Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #11 – “My Brother’s Keeper”! In the previous installment, Bruce Wayne has a long lost brother that he never knew he had, apparently. And he’s an Owl. An accident caused him to be born early and sickly and the Waynes hid him in the awful Willowwood Home for Children. If this sounds stupid, it’s because it is. It’s stupid and I hate everything about it.

Also, for some unfathomable reason, Bruce’s brother blames Bruce for the deaths of his parents, so now he seeks revenge! Wayne against Wayne! Brother against Brother! Owl against Bat!

*groan*

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #11 [August, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“My Brother’s Keeper”

There’s a full-page shot of Batman punching Owlman and barely connecting with it. “That all you got, brother?” Owlman asks in his best Hulk Hogan impression. “Or are you just playing nice?”

“You’re not my brother,” Batman growls, throwing another punch. “You’re a lunatic in a bird suit… and I was done playing nice… A LONG TIME AGO!”

Very poetic, Bruce. Your banter leaves a lot to be desired. A few more punches later and Owlman isn’t addled or hurt at all. “Is it my turn now?” he says, a fiery glint in his eyes. “Good.”

So Owlman bashes Batman against a wall and starts naming brothers. Romulus and Remus. Eteocles and Polynices. GOB and Buster. “But one brother always gets greedy and takes it all in those stories, doesn’t he? He takes the city for his own and forgets his kin. Leaves his fallen brother to rot. Just like you did.” Owlman shakes his poop-stained finger at Batman, who suddenly gets thrown the fuck through a brick wall, killing him instantaneously. Or, rather, making him fall 40 stories to the street below.

Batman launches his grappling hook and pulls Owlman down with him. Good thing Owlman has some sort of whiz-bang flying suit! With Batman hanging by a string below, Owlman decides to fly Batman around town to show him what he remembers from his view at Willowwood. There’s the Crowne Tower where all the starlets got murdered. Also, Owlman could see the reflection of Wayne Industries within its shiny, shiny windows.

Batman tries to let go of his grappling hook, but Owlman grapples him with his own hook. The tour shall continue!

Like a tour right in the side of the fucking building.

Seven years of bad luck. Congrats, you’re now a quadriplegic!

And the only thing that happens is maybe Batman is bleeding from his mouth a little bit. A big bowl of who cares? No stakes when the guy can’t get seriously hurt being flung into the side of a goddamned building. Comic books are stupid.

Owlman spouts off a ton of speech balloons filled with pointless lunacy that I will not repeat here. Just understand that the guy is loony toons and rather vindictive. Also, the Owls will help cleanse the city. Also, Bruce gets smashed right into the bell of a church tower. Like, we’re talking 190 broken bones. But no. Barely a scratch.

Then Owlman flies him up to an airplane cruising along the sky. “And so ends our tour, brother! I’ll watch the pieces of you come out the other side, scattered over the city you thought you knew so well… but didn’t know at all!”

And yes, Batman doesn’t so much as grimace as he’s inches away from being sucked into the jet engine. It’s so fucking stupid that I’m taking a shit on a glass table right now.

“It’s okay, Bruce! You can let go now!” screams Owlman as Batman less-than-desperately hangs on to the engine cover. “Your brother is watching over you. Just as he always has.”

I don’t know why Owlman keeps talking. Batman is dealing with a 180 dB engine right now, he can’t hear your loquacious ranting about brothers and the like. Luckily, Batman somehow at some point had placed a detonation device on Owlman’s back! And it blows him up to smithereens, scaring the everloving shit out of everyone on the plane.

A man watches as Batman pulls himself up from the engine cover and onto the wing. Then he just… lets go. He lets go from a flying airplane.

Uhhhh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We’re going to proceed with an emergency landing because some clown is fucking around on my airplane.

Batman plummets to the ground at escape velocity and, at the last minute, latches onto a building with his high-velocity Bat-rope. He, again, crashes right through a brick wall and lands on a pile of nails and razor blades and exploding mines with nary a wound.

“You just won’t stay dead—will you, brother?” says the very much alive Owlman, who picks Batman up by the scruff and leads him to what will now be BATMAN’S TOMB! Ha! They’ll be brothers buried together for a wee bit of time before Owlman comes back from the dead due to that one thing that’s in their blood that they brought up, like, six issues ago. I don’t remember.

Owlman’s verbosity continues. When Bruce was traipsing around the world training, the Court had said he died somewhere in the Himalayas or the back alleys of Paris, since he disappeared and all. It was Brother Owlman’s time to shine at that point, but noOOOoooOOoOoOOOO, Bruce had to come back. Out of nowhere! And the Owls decided “meh, you can be Lincoln March or something instead”. Disrespect! He wanted the city! It was his time!

In short, Batman’s going to be a blip on Gotham’s radar while Owlman will be Gotham’s history!

Then Batman sticks his thumbs in Owlman’s eyeballs and runs away. “Run like you always have,” Owlman says, clearly barely addled by thumb-in-the-eye syndrome, “but when you feel the prickling on the back of your neck, know that I’m coming for you! Reaching for you from the other side of your reflection!”

All this time, the tower has been exploding and on fire and the like for reasons that are not at all discernable to me. Owlman is trapped inside while the building completely collapses 9/11-style, but Batman says that he found no evidence of a body when he later investigated the rubble…

You’re like the petulant son I may or may not have!

Back at home, Bruce sits in a wheelchair with a few broken-ass limbs. Dick Grayson comes into the room ready to kick Batman’s ass for punching him back in Issue #7. But now that he’s wheelchair-bound, I guess he gets a pass.

Bruce tells Grayson that the Owls have set up a real labyrinthian trail, and their resources are staggering. He can’t make heads or tails of this whole operation. All the Owls he has found are stuck in cryogenic chambers, and those who got away, well… he’ll find them soon enough. Mark his words with a pen, sir.

Now Grayson gets to hear all about Lincoln March from Bruce, a story no one asked for! Bruce found out that his mother was pregnant when Bruce was three years old, and a car accident that Bruce doesn’t remember caused a premature birth. He died in 12 hours. For one night, Bruce had a brother. BUT, is it possible that the child survived and the Waynes squirreled him away to Willowwood for treatment? And that the records were falsified? To what end? That sounds like a lot of work for literally no reason.

Grayson seems content with the conclusion that the records were not falsified, but Bruce isn’t fucking done you little shit. *punches Grayson again* According to records, Willowwood admitted a John Doe baby a week after his brother supposedly died. Now, what isn’t to say that the Court knew about this and used it to convince Bruce he has an alive brother? This is where DNA evidence comes in, and there’s not enough sperm splashed around during the fight to make any realizations. But Bruce will not rest until he gets the evidence he wants! The no-resting continues, as usual.

But what of Bruce’s parents? Why would they keep such a secret from him? They wouldn’t have! Anyway…

Bruce apologizes to Grayson for him finding out he should have been a Talon. Grayson decides that he can’t punch Bruce anymore. Leave it to me, then!

Grayson asks if Bruce will rebuild the tower. Taller! With plenty of windows! “Lately, right up until all this with the Court, I’d come to think of the city as mine. As Batman’s… but I see now that I was wrong. Because Gotham isn’t Batman. Gotham isn’t the Owls. Gotham is… Gotham is all of us.

*sheds a single, salty tear*

BUT, the city is still Batman’s and the Owls better watch their fucking backs. The end.

Continuing the Jarvis Pennyworth side story…

“Screeching metal, burning rubber,and fire… followed by perfect blackness.”

As you recall, Martha Wayne fucking crashed her car like an idiot with Bruce inside. So much blood, oh my god. It looked like a slaughterhouse. And that’s how Martha Wayne died! Wait.

The trauma of the accident caused Martha to lose her baby. Martha was beside herself with sadness and grief, so Thomas decided to whisk the family away for a summer out of the country. To get away from Wayne Manor. To get away from Gotham. To get away from stinky Jarvis, honestly.

When the phone rang earlier, it was some mope who wanted to kill Martha down by the docks. Well, the phone is ringing again and Jarvis has this “brrrrt!!” look in his eyes.

It’s starting to get ugly for the frothing, feral butler.

Jarvis does not succeed in escaping from the Owl. At the manor’s gates, the Owl drags his ass back to his flaming house where he apparently dies. His last dying thoughts and wishes are for Alfred to never, ever, not in a million years, visit Gotham City. Ever. Or he’ll be so haunted.

In the “present day”, a younger, mustachioed Alfred pays his respects at his father’s grave. Bruce approaches him with a “we’re going to fuck up these Owls” attitude, but Alfred isn’t so sure. “I remember the cloud of darkness when I first came to this place,” says Alfred. “At the time, I truly felt that the manor was cursed.” And Bruce agrees that it is cursed in some way, and oh well because it’s the only home he knows. Alfred poops on Bruce’s face and tells him that this is the first time he has ever visited his father’s grave. He, in fact, didn’t really even know him!

“And yet, in those early years, I felt him hovering over me. Like a force trying to impart something. But there was nothing I could to but try to live up to the man he wanted me to be.” Alfred looks vaguely into the distance.

Bruce and Alfred say a few more pleasantries that mean literally nothing, and the comic book is over.

Final Thoughts

This was one of the most boring issues of a comic book that I’ve ever read! It took me, like, three hours to get through. Fuck this Batman story, man. I want to see Bruce Wayne wrestle a polar bear or something.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #10 – “Assault on the Court”! In the previous installment, Batman escapes out of his own property by the skin of his teeth as the Talons try to tear him to shreds. Alfred is trapped in the armory like a goose.

While the rest of the Bat Family is keeping an eye on the people on the list who weren’t murdered yet, Batman visits local politician Lincoln March, whom no one was keeping an eye on. He gets murdered right in front of Batman! BUT, March was able to give him a list of three Owl names, and now Batman’s going to use these leads to sell some real estate! You betcha!

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #10 [August, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Assault on the Court”

So, to start off, we learn about Joesph [sic] and Maria Powers. They own the most expensive residence in Gotham City – the top three floors of the Powers Hotel, estimating $58 million. Hard to get to without passing a thousand protective guards and the hotel itself, it has never had a visitor that wasn’t invited by the Powers.

UNTIL NOW.

Maria comes back to the residence to find the whole place trashed. She drops her monocle in her champagne glass and tries to call security on the comm, but no one answers… she gets into the elevator to escape…

“Going down?” asks a menacing slab of beef of a man. The kind of man who wears a stupid bat suit. Batman shows Maria an Owl mask, and she immediately tells him that it’s not Joseph’s. She swears on her 145-year-old life! “I know, Mrs. Powers. It’s yours. I found the case for your husband’s mask, but it’s empty. Where is he?”

Did you check the various brothels or bowling alleys? Barring that, look up your butt. Ha! Maria Powers threatens Batman to leave the city and never come back. Batman thinks he has the upper hand, but he ain’t got no hand at all! Batman doesn’t do much more than huff before turning away from her.

“Your scare tactics worked, sir,” says Alfred in Batman’s earpiece. “She’s dialing her husband now.”

“Tell me you can track the call, Alfred.”

Alfred can do anything. That guy fucks. Meanwhile, all the frozen Talons have been moved into the Batcave’s cold storage laboratory. “They seem to have retreated into some kind of preservatory stasis.”

Alfred gets a lock on Joseph Powers’ phone. The location is in a “blackout zone”, as in, ask about the zone again and you’re getting punched in the eye! But really, it’s a quarter-mile radius in which the phone could be anywhere. It’s on Gotham’s south side, so take the B train with all the homeless people pooping on the seats.

Batman immediately deduces the location of the phone at 77 Irving. “Right where it always was.” Alfred is perplexed, and he of course doesn’t get an explanation because Batman is an asshole.

Earlier in the evening, when Lincoln March gave Batman the list, Joseph Powers was named. Joseph Powers, the guy who founded the Gotham Aviary and its collection of rare owls. Joseph Powers, with the skewed financials. Joseph Powers, with the club foot and the lazy eye.

And at 77 Irving, Batman feels a tingle in his nethers. “I came to Harbor House when I was a boy. I was looking for the Court of Owls. That time I found nothing. Not tonight. Tonight, the Court goes down. Once and for all.”

No more skulking or billowing. No more Mr. Nice Bat. No more Mr. Scared Bat, either. Or Mr. Poop-My-Pants Bat.

Batman barges into Harbor House and starts punching stone gargoyles, vowing the end of the Court’s influence on his city. HIS city! And Batman is so fucking confident that he’s going to win this thing right here, right now, that he doesn’t expect to stumble upon a creepy dining room with a long table seated by about two dozen dead losers in Owl masks. Wine spilled everywhere. Well-dressed socialites dressed all fancy-like. A real suicide cult situation. “Damn you…” Batman mutters, walking away. “Damn you all.”

The next morning, Bruce sits at a chair in his manor with a view the overlooks the city skyline. He looks tired and scruffy. Alfred walks into the room all like “SIR! You’re meeting with the firms bidding on the elevated park in less than an hour!” Bruce doesn’t give much of a shit about that right now. “It doesn’t make sense, Alfred. Members of the Court, taking their own lives, just like that.”

Alfred says it does make sense. After all, Bruce took the city back from them. Bruce isn’t convinced. After all, this is only Issue #10 and the story doesn’t end until Issue #12! Something fishy is going on. Another thing: all the money was siphoned from their bank accounts. It feels more like a setup.

Treating him like a child, Alfred tells Bruce that this is all over and maybe he should move on. You don’t get more answers. There are no questions left! Scoot along now, the firms are waiting for your tired, disheveled-lookin’ ass. And, as no surprise to anyone, Bruce is going to go out as Batman instead to go after… him. The one he forgot. Whoever that is. Even Alfred is perplexed, but that’s a usual state of mind when you work for Bruce Wayne.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Batman starts talking about sinkholes. There’s on in Gotham City under the old Willowwood Home for Children.

And, to this day, their creepy, emaciated ghosts still do jumping jacks and various other calisthenics in the foyer.

Eighteen years ago, a sinkhole opened and swallowed up the orderlies’ quarters. After that, all the abuse and neglect that the children suffered came to light. “They say the sadness of the lost children caused the sinkhole. They say the place is haunted by their spirits.”

What all this has to do with Batman meeting the last Owl he forgot about, I don’t know. But he suddenly gets entangled in a dang net and approached by shadowy figure.

“So, tell me, Batman… Who? Who am I?”

“I don’t know,” Batman says, writhing on the floor stupidly. “But you’re not Lincoln March. Because Lincoln March doesn’t exist. He’s a paper man, set up by the Court of Owls.”

“Good. So if I’m not Lincoln March, then who am I?”

Then Batman answers with about 1000 boring words. A traitor, a thief, an old member of the Court before he betrayed them. He poisoned a whole room full of them and made it look like a suicide pact. Meanwhile, he included his name on the list of targets as a fake-out and staged his own death. The man counters this by saying he actually did die, but he took the serum that brings Talons back to life.

The man tells Batman that, before the serum, the Court was developing a suit for a newly trained Talon that was supposed to rival Batman in speed, strength, cunning, and penis-girth. And, again, he asks Batman if he knows who he is. Come on, now. Guess!

Well, it turns into more of a tangle, so I’ll let you fuckers read some of this now. I don’t wanna read any of this.

Yeah, I’m not reading all that noise.

After all these words, the man gets upset. Batman still isn’t answering the question of WHO HE IS! WHO IS HE, GODDAMNIT?! “SAY IT!”

“The pin,” Batman responds.

“The pin! What pin?” the man asks, stunned.

“In the story you told me, in Old Wayne Tower. About your mother’s death. The car accident that killed her.”

“There’s the lie, but where’s the truth?”

“You mentioned a pin she wore. A misshapen heart pin. Made of clay.”

“And?”

“You saw the picture of my mother wearing that pin and you used it in your–”

Whoops, they’re blah blah blah-ing again! I also don’t know what the fuck these two are talking about, prompting me to suspect that I accidentally skipped about a dozen issues of pin talk.

Anyway, here’s the big reveal:

Is this comic over yet?

“I don’t have a brother!” Batman yelps in the net, turning purple. The man reminds him that he is supposed to have a brother. Twins, son. He was born first, sickly and thin, and was thrown in Willowwood out of sight of the public eye! Batman doesn’t believe it! His parents would never do such a thing!

“If you wanted to know if the Court had anything to do with our parents’ deaths, Bruce, the answer is no. They didn’t. That was all your fault, Brother. And I’m going to make you pay.”

One-on-one fight coming up! Owl vs. Bat! Who will win! Not the audience, that’s for sure, brother!

Continuing the Jarvis Pennyworth side story, the one where he thinks he single-handedly ruining the city. He’s running away from menacing figure near the gate that exits the manor’s grounds. “Death’s shadow draws closer with every passing moment,” he says, rather melodramatically.

He runs back into the manor, closes the door behind him, and presses his body up against it. Knives jut through the door, piercing his shoulder!

Anyway, the legacy of the Wayne family has been irrevocably fucked for reasons that are still not at all apparent. Martha Wayne wanted to open a school for underprivileged children. This would help shape the city into something less shitty than its current shitty state, and therefore be suitable for Bruce and her (!) unborn child.

One day, Martha is yelling into the phone to mayor complaining like a Karen about men, who represented the city, coming to threaten her unborn child. Jarvis scoots young Master Wayne up to bed so he doesn’t hear the irate hootin’ and hollerin’.

“In a city like Gotham, there will always be those who stand firmly against progress,” present-day Jarvis thinks as the door opens and sends him flying across the room. He runs, rudely leaving blood dripping everywhere. “My father even told me once never push a Wayne towards greatness. Happiness is a more worthy goal. And far less deadly.”

Jarvis now hides, terrified, from an approaching hooded figure. He never took his father’s advice until one day when he received a call about taking Martha Wayne to Dock 17 at the Gotham Marina. Failure to comply will result in an anal thrashing the likes of which you have never felt before! Maybe!

Brave like a skunk, you little shit. Go to your room.

Jarvis comes to Martha to tattle on the mysterious caller, who may be bigger than City Hall. They want Jarvis to take her to the docks, so saddle up! Jarvis looks out for Numero Uno around here!

Change of plans: take Martha and Bruce to the grounds for the new school for Underprivileged Little Wankers. Jarvis is nervous as an emu.

Because the school grounds are on the corner…

…of Lincoln and March!

Then the car flips over or something in a fiery crash. I don’t know.

Final Thoughts

Is anyone invested in the outcome of all this? I certainly am not. I’m invested in this bag of Sun Chips I’m eating though. This is infinitely more worthwhile. Mmmm…