Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman and the Mad Monk, Issue #5 – “Dark Moon Rising (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Batman follows Julie to the Castle of Vampiric Wonders and encounters all sorts of hilariously clichéd booby traps, such as feral wolves, dungeons, pits, walls that close in on you, walls that close in on you with spikes attached to them, staircases that turn into slides at the push of a button, and so on and so forth.

So Batman’s gonna die in about 45 seconds unless he presses a button on his utility belt that extends his dick like a grappling hook. Parental guidance advised for Issue #5!

Batman and the Mad Monk, Issue #5 [February, 2007]
Written by: Matt Wagner
“Dark Moon Rising (Part 5)”

This Dala lady won’t shut the fuck up about Niccolai. I haven’t seen one great thing about him, and she gushes like he turned her poop into solid gold. Plus she always talks about her old country without namedropping it. Don’t be ashamed! Moldova is lovely this time of year.

Anyway, she met Niccolai after her parents and sister died in the war. You know the war. The “Old Country War”. Dala saw them die, too. She was right there when it happened. She wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Niccolai and Dala check the traps. The wolves are dead, so that’s a bummer, but someone “tripped the third stair on the staircase” so it turned into a Super Fun Happy Slide, which must have sent the culprit down to the Spiky Dungeons.

Dala became a heroin addict after the death of her family. There wasn’t a vein she wouldn’t shoot up, boy howdy. Those were the days.

Niccolai is pretty confident that the intruder will die a painful death and they can clean up the mess once the walls retract in a few hours. Plenty of time to watch M*A*S*H reruns.

Dala was hitting rock bottom, and Niccolai swooped in to save her life. “I have loved him ever since.”

Let’s check in on the poor asshole currently caught in the trap. Oh, right, it’s Batman. I forgot. Well, sir, he’s trying to keep the walls from closing in and it’s not working very well. The blood-draining gate is stuck tight. He decides to use a batarang to wedge under the walls to slow them down, and it reduces the speed by roughly 0.000000000005 meters per second. Just the time he needs to figure some more shit out.

Hot enough for ya??? Heh heh heh. Wait a minute! That doesn’t make any sense here!

Batman’s big-brained bright idea is to try to blast open the covered hole in the ceiling. The hole he fell through. It’s covered now. And he has to try to blast it open. He lines the cover with plastic explosive, knowing full well that it’s probably humorously kill him, but he gives it a shot anyway. He lights a fuse. He prays that his melon head doesn’t explode.

KA-BOOM

“Dizzy… Concussion? Ears… ringing… good sign… focus… walls… no time…” He mumbles like this for another few panels until he realizes that the cover blew open and the spikes are ready to impale his tender eyeballs. He grapples his way up and shreds the shit out of himself on the closed-in spikes. Bleeding everywhere like a doofus. He grimaces in pain. No time for that, though. Get the fuck up and save Julie, you ho.

Ugh. Batman’s going to wuss out here and leave. He needs medical attention first before he can start punching weirdo vampires.

As Batman hobbles around like a wounded baboon, Jim Gordon has been waiting on the GCPD roof for 915 hours. “He’s never taken this long to respond,” he thinks while dragging on what looks like a fucking cigarillo. “Or perhaps I have grown to expect too much. I simply push that damn button and expect him to show.”

Gordon continues beating himself up for being an unempathetic piece of shit. Batman appears out of thin air wrapped in huge, bloody bandages. Gordon just about has a heart attack. Batman merely says “I’ll be fine.” He just cut himself shaving! lol!

Look, we could spend all day throwing up over the sight of blood everywhere. What’s the good word, Jim? How’s the Gotham baseball team doing? You know, the Gotham City Garbage Fucks? Are they winning the pennant this year? Oh, you have other things you want to talk about? Fine.

Damnit, Jim! You’re more cryptic than my eleventh ex-wife!

Basically, Gordon yells at Batman for doing things his way to achieve the same goals. Jim Gordon does not skulk in shadows and be all secret all the time, oh no. He wants things out in the open and in front of his mother! “If I’m going to contact you in the future, it’s going to have to be something more aboveboard. Not so covert. Don’t ask me how, because, as of yet, I haven’t a clue.”

Batman looks like Gordon just tried to fuck his dog at both ends, but he accepts Gordon’s sudden rude outburst and makes no further mention of it! Time now to talk about those bloodless victims. After 50 hours of rifling through the victims’ pockets, they discovered a pattern: all the victims were out-of-towners who had left their hometowns to live in the city of one reason or another, and none of them had any siblings? How does that shit grab you, Bat Guy? Pretty good shit, huh? Suck on that shit, why don’t you.

Batman finds this information quite significant, and he shows it by disappearing suddenly in the middle of Gordon’s sentence. He decides to let the awkward silence simmer by enjoying the view from the roof. Gotham City has the skyline of a Swiss army knife, so there’s a lot to uh… goggle at.

Dipshit.

Later, Batman decides to scale Julie’s building like a creep. He peeps at her sleeping in her bed, then loses his grip on the rope and slams his broken body onto a balcony. Between the legs would’ve been funny, but I guess I can’t have everything.

“No good,” he thinks, scrambling onto the landing. “Wounds reopened… Need… patching up… Had to… Had to… make sure… She’s okay.” Then he starts swinging around town again while Norman Madison, on the landing behind a shadow, holds his gun and sweats and boggles his eyes and gulps. Dude is one loud knocking noise away from splattering his brains against the wall, and I’m here for it!

Bruce has finally returned home to his faithful general practitioner and personal proctologist Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred stitches his man up while relaying some information he knows about the Rallstone family (who used to own the castle). The Rallstones stunk! They stunk to high heaven! And their corrupting influence seems to have seeped into Gotham City’s current legacy! Why, the young playboy Richard Rallstone gallivanted around Europe as he pleased like he owned the place? Can you imagine that, Alfred? A rich guy gallivanting around town like he owns the place? Madness!

Richard’s father was the last known resident of the castle before he went bankrupt and murdered himself for fun. The deed is listed under Richard’s name. Bruce finds all this out on AOL.com, by the way.

Now that Alfred is done miserably dressing Bruce’s many mortal wounds, Bruce outfits himself with his robe and slippies and muses over the identity of the “Mad Monk” and his reasons for squatting in the castle. Is it Richard Rallstone, sick of Europe and now feeding on women’s necks? We’ll have to circle back to that notion later.

Alfred insists that Bruce gets some rest, like he does in every Batman comic book, but this time Bruce actually listens! That’s a first! Write this down, you’ll never hear about it again.

The next morning (or maybe it’s 3pm since she got drugged as fuck), Julie descends the staircase in a hungover haze. Norman has bags under his beady eyes. He has something important to tell his daughter, but her alertness and energy is exactly the opposite of his. She’s still tired, but he has something to get off his burly, beefy chest. “Lord knows I’ve been ashamed of what I did, but now… now I find myself– …oh, god…”

Dear, I’ve spent our entire fortune on pogs and Magic 8-Ball slammers. And I’m taking them with me to my grave.

So, Norman stays vague about his shady dealings, but shady dealings they were. He hands Julie a copy of his will. It holds information about all his accounts, holdings, trusts, piggy banks, complete with passwords and CAPTCHAs. They hug it out. He tells her that if she never sees him again, well… heh, uh… well… he loves her!

Norman leaves, knowing that he needs to steel himself for his next task at hand (getting buttfucked by an industrial meat hook). Julie still looks all fucked up, barely knowing what’s going on at all. She says bye like he just left for the store.

Next we get to see a glimpse of Niccolai and Dala’s cozy bedroom! Two coffins in a dirty, dingy basement room. It took Dala a while to get used to it, but she wouldn’t trade it for one of those bullshit Tempur-Pedic mattresses any day.

Now Niccolai, he sleeps like he’s dead! Dala tries to wake him up to tell him something: “She has returned – and I think she has succeeded!”

Niccolai rises out of his coffin lookin’ like Severus Snape with more energy. Julie, looking drunk as fuck, stumbles into the room guided by Dala. She mumbles and stammers, taking forever to say one sentence. In fact, she doesn’t even finish saying it, because Niccolai grabs Norman’s will out of Julie’s hands. Surprised that it was so easy for Julie to obtain this precious document of bank account information and where Norman’s Beanie Babies will end up when he dies, Niccolai smiles to his ugly self. He snaps his fingers and Julie falls into a deep trance; falling to the floor, motionless, eyes wide open. Now that Niccolai has what he needs from her, she’s yesterday’s trash!

Dress her up in a turkey costume. Gobble gobble!

Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce is having another stupid fucking dream about his parents getting murdered. I’m starting to get really sick of that shit. He wakes up yelling “JULLIIIEEE!”, grabs his Batman jammies, and heads for the Batmobile against Alfred’s insistence to stay the hell home. What Alfred doesn’t realize, of course, is that Batman doesn’t listen to butlers. He hasn’t before, and he will not today.

Alfred hands Batman a few pills, which Batman immediately gobbles up. He then asks what they are. Alfred says “Roofies! Ha!” and then has his way with him before saying “Just kidding, it’s pain killers and blood coagulant.”

Batman takes his leave. Alfred sheds a tear.

We end with Niccolai the Mad Monk presiding over the Brotherhood! All like “I’ve got a surprise for you! Check out this lady I drugged.” Julie stands chained against an X of wood. She’s wearing a fancy dress with a fancy bodice and a fancy eyemask.

Batman’s going to ruin the party.

Final Thoughts

Bruce Wayne is gonna get Julie hella killed and he’s going to beat himself up over it and lock himself in his Batcave for four months while Alfred has a lot of sex in Bruce’s bed.