Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman and Robin (Vol. 2), Issue #6 – “The Real Me”! “CAN YOU SEE THE REAL ME, DOCTOR? DOCTOR! CAN YOU SEE THE REAL ME, MAMA? MAMA!” In the previous installment, Robin agrees to do bad crimes with NoBody and now Bruce has to find his son to take him away from the big bad man. That’s about it. We saw some backstory about Morgan Ducard’s dad, Henri, but that’s boring and I won’t talk about it again!

Oh yeah, NoBody and Robin ambushed an embassy and now Robin is going to shoot an ambassador in the head. We’ll see if he does just that!

Batman and Robin (Vol. 2), Issue #6 [April, 2012]
Written by: Peter J. Tomasi
“The Real Me”

“ABOVE THE SKIES OF GOTHAM… …DARK KNIGHT BATTLES DEMON SEED!” What’s this now? Who the shit is Demon Seed? Sounds like Evil Cum. That’s not very threatening…well, maybe it is.

Maybe it’s some really threatening evil cum.

Aaaannnnd, we pick up right where we left off: Robin pointing a gun at some poor little bitch’s head! And NoBody is trying to goad him into killing the ambassador by taunting him a little about still being Bruce Wayne’s daddy’s boy. “Show me you’re beyond his reach, Robin. Show me you TRULY understand.” NoBody demands as this ten-year-old is about to shoot a goddamned ambassador at the embassy for no real reason.

Robin brings the gun to the ambassador’s temple, point blank, and pulls the trigger.

When you get to Hell, tell the devil that I’m coming for him next.

As the smell of the ambassador’s poopy pants fills the room, Robin throws the gun down in disgust. “I’M NOT HERE TO PLAY GAMES, DUCARD!” he whines like a child who showed up for no other reason than to play games and someone told him that he doesn’t get to play any games. Ducard claims that he isn’t playing games either, and then in the very next sentence tells him that this was a test to see how committed Robin was. That sounds like a game to me. And Robin won the game. So now Robin has Ducard’s trust, and they’ll haul the smelly ambassador over to some other location for questioning about his alleged “slave trading”. Ducard shows Robin how to incapacitate a motherfucker using only two fingers, and he lets Robin do the honors. Robin boinks the ambassador Three Stooges-style.

POK! Take that you hoser politician! Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Batman, meanwhile, is still combing the city looking for his estranged, troubled, murderous fruit of his loins. I don’t know why this kid is so hard to find, he found him quickly the first time. Didn’t Alfred put a tracker on the little whelp? Well, at any rate, Batman was able to pinpoint the embassy as Robin’s possible location so he gets some brownie points there, I suppose. Alfred briefs him that all the embassy’s security cameras are malfunctioning, so Batman takes this opportunity to plow right through the fucking window like he not only owns the place, but is happy to break the windows at the place he owns as well!

After busting into the embassy, Batman takes a moment to reminisce about the past again under the guise of telling the story to Damian…which we all know isn’t actually happening because he hasn’t found the kid yet! Stop telling the story, Bruce, it doesn’t count if he’s not there to hear it! Bah.

So we flashback to Bruce and Morgan training under Henri Ducard’s watch. Fighting, blindfolded weapon disassembly/reassembly, hiking through the woods, lectures from Henri Huggins himself, all for the purpose of taking down this Hassan terrorist kinda guy. They worked on tracking him all over the world as a unit of three, traipsing through deserts and riding big hulkin’ jeeps through sandstorms.

Take it all in, Bruce! Get to know the feces. Be one with the feces.

And, eventually, they track him down to a hotel room.

And what a SNOOOOZE of a story this is!

So, in an adjacent building, Bruce and Morgan stakeout and keep an eye on Hassan while Henri moves in on him. Morgan says that his old man has been waiting for this moment for years! Finally, he’s going to close the chapter on the Hassan Hunt!

“Ducard,” Bruce radios out to Henri, “Hassan’s going to the door. He’s got a gun.”
“Where exactly is he?” Henri asks.
“He’s at the peephole.” says Bruce.

POK!

BAM. And just like that, Hassan gets shot right through the head like a dumbass. Bruce finds this surprising. I guess he thought they were going to ask Hassan nicely to stop being a terrorist and then they would have a nice chat over tea? Instead he gets all pissy at Morgan, like he was duped into being involved with killing a terrorist. It’s very strange to me.

“What happened to seeing this evil bastard brought to justice and put on trial in front of the world court–I thought that was the goal, Morgan?!” Bruce spits at him. Look, Brucey, how can you be so smart and cunning and jacked and brave and jacked and resourceful and fearless and jacked and NOT know that this was the plan all along? You naive slut? Bruce strolls on out of there. Scruples! OHHH, BRUCE HAS HIS SCRUPLES ALL RIGHT! SCRUPLES OUT THE ASS, DUCARDS.

“Wayne’s a loose end that needs to be cut. See to it personally, son.” says Henri while taking a sexy drag from his cigarette.

And now, in a fight scene that is as clear as mud, Morgan attempts to snipe Bruce Wayne as he gets into a taxi. The bullet still hits him (?), Morgan thinks Bruce is dead, he heads down to his car and drives away, a cinder block crashes right through Morgan’s windshield, Bruce leaps down from above through the windshield (“MORRRGGAAAAN!”), Bruce grabs Morgan out of the car and throws him around for a bit. Eventually, Bruce throws Morgan’s broken body through Henri Ducard’s skylight, right on top of him while he sits at his desk doing bounty hunting desk work or whatever the hell Henri Ducard needs a desk for.

Lo’, there’s the story of how Bruce Wayne ended his relationship with the Ducards! What a great story that a) Damian still hasn’t heard, and b) wasn’t a fucking big deal of a story to begin with. Why didn’t he want to talk about this with Damian in the first place? So stupid.

We’re back at the embassy. Police have shown up, including Commissioner “Mustache Bandit” Gordon. Batman tells him that an ambassador was STOLEN from the BUILDING, and then Batman says “I’ll help you out but I’m gonna do other stuff too, BYE!” and leaves.

Gotham Harbor. NoBody has a secret Crime Boat where he’s got the ambassador ball-gagged so they can do Crimes on him. Using “truth serum” they were able to get “all they need” from the “ambassador” so they can “take apart his human trafficking system” within “a matter of days” and then they can all “go home” and enjoy their “Hungry Man Dinners”.

I remember this scene from Pulp Fiction!

As NoBody wraps up, he turns to Robin and goes “…so…did….uh…did your dad finally tell you about the time he almost killed someone?” and Robin says “you’re lying you old bag of horseshoes” and then NoBody goes “yeah well ‘fraid not, it was me, he almost did murders on me” and Robin says “you’re lying you stinky sack of dog bones” and then NoBody does “yuh-huh”. They go back and forth in this vein while the ambassador gets dangled over some lovely acid. Robin realizes that he’s standing next to an Olympic swimming pool-sized vat of acid and says “YOU’RE DUNKING HIM IN ACID!”, proving again that Robin’s a sharp little guy. Robin protests this barbaric behavior, and NoBody starts justifying his actions while attempting to subdue Robin with his special fancy pulse palms, but Robin is too quick. He shoots the fucker with his grappling hook.

NoBody goes berserk. Robin had activated a GPS, which NoBody noticed, and now Batman has a lock on Robin’s location. “I thought you were on MY side! But you BETRAYED me, just like HE did!” NoBody whines. Robin unveils that this was all an elaborate ruse this whole time! And NoBody, when he asks Robin why he’d throw away all that he was offered, Robin responds with “Because he’s my father, you idiot.”

Touching. Is that a tear in my eye?

NoBody isn’t going down without a fight. He uses the GPS to transmit a message to Batman. He tells him that Damian pulled the wool over both of their eyes, it seems. And since NoBody is all pissed off at this betrayal, he starts breaking Robin’s bones or something so that Batman can hear it.

Batman is displeased.

Final Thoughts

Morgan is fucked. Even if he pretended to hurt the little twerp over the GPS loudspeaker, Batman is still going to punch him so hard in the face that he’ll push Morgan’s teeth through his asshole.

And what the hell is Demon Seed? From the cover. That was never addressed! Oh well.

Shit’s going to get real. Two issues left! Stay tuned.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman and Robin (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Mutineer”! As in, an engineer of mutiny? In the previous installment, little Damian Wayne got an earful of parental disapproval from Bruce “Vilanch” Wayne. Now he is grounded! But Damian doesn’t want Bruce to tell him what to do! There’s a lot of this kind of fighting. Meanwhile, Alfred is the much better parent and Bruce should go back to not being a father just like in every other Batman series.

Morgan Ducard, the son of one of Batman’s mentors, hates the way Batman does things and he likes killing instead as NoBody. He tries to change Batman’s mind about his approach to crime fighting, but Batman is Mr. Morals and won’t budge. Damian, however, keeps killing bats and bugs and stuff like a little hellion, so NoBody has a better shot of bringing him over to the dark side. And that’s just what he’s going to do.

I outlined my prediction for the remainder of this storyline in the previous post, but I’ll do it here again: Looks like Damian’s going to the dark side for an issue or two, he’ll learn the error of his ways, he’ll come crawling right back to Bruce crying about how wrong he was, Bruce will jab him with an I-Told-You-So before they decide to team up as a real team and fight this villain. Respect will be earned both ways.

We shall see.

Batman and Robin (Vol. 2), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Peter J. Tomasi
“Mutineer”

BATMAN BETRAYED! Check that cover, Damian’s got a new dad now, bitch! MUTINEER!

Bruce finds a note in the grass by his parents’ gravestones. “I had to leave. The lie is over.”

In Wayne Manor, in Damian’s bedroom, Alfred shows Bruce a sketchbook containing pages upon pages of Bruce and/or Batman getting killed. “…I’ve let my own son slip away…” Bruce laments, finally understanding the gravity of the situation. He’s a little less creeped out by drawings his son made of axes chopping his skull in half than I would think, but hey, I’ve got daughters! What do I know?

“We’re getting him back, Alfred. I won’t let him down again.” Bruce says, but dollars to doughnuts says that he will let him down at least once before this story arc is over!

Meanwhile, Robin is chillin’ with NoBody on some fuckin’ snake gargoyle thing. “You made the right choice, Damian.” NoBody says; he’s so proud of his new son! So springy and vengeful! Full of weird, murderous rage and aspergers!

I’m a kid, I can puke on command. Here, watch:

“Are you prepared to have your father as an enemy?” he asks. Robin declares that Bruce has always been the enemy, and that Alfred has been more of a father to him than that hoser ever was. NoBody confirms, one last time, that this kid is willing to be a little sociopathic asshole as needed. And it will be needed a lot! Robin is fucking ready, man.

NOT SO FAST, PUNK. NoBody doesn’t trust you completely yet, and he proposes a demonstration to prove your loyalty! Ha! And yet, never one to back off, Robin declares that it is NoBody that has to prove himself instead! “So far all I’ve heard up here is words.” Robin says menacingly. Better watch it, NoBody, it looks like Robin’s got that crazy glint in his eye. In five seconds he’s going to gnash at your jugular!

“If it’s action you want, then follow me.” NoBody tells him. Oooooh, sexy!

Back at Wayne HQ, Bruce and Alfred are in a giant room with a wall completely lined with screens. They’ve tapped into every single security camera in Gotham City! And Bruce tells Alfred that he’s too fucking busy and bored to stick around, so he’s leaving while Alfred can be stuck inside looking at 400 screens all night. They’re looking for any sign of Damian even though Alfred reminded Bruce that the kid was trained to evade camera detection. Bruce doesn’t listen and he leaves going “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN’T HEEEEEEEAARRR YOOOOOUUUU”.

“Even the one I installed in the Macy’s women’s bathroom, sir.”

As Batman drives around he has a “MY SOOONN! MY SO-O-O-O-O-OONNN!”” inner monologue. He starts wondering why Damian was so willing to scurry on over to the dark side, and then takes the opportunity to finally blame himself for Damian’s shitty disposition. He wasn’t ready to tell his personal Morgan Ducard story then, and he’s sorry. He’s ready to tell it NOW though, which is funny because he’s still not fucking telling Damnian his personal Morgan Ducard story. He’s just telling it to himself again. Jesus Christ, Bruce.

So he starts telling his story to the comic book reading audience and not at all to his son who wanted to hear the story. As we all know, Morgan Ducard’s dad, Henri, was the most sought-after assassin in the world. However, one day he met a woman named Felicity Strode and he got a boner so big that he wasn’t able to think straight about assassinating anymore! Henri fucked a baby into this lady and now he has a family and that’s not a very good thing to do when you should be bounding around the globe assassinating motherfuckers! But, here’s the twist: Felicity Strode was an assassin herself who was hired by a terrorist organization that had lost men due to Henri. And Henri doesn’t know that. So that sucks.

Well then, Ducard ain’t so fuckin’ smart, is he? Assassinate yourself a clue.

BUT, along the way, even though it was Felicity’s mission to kill Henri, she instead fell in love with him and had a baby fucked into her and yada yada yada. She never revealed this secret to him. They lived happily ever after.

But not really, because when you play with terrorists you get the, uh…the whammy. Years later, the terrorists still wanted Henri Ducard dead. If they didn’t get from Felicity what they paid for, they were going to torture and kill her son. When Felicity agreed, over the phone, to follow through with the original plan, Morgan (who overheard the call) was all like “NOT TODAY!” and then he stabbed his own mother with a kitchen knife. From that day forward, Henri Ducard took his son under his wing and taught him the art of killing everybody everywhere all day!

While all this was happening, Bruce Wayne was cavorting around East Asia learning martial arts and whatnot. After that, his next stop was going to be France to find Henri Ducard (they hadn’t met each other yet). He had no such luck, that is, until Morgan popped up out of nowhere while Bruce was carrying some baguettes home from the store (natch!) and tried to murder the shit out him with a knife while Henri watched in the shadows. It didn’t work!

Ha! Can’t argue with that one.

Henri starts questioning Bruce with a gun pointed right at his head. Bruce tells him that he knows Henri and Morgan are tracking a terrorist named Hassan, and he’d like to be involved! For some reason! He asks them if they want an apprentice.

Years later, Bruce regrets this decision.

We finally cut again to Robin and NoBody, who are busy staking out an embassy where NoBody wants to whack an ambassador. NoBody declares the ambassador a slave trader, profiting off of human trafficking and coordinating the transportation of people across borders. YEAH, AND WHAT POLITICIAN ISN’T? Turn a blind eye, son! Robin is hostile and hesitant about assassinating some high-end political figure, but NoBody is like “do it anyway!” and Robin is all “ok, fine”. And then there’s a big, page-long montage of both of them infiltrating the embassy and knocking around security guards and employees like they own the place!

When they get to the ambassador, they successfully subdue the sweaty, balding urchin and knock him to the floor. Robin, with a look on his face like the ambassador is making him eat his vegetables, aims a gun at him. NoBody says “I told you you’d have to demonstrate that your newfound will is genuine. Now shoot him in the head.”

Final Thoughts

TAKE HIM DOWN, ROBIN! WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP!

I know I’m supposed to sympathize with Bruce Wayne in these comics, but man, fuck that guy sometimes! Robin should get adopted by this Morgan Ducard guy, and then stab him with a kitchen knife in 9 years when he least suspects it. Then he can traipse on down to Wayne Manor and stab Bruce and Alfred with kitchen knives. Then he can be the Kitchen Knife Bandit! Then he can get his own comic book series where he stabs a different asshole with a kitchen knife in every issue until he himself is finally stabbed with a kitchen knife in Kitchen Knife Bandit (Vol. 18), Issue #4.228 (“Knifed!”).

I guess what I’m trying to say is, Damian Wayne is the most interesting DC character I’ve come across so far in my incredibly short travels, and he’s going to be ruined in less than three issues with “morals” and “empathy”. Makes me sick!