Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #6 – “Kill Game”! In the previous installment, not much happens really. The issue was split into two stories, and not enough happened in either to necessitate a real recap! But here I got anyway:

Batman gets a lead and finds himself needing to hit up the Iceberg Casino. Charlotte Rivers is undercover there, but not undercover enough, because Penguin’s got creepy sex offender cameras in the changing rooms.

The backstory showed Prof. Hugo Strange’s strange estranged son, Eli, conning through a mobster poker game while Catwoman robs them all blind.

Issue #6 returns to the single-story format. Let’s see what that Batman nerd’s up to now, since he’s supposed to show up at the casino as both Batman and Bruce Wayne. Gonna be a Mrs. Doubtfire situation.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #6 [April, 2012]
Written by: Tony S. Daniel
“Kill Game”

In a private residence overlooking the water, the glimmery Pink Floyd laser light show that is the Iceberg Casino can be seen from a very short distance. You could throw a rock at it. Legend has it that the Titanic Casino was completely destroyed by the Iceberg Casino. All 4.9 billion people perished. It was a sad day for Gotham City. You can read about it here —> www.iceberg.com.org

An unidentified couple discusses the casino. The dude needs to get into that casino, man. The Penguin’s just been hanging out there for too long, he needs to be flushed out. The lady presents to him a gold VIP pass, the same one that was stolen from Fatty Uncle Boil-Face. “You’re a helluva woman, Chase,” the man says with gratitude, slipping the card into his wallet. She’s revealed to be a blonde with an eyepatch. I don’t know who! So let’s move on.

“Just listen to me and we’ll be living like royalty in Costa Rica by Sunday,” Chase tells him while putting on a pair of stiletto heels. That’s right, honey, she’s got her…er, eye…on the big picture. She’s got it all figured out! It’s all gonna be fiiiiiine.

Gah! Get it out of here! I’m trying to eat lunch!

“First, that face of yours has to go. You know how I hate that one.” She punches him right in the mug, bluntly telling this fucker that he needs to look like he has even one measly ounce of class! So this guy goes into the bathroom and applies his concealer, looking all pretty now. Can’t take any chances on anyone recognizing this mope, the plan has to be pulled off without a hitch.

Jack Houston is the name, and being called “Snakeskin” is the game! And the other game is crime! Once upon a time, Houston volunteered his body for skeezy back-alley medical research and got disfigured to high heaven! He won a settlement, gambled it all away very quickly, and got himself five million dollars in the hole. Every single casino and loan shark is now after this guy, so he’s turning to criming around with crime activity to pay back his debts while looking like other people.

And now you know….the rest of the story.

Batman’s been doing some detective work in these comics! Snakeskin’s fingerprints match the ones found on the dropped $1000 Iceberg Casino chip. His last known residence is the Abbot Transient Motel, getting handy-Js from the female vending machine stockers. The motel room is decrepit as all get-out; a bathub is filled near the brim with blood. Human blood. Like, from a person and it’s that guy! You know! The guy with the thing! He was last seen in Issue #4 doing stuff! …uh. Raju! Raju’s dead.

Trusty Alfred the Wayne Manor Bitch positively identifies the body from Bat Cave Command and discovers phone records showing Raju calling Nicolas Pog, a weapons dealer, and Jill Hamilton, a…woman. BATMAN HEARS ALL HE NEEDS TO KNOW. TALLY HOOOOOOO!!!

Batman “speaks” to the desk clerk, a real Danny-DeVito-from-Taxi-looking piece of shit. And by “speaks” I mean “allows the guy to shoot off half his own foot”.

It’s Always Sunny in Gotham City, bitches! RAT-A-TAT TAT!

“I stand there and let his fear take over,” remarks Batman’s inner monologue as DeVito fills his pants with all the poop in the universe. When asked if a Jill Hamilton has checked into the motel, DeVito claims that “some chick with an eyepatch was here” and he only saw her in passing. He ain’t know no names!

“Hey–I’m bleeding out over here. Help me!” DeVito cries, but Batman walks away going la-la-la-la.

At the Iceberg Casino hotel, incognito as a cleaning maid, Charlotte Rivers paws through Eyepatch’s belongings. She finds some unseen thing she was looking for, but Eyepatch BAFFS her on the head from behind. “You picked the wrong room to pilfer, bimbo!” says Eyepatch, but they exchange knowing glances at each other.

Eypatch and Rivers are sisters. “We need to talk, now,” an angry floor-crawling Charlotte snarls.

“Make it fast and get out. I’m too busy for your drama.” says Eyepatch aka JILL HAMILTON eek!

“I’m investigating some bad people, Jill– and I’m about to expose a whole underground weapons operation,” Rivers declares triumphantly. “One that goes all the way to the top of Gotham. Guess who’s name popped up?

Don Henley? Erik Estrada? Dr. Joyce Brothers? Chaz Bono? John Astin? Frances McDormand? Jonathan Rhys Meyers? Corbin Bernsen? Amy Adams? Jimmie Walker? Dana Delany? Phil Donahue?

Ok! I’ll go first! Do you like boys???…. ♫♪♫♪♫♪

Anyway, tread lightly, Sweet Sister! Rivers has all the dirt fit to print. But she doesn’t scare Eyepatch, oh no sir! “I’d ruin both you and your privileged little life,” says Jill Hamilton as she calmly starts to pour herself a drink…

…and instead smashes the bottle.

Speaking of Danny DeVito…Penguin, elsewhere in the casino, he praises his council of weirdos and fuck-ups for coming together as a team and meeting diplomatically! “The challenges that await you in Gotham will be plentiful. They’ll come from friends, which will be few– and, of course, they’ll come from foes, which will be many.” Hey, nice speech, Shorty. Who wrote that nugget of great prose? Tony S. Daniel? Pffft.

Penguin prattles on about how he’s taking all these rejects under his wing, but they are all curmudgeonly about how much money they’re being asked to cough up for Penguin’s acts of altruistic good intentions! There’s an invisible guy wearing glasses, there’s a guy who looks like a red container of poisonous gas, there’s a guy wearing super cool x-ray specs, there’s a guy who looks like a dang lightbulb. A real dream team.

Penguin has a speech impediment that makes him end sentences with “WAH!” Like a penguin! Or a Waluigi. He calls this sorry bunch of losers a, well, a sorry bunch of losers! “What’s happening in the streets right now is exactly what I’m protecting you from… Another reason none of you have been targeted yet is that word has spread as to who’s holding your money.”

The Iceberg Casino is the most secure location this side of Switzerland! No worries! No men who masquerade as bats to worry about here! Heh heh. WAH!

One of Penguin’s female servants has a rather suspicious eyepatch, though..

Let’s turn our attention to Crime Alley, where Batman is chasing down Smitty, a lackey of that Nicolas Pog fella. I wonder what kind of weapons Pog’s been dealing lately???

Smitty looks rather ratty and twitchy. Apparently, Pog is extremely wealthy and has the means to hire all kinds of crooked lawyers…he’s even able to buy off crooked cops and judges. And yet he has Smitty, this ugly dumbass.

Oh no! Did I accidentally run down GHOST ALLEY by mistake??

Smitty is hardly a fraction of a match for Batman. It looks like he starts tickling him? “Where’s your boss, Smitty? Where’s Pog?” he growls as he continues moving his Uncle Touchy fingers all over Smitty. Batman had to go through a lot of people to get to him. Lots of punched-in faces, lots of broken teeth, lots of snapped bones and burned arms and missing kidneys. Smitty whimpers and gives up the goods.

Smitty directs Batman to a bomb-making facility.

!!!

But there are no bombs. Just plenty of materials for making bombs. Even Smitty is puzzled; he suspects the one-eyed lady had something to do with this. She and Pog have been cozying up a lot lately. Hanging out in an estate that’s, like, five feet away from the Iceberg Casino and all.

Batman finds a large ice cooler in the room. Inside is the hacked up body of Nicolas Pog with a ninja star sticking out of his left eyeball. So what is this, the killer wants to make her victims just as one-eyed as she is? Tee hee.

Ugghh, Charlotte’s at the casino. I guess he’ll have to show up there after all anyway. Boo.

Penguin steps his ugly butt out to the front of the casino and announces the grand opening to all the waiting patrons. During the diversion, One-Eye’s male face-changing partner in crime, Jack Houston, Snakeskin Magoo, motorboats on up to the loading dock and she sneaks him in under a serving cart. In the main lounge, Bruce Wayne calls up Charlotte and asks her to acknowledge his smiley, ruggedly disheveled and tuxedoed presence at the casino entrance. She leaves him hanging as she follows her sister, who passes through pushing the cart.

Brucey tells Alfie to put the yacht in neutral and give him five minutes. The tracking device he put on Charlotte’s dress (which she isn’t even wearing anymore, dummy) should help him find her and allow him take her back out in less than five minutes! Then they’ll be heading back to Wayne Manor where Bruce and Charlotte will fuck abusively while Alfred attempts to enjoy his can of Hormel chili (no beans) in the next room.

Man, I sure feel stupid wondering how Alfred is up to his neck in pussy. Who could resist?

But hold up, drive closer to that boat over there. That’s the same damn boat that the clown mask thug was driving when he got away from me! It’s a stolen boat! That’s it, back to Batman Time! Alfred, wait here for about six hours! I’m probably gonna get knocked unconscious and tied up. Feel free to help yourself to the snack bag, I brought beef jerky.

Alfred crabs and groans about how Batman already has him involved in the vampire case, which I can read all about in a series called I, Vampire, which I’m NOT going to read at all whatsoever…

…yet.

…but apparently there was a train and some missing passengers and a lot of blood, so Tony S. Daniel fulfilled his obligation to namedrop a concurrent New 52 series that no one was going to bother reading.

Back in the casino, Rivers keeps following One-Eyed Jill. Even if she knows Charlotte is here, even if she knows Charlotte’s on to her, even if she knows Charlotte is likely following her…she has to try and stop her, right? Thanksgiving is gonna be awkward, but it’s a small price to pay!

Charlottle walks into a dark room, where she stupidly calls for her sister to come out, come out, wherever you are. Then a guy with a knife stabs her a few times!

THAK THAK THAK THAK

Mr. Puts-On-a-Different-Face Guy hears a loud crash in the middle of his maniacal stabbing session. For a quick second, he thinks One-Eyed Jill is setting him up, but Batman makes his very loud, room-filling appearance by hammering this guy with his many (two) fists.

“WHY?!” *punch* “WHY?!” *other punch*

Charlotte’s bleeding out on the other side of the room. Batman runs to her and gets a glass door closed behind him. They’re both now stuck in a small elevator-sized enclosure.

“Hahaha! You lose! You lose, Batman!” the bloody face-changer laughs through the window pane.

“I did this. My feelings for Charlotte fogged my judgment for a split second– I did this. I killed us.” Batman struggles as Snakey Skin presses a few buttons, and the glass box starts filling up with snow and ice.

Final Thoughts

I hope Batman fucking dies, dude. Then Alfred can take over and actually get some shit done!

One more issue left in the storyline. Looking forward to wrapping this abortion up in a nice tidy package and then shipping it through the mail to Batman’s mom. Oh wait, she’s dead! Haha!

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.