Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #406 – “Black Dawn”! Chapter Three of the gripping Year One saga! In the previous installment, we see Bruce Wayne’s early failures, and some of his successes, as Gotham’s newest masked vigilante! We see Lieutenant Gordon receive early, but minor, vestiges of respect among his fellow police officers! We see Gordon chasing down Batman only to realize that he might be good!

We see a building Batman is in get firebombed! Oh no!

Who will save the Batman?!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #406 [April, 1987]
Written by: Frank Miller
“Black Dawn”

Batman is certainly trapped within the bombed building! All around him, fiery debris is falling and smoke is filling the room. The thermite in his utility belt starts igniting, so he loses that off his person as fast as fucking possible. He finds a locked metal trapdoor on the floor with a “DANGER: ELECTRICITY – 80,000 WATTS” warning, and banking on a longshot that the warning isn’t real, he grabs a lockpick from his glove and works on the lock.

June 7. Are we in a brothel again? Remember Holly, that child working the street? And Selina, the short-haired cat-like woman who was probably Catwoman? So, yeah, there’s no way this woman isn’t Catwoman. She’s sleeping in a bed with about 12 cats crawling all over her whining and meowing! It’s the middle of the night and these cats are waking her up. She asks Holly, who is at the window of the same room, what time it is. Holly tells her that there are explosions blowing up at Robinson Park. “Maybe Branden’s cornered a jaywalker.” Selina responds, quite humorously! Everyone has that SWAT fuckface Branden’s number, don’t they? LET’S GO BRANDEN. Am I right, folks?

Gordon’s head is wrapped in a big goddamned bandage and he looks like he doesn’t even know what planet he’s on right now. Batman’s made enemies of the whole city, he thinks, and they’ve only got him cornered because he was trying to save an old woman’s life…

Selina and Holly are watching the scene unfold on TV. When they drop Batman’s name, Holly wants to go check out the action in person. “What the hell. Grab your coat.” Selina responds, tempering her own enthusiasm a bit. She’s feeding her horde of cats.

80,000 Watts?? Blow that fucker up before I dishonorably discharge right in your face.

An 18-member SWAT team is inside the building, which didn’t even look that big to begin with! They scour the wreckage looking for the masked one, passing by an innocuous chimney. Eventually, they come across an unlocked metal trapdoor on the floor with a “DANGER: ELECTRICITY – 80,000 WATTS” warning. Sound familiar? They decide that it sounds like a cool thing to shoot at with their many semi-automatic rifles! THEN they decide to lift the trapdoor, which contains a staircase leading to a basement.

It turns out this abandoned building is lousy with dead winos! They just keep finding them everywhere! But no sign of Batman. Once team-leader Branden decides that the basement has nothing of interest (unless you like Jesus-y artifacts on the walls of what looks like a dang basement prison cell or some shit) and he’s ready to leave, a voice tells Branden that he’s just fine where he is! Batman pops out of the innocuous chimney with a walkie-talkie! A pile of wreckage has been placed upon the trapdoor! The SWAT team is trapped! Jiminy Jillikers!

Batman drops a smoke bomb down the chimney, which leads to a hole in the wall in the basement which used to be a fireplace. “GAS MASKS! FAST!” Branden instructs.

Outside the building, Gordon ignores Branden’s radioed calls for help due to “orders”. Holly is excitedly atop a cop car front hood trying to get a better view, perhaps even a possible glimpse of Batman himself!

Commissioner Loeb is hovering above the wreckage of the building in a helicopter, where it’s revealed that a sniper is atop an adjacent building at the ready. Once day breaks, it should be easier to take Batman out. Until then, Commissioner Loeb, be patient, you big stupid baby.

How undignified, under the stairs like this. Sad as Harry Potter.

Batman, laying low under some stairs, takes stock. Without his utility belt, he has no rope, no thermite, no tear gas, no batarangs, no moisturizer, no toothpicks, no protein bars, no cockrings! All he has left of any use is a blowgun that he keeps in his boot. As another SWAT team makes their way down the stairs, they startle a cat that was serving as Batman’s companion, almost giving away his location. I mean, come on, he’s barely hiding! Look at this shit.

Anyway, Batman also remembers that he has an “untested unofficial Wayne Electronics invention” affixed to the heel of his boot. Then he says this about it that makes no sense: “Too bad I can’t afford to patent it. I’d make a fortune. But then, I already have a fortune…” yeah, ok Bruce, then fucking patent it since you can afford to, dingus.

So this device, once Batman turns it on, an ultrasonic signal is sent all the way over to the Batcave where every bat residing in the cave is summoned. What’s the plan here, then? Getting hundreds of bats caught in the SWAT team’s hair, rendering them skeeved out? Last ditch effort plan there, BatGuy.

While he awaits the bats, there are about twelve SWAT guys milling about the destroyed building just utterly perplexed about Batman’s elusiveness. Batman shoots a poisoned dart at one of their necks (possibly Branden?), with enough snake venom to take a man out for a day! Sounds lovely, I could use some relaxation myself.

Come to me, my pretty! Rawr!

With only two darts left, and too many men to take out, Batman smartly gives up on that plan. So, instead, he decides to just run through the room while a dozen SWAT guys shoot millions of bullets in the room at point blank range. Batman gets away without a scratch. Except for the part where a bullet connects with his arm! I guess that’s a scratch at the very least. Some cops outside the building get wounded too, because bullets are fucking flying everywhere and the Gotham SWAT teams are the worst in the country! At least the cat gets away clean; it heads right to possibly-Catwoman, jumping right into her arms.

Batman is huddled like a frightened chihuahua in the corner! The team closes in on him, and even though he’s quite wounded, Batman kicks a damn Greek column in half which causes the ceiling above to rain down on everyone in a crumbling mess of stone and dust. “You’re the one who tried to shoot the cat,” Batman says to one of them, punching him right in the bread basket!

And then the bats come…thousands of them, swarming the scene, scaring the bejesus out of literally everybody. Batman hops on a police motorcycle and burns rubber, baby, and the bats follow.

What a dumbfuck. One less shitty cop in the world.

The police chase down Batman and the swarm of bats. Somewhere along the way, shrouded by the bats, Batman takes a turn. The police lose him, they’re just chasing bats, man. One dumb motherfucker drives off a pier. Batman’s gone, he got away, it’s over, flew the coop, show’s over folks!

The entire crowd had to get rabies shots! Five SWAT members suffered broken bones and internal bleeding! The winos who died when the building was firebombed had no relatives to complain about, so that ends that particular chapter! And, per the commissioner, anyone available to ring up charges on Loeb or Branden aren’t available to take Gordon’s phone calls…

June 9. Looks like we’re three days after the exciting adventure in Lieutenant Gordon’s boring office. Bruce Wayne is also not answering Gordon’s calls because, per Albert, he’s been skiing in Switzerland for six weeks. That’s a long time to go skiing, Bruce! 42 days of skiing? Go fuck yourself with that much time skiing. That’s what Gordon should’ve said! Missed opportunity! Anyway, Gordon is pretty certain that Bruce Wayne is Batman at this point. He tries getting a hold of him in Switzerland, and some guy who claimed he was indeed Bruce Wayne tells him that busted up his limbs in a dang skiing accident! But he’ll be back to the States in a month’s time. *wink*

Essen’s there in the office too, tells him that Bruce Wayne could easily afford an impersonator, and casts would conveniently cover up all the bullet wounds he suffered. Then Gordon and Essen call a taxi cab to head over to the Bone Zone.

She goes home and jerks herself with her gun, just like the rest of us cops!

June 15. Well lookee here, Bruce Wayne actually IS skiing! Way to commit to the alibi, Brucey. He’s doing extravagant flips over chasms like a lunatic, almost like he wasn’t shot with bullets at all in the last week! His inner monologue fears how many people want him dead, and his best bet at this point is to recruit Gordon as an ally. Somehow.

June 17. I don’t know who Stan is, but a man is bleeding out from the face on the sidewalk. Selina looks like she damn near killed the man. Other prostitutes look on in horror. Selina’s done with this whoring business! She grabs Holly and tells her that she has a plan for both of them.

Now you’ve gone and done it.

Meanwhile, Gordon and Essen are enjoying a late-night coffee at a diner, as has become their routine before ending their shifts and heading back to their respective homes. This time, a downpour is keeping them both inside the diner and talking, getting to know one another more personally, intimately, nuzzling boners. He finds out her name is Sarah! Pesky little details like that never come out, do they! How scandalous!

Turns out she’s from Chicago too, just like Gordon. They even had the same favorite restaurant! They must’ve crossed paths at some point…although, now that Gordon thinks of it, Essen was probably in high school when he was frequenting it. Hmm, never mind! Kinda gross, though!

Gordon’s running an hour behind and hasn’t called Barbara at all to let her know. Sheesh, gonna be in the doghouse for sure. Dagnabit. The rain eases and they head out, but soon enough the downpour starts up again. They huddle together under a narrow doorway, barely shielding themselves from the rain.

Whoops, they start kissing! How did that happen? Heh heh heh.

August 7. Two months later. We see Selina finally donning a Catwoman costume! Holly whines that they spent all their remaining money on it. Selina tells the little whelp to go screw! “Just watch.” Selina says, and then leaps out of a building!

Not pictured: The inevitable 60-foot fall, splattering the pavement.

And we end with Jim Gordon sitting on his bed in his underwear with a gun (about to jerk himself with it, no doubt). “I hate this city. I hate myself and the night and everything it brings.” he begins, toying with his gun in the dark. He hates how much he and his wife are fighting these days. She says he’s gone too much. Instead of apologizing, he always snaps at her instead. “Tonight she called the office and I wasn’t there, I was out having coffee with Sarah,” he thinks. His mind’s all messed up. He should be focusing on his wife and his unborn child, not Sarah Essen, not the criminal Batman…

…and yet…”he saved that old woman. He saved that cat. He even paid for that suit”.

“The hunk of metal in my hands is heavier than ever…”

Final Thoughts

Yeah, so most of this issue was boring action stuff, but the aftermath made up for it with some actual story. Gordon is way more flawed a character than I ever thought. Batman too, I suppose, especially for a DC hero. Usually Marvel has all the flawed humans, but it’s nice to see it here.

Still liking this! Of course I am. You’d have to be some sort of IMBECILE to not! The next issue is the final chapter of this story, I’ll see you then.

Merry Cunting Christmas and welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #405 – “War Is Declared”! Chapter Two of the thrilling Year One saga! A good a gift as any! In the previous installment, we witness Commissioner Gordon (then known as Lieutenant Gordon for taking-place-in-the-past reasons) arrive in Gotham City after relocation, and he’s not making any friends! We witness Bruce Wayne returning to Gotham City after 13 years of overseas training! We see both of them fail miserably! We see a bat fly through a window at Wayne Manor and solidify history forever! We also saw whores and pimps and possibly Catwoman!

Now we get to see Bruce Wayne Batmanning around? Let’s hope so!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #405 [March, 1987]
Written by: Frank Miller
“War Is Declared”

April 4. Hey! This isn’t Bruce Wayne Batmanning around! It’s that nerd Jim Gordon driving in the rain! Boo! Gordon’s on his way to a hostage situation in Brigham Circle, wherever that is. I haven’t drawn my handy map of Gotham City yet, so excuuuuse me, princess. A kidnapper is holding three kids at gunpoint and ranting some world salad nonsense about it. The man’s name is Albert Blume, and he was released from Arkham Asylum two weeks ago. Blume’s a paranoid schizophrenic! I’m sure this all will end well!

Merkel, some other detective who is trying to brief Gordon on the situation, drops the name “Branden” between spurts of radio static. Branden, per Lieutenant James Gordon, and I’m paraphrasing, is a shitty fucking SWAT officer. With Branden in charge of dissolving this crisis, those kids will be dead six ways from *looks at calendar* …from Sunday! Tomorrow.

Gordon arrives on the scene and tells Branden to step off, bitch! Almost every officer there mumbles some permutation of “geez, not Gordon, boo, sigh”. Gordon visibly removes his gun from his holster, holds it up so that Kaptain Krazy Kid Killer can see it, drops it on the puddly ground, and makes his way forward. Meanwhile, Barbara Gordon (not Batgirl, but the mother) is wearing a very tasteful shirt that says “BABY” with an arrow pointing down to her baby hole and watching the hostage situation unfold on the rabbit ears.

PURPLE MONKEY DISHWASHER! I’LL ASK THE PINEAPPLE FOR DIRECTIONS! Haha. I’m random! I love Invader Zim.

Gordon heads up the stairs looking like he’s going to shit a liquidy stream of turds at the slightest little noise. The raving lunatic is gripping one of the children with one arm and points his gun at Gordon with the other while saying “SPIDER NASTY DON’T NOISE IT–NO LUNCH. NO LUNCH. SAID NO LUNCH NO GANGRENE LUNCH.” Makes sense to me! Gordon slowly inches toward the guy and knocks the gun out of his hand. He probably did shit his pants right then.

I hate the sun. I hate the moon. I hate my friends. I hate Jesus. I hate…the DMV…

April 5. SWAT bitch Branden is complaining to Commissioner Loeb, who is, as you may remember, King Shithead himself as well. Loeb sympathizes completely with Branden’s complaints that Gordon humiliated him in front of his team. Loeb would love to remove Gordon post haste “but we must be patient. Gordon has the press on his side…”

Gordon is taking out his pent up aggression and frustration at the shooting range. Ol’ Gordie’s having a stressful time these days. Let’s move on.

April 6. Gordon is sitting up in bed smoking in the middle of the night while his pregnant wife sleeps. He is losing all faith in his, and his family’s, future in Gotham City. He regrets relocating. “How did I screw up so badly…to bring an innocent child to life…in a city without hope…”, he laments, and as he says this, we see a shadowy, sprawling winged figure on a rooftop overlooking the city…

April 9. It’s Jim Gordon’s night off! He’s having quite the sexy dinner date with Barbara practically humping his butt while rubbing his shoulders as a chicken (a sexy chicken?) cooks in the oven. The phone was supposed to be unplugged, and it wasn’t, and it rings, and Barbara picks up, and duty calls.

What do I look like, Animal Control?!

Finally, we shift focus to another point-of-view character in this story! A man in a bat suit is harassing some youngsters who appear to be stealing electronics from an apartment. Sounds like a real no-good punk to me, I hope Gordon hangs him out to dry. Especially since he almost kills one of the kids by scaring him so badly that he topples over the edge of the scaffolding on the side of the building! The bat-like man keeps him from falling to his death by holding onto his leg; meanwhile, one of the other two kids is kicking him in the head. Things don’t seem to be going well. The third kid smashes the TV over Mr. Bat’s dome. This is what 13 straight years of overseas training gets you?

Eventually, Mr. Bat is able to grab the kicking kid’s leg, twist it to hold him upside-down, and knock his head on the scaffold floor. Meanwhile, the dangling kid blacked out from fear or, like, excitement or something, and Mr. Bat pulls him up to safety. I don’t know what happened to the third kid, the TV smasher. I think he was kicked against a wall. Anyway, the Bat wins this round, but I don’t think this guy’s gonna make much of a long-term career out of this!

Looks like Flass has a new, sexy submissive collar.

May 15. Lieutenant Gordon is briefing his “men”. The vigilante (or Batman as he’s called–hey, that has a nice ring to it!) has committed 78 acts of assault in the past five weeks and he must be stopped! He works between 12am and 4am and he hits neighborhoods at random and he carries around a giant boombox playing Phil Collins very loudly and he litters like there’s no tomorrow and he puts his toilet paper on wrong and he called Gordon a ginger nancy boy! Gordon asks Flass for his neck-braced insight into the mind of Batman.

Flass insists that it’s not human. During one of his routine, uh “cocaine busts” (aka, aiding in the delivery while getting a kickback from the mob), a creature flew down from the sky with wings 30 feet across bellowing like the dickens! One of the gangsters shoots the creature, but the bullet goes right through him! And then the creature laughs!

The whole room is snickering while Flass is recounting his story, which pisses him off. Gordon is reveling in it all and asks Flass to continue talking about “creature claws” and “paralyzing little dart things”. Flass has a Bobby Hill frown.

May 19. For some unknown reason, Batman is “getting serious” and is sneaking onto the mayor’s estate. Loeb is at the mayor’s estate enjoying a fancy dinner party, and he’s even wearing his best suit with the Mickey Mouse lapels! Gordon is bugging Loeb over the phone about Batman and Loeb has no patience for it! Outside the residence, Batman overhears Loeb’s side of the conversation. “Lieutenant Gordon. I’ve been hearing his name often. All the right people seem to hate him.” Batman muses as he, like, pulls a pin from a fucking grenade or something. Loeb is siding with Batman, noting that crime has been down and the city’s spirits have been lifted lately! So pipe down! However, once Loeb is off the phone, the mayor and the city councilmen complain to the commissioner that Batman is costing the city money. Loeb laughs it off: “But the people of Gotham City have a hero. Makes them feel safe. And the safer they feel, the fewer questions they ask.”

The councilmen still disagree somewhat huffily, and as they continue to discuss matters, Batman launches the fucking grenade right through the closed window. It lands on the dinner table. Batman cuts a power cord outside the residence. “It’s showtime.” He says. Sounds like the grenade is merely a smoke bomb. All the old politicians are freaking the fuck out. Batman launches another grenade-like weapon that destroys the wall. Batman emerges, and tells them all, basically, that from now on, well, they’re all fucked.

May 20. Yeah, sure, Commissioner. Under a butt.

June 2. Batman’s flowery monologue cursive script is telling us how dangerous a midnight stroll in Gotham’s East End is, especially for a woman. Luckily, Gotham’s got a lot of great cops patrolling, looking out for midnight damsel-in-distress muggings! Mayhaps they might catch a glimpse of The Bat-Man and haul his ass downtown?

Not bloody likely!

June 5. One of the more uppity members of the mayor’s council is found hogtied and nude on a bed. Batman drove his Rolls-Royce into a river! This early-installment Batman is pretty mean to his fellow rich people.

June 6. Commissioner Gordie is speaking with Assistant D.A. Harvey Dent about the hogtying and terrorizing of who they are calling “the Roman”. Dent has been trying to nab the Roman himself for years, and is enjoying quite a chuckle about a masked vigilante humiliating him and destroying his expensive property. However, Gordon needs to DOT ALL HIS T’S AND CROSS ALL HIS I’S, AS THE SAYING SORT OF GOES, and needs to rule Dent out as a suspect in this brand of masked vigilante justice! You’re barking up the wrong tree, Gordo!

Or is he?…

And although Dent had plenty of alibis, it seems he’s currently Gordon’s chief suspect. However, Batman seems to have an arsenal of weapons that Dent could never afford. Gordon’s going over the situation with some blond bombshell in the car with him, Essen, who was also there by his side when Gordon briefed his team. Besides the strong implications that they’re going to quickly become an item, she tips him off that not only is Bruce Wayne the richest man in Gotham, but he’s got a motive for taking out Gotham’s criminals. MURDERED PARENTS! I know that one! Gordon’s happy with this new information, and I’m sure some dick-sucking ensues. And by that I mean Gordon starts sucking Essen’s dick! Heyo!

But the dick-sucking will have to wait for now. An out-of-control truck just ran a red light in front of Gordon’s car and is heading full-speed toward an old homeless woman dragging a shopping cart! Oh god, who will save the poor old woman?! Gordon instructs Essen to grab the wheel, and he leaps out his side and latches onto the runaway truck. And what the fuck does he think he’s going to do there, exactly? He’s no superhero! He can’t even unplug a phone!

At the very last second, Batman, who we had seen lurking around in the shadows, pushes the old woman out of the path of the truck. The truck barrels into her shopping cart, just fucks it all up to kingdom come. Rude!

Gordon lies there on the road barely conscious, but Essen’s got a gun pointed at our favorite masked vigilante! No, not Zorro goddamnit. Aren’t you paying attention??! Quick as The Flash, or maybe even Superman, the masked vigilante grabs Essen’s gun and pushes her out of the way. Gordon points a gun, but he’s too dazed to pull the trigger. Batman gets away. And, in his haze, Gordon ruminates over Batman actually helping save a life right in front of him.

SHOOT THE GUN! SHOOT THE GUN! What kind of cop are you? Come on, Kim Potter, pull that fuckin’ trigger.

The backup that Essen had called are already on the scene shooting at Batman as he runs off. He gets some hot lead in the leg, which he ignores as he keeps speeding off. He leaps through a boarded-up window into a nearby abandoned building/heroin den, and the police holds-up for further strategizing. While Batman slogs his way to the roof before any helicopters do, Gordon is fighting with the commissioner over the radio, who had called in Branden to assist instead. Branden! Grrr, we hate Branden, don’t we fellas?! SWAT bitch!

But even though Gordon is having second thoughts about Batman’s criminality, the commissioner had given Branden approval to fucking drop a firebomb onto the building.

So do you know what Branden does?

He fucking drops a firebomb onto the building.

Final Thoughts

Tense shit. Not only is Gotham’s major cop corruption most of the focus of this story, but I’m finally seeing a side of the city that actually, finally, SHOWS how shitty Gotham actually is. I mean, I know my sample size has been tiny so far (and if you’re reading this way in the future when I have about 1000…pffft…comics read already, at this moment with respect to the Batfamily I’ve only read the first storylines of the New 52 Batman, Batgirl, and Batman and Robin books, and none of that has even touched upon the sordid affair that the city itself is). You always hear about it, but damn.

This is good stuff! Of course it is! That’s why I’m reading it in the first place! Seacrest out, son, and God Bless Us Everyone™. Merry Christmas, you big losers!