ass drugs! They also want to kidnap this sick, young, pregnant woman too! Because when they’re out of drugs they can do some rapes. Thanks, Leslie, you’re the best! We’ll be going out the back now, see you next time.
NOT SO FAST, CREEPS! Gotham has a new hero in town and his name is Mr. Batsman.
“You can crawl…on your bellies…and plead for her forgiveness…that’s the first choice. The second is…”
Grrr, I’m the bat! Here, let me tell you a super secret shaman story that I’m not supposed to talk about.
Batman gives these guys a clue: pssst, the second one is more fun. The thugs brandish knives. Yay, the second one it is, then! Batman uppercuts one in the gut, and knocks the other guy in the chin. This shit is easy when you’re wearing spandex. Suddenly, there’s more confidence. Preteen prostitutes aren’t stabbing anyone this time. No fucking cop bullets either.
The third thug grabs the young, pregnant woman and points a gun to her head. “Back off, or I’ll blow her brains out.”
Batman calls his bluff and doesn’t back off. The thug drops the woman and starts shooting in front of him, but Batman disappears! The young woman runs crying back to Leslie. Shit’s getting tense now…
OH SHIT, LOOK UP! AHH! Bounce. Pummel. Batman flies down from above and knocks the dude unconscious.
Only one dude is still conscious. He’s really got the waterworks going. Batman gets right up into his face: “Tell everyone. Tell the punks, junkies, gunsels, enforcers, all the wise guys, leg-breakers, muscle boys…tell them they’re finished. Tell them the streets belong to the BATMAN.”
The dude runs away. Leslie asks if all that violence was necessary. Batman says yes.
The pregnant woman picks up a knife off the ground and points it at the hero. “CHUBALA…don’t hurt me…don’ come near.”
Batman comes near. He tells her he’s here to help, and give him the knife.
Ha! Fuck that! She ain’t giving you the knife! You don’t get the last laugh here! She stabs herself right in the dang chest and collapses in a pool of blood.
lol
Final Thoughts
Hey, what the dealo? This isn’t that bad at all! With the first half I thought I was gonna get into one of those overly-spiritual fish out of water stranger-in-a-strange-land type stories where Bruce learns a lot from some fake tribe over the course of the story. Instead I get the snarkiest depiction of Alfred I’ve encountered thus far, and a pretty grim clinic robbery situation!
Again, I have to ask, why didn’t Alfred ever get his own comic series? Why the FUCK wouldn’t they have 100 of them by now?
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