A group of specalists, assembled to combat general crime? It'll never work!

[thanekos.insanejournal.com]

once upon a time, Batman realized stemming the tide of crime wasn't a one man fight.

It's never been, really, even for a Batgod- so for a man who's been at the job for 1 1/2 years, it's almost impossible to be effective one hundred percent time.

Criminals like the afro-sporting something-planning Peter Scotta can get lucky, and Batman can't defend himself against that luck. He needs to mitigate that factor with help...



Like Jim Gordon's:





or Harvey Dent's:



anyhow, Batman decides that relying on the police department for info is not the most optimum of ideas.

Better to build his own team of operatives, he thinks, reporting to him alone.

People who can collate information for him, make the leaps and do the legwork his single brain can't so that he can be much more efficient at the crime fightings.

And so, he brings this varied team together:



From top to bottom, we've Mira Charan, skilled criminal psychologist; David Rubens, brilliant-but-shy electronics tinkerer; Gerard van Daalen, ex-Green Beret on a thinning hair trigger; Amy Ross, idealistic FBI analyst; and Luis Diaz, ex-con looking to go on the straight and narrow.

perfect material for your support staff, isn't it?



an autonomous crime-fighting cell of interested folk. might almost work, Bats.



the team, surprisingly, proves equal to the task:



Sir.

a-heh.



but alas, everyone needs a challenge. and so, enter Victor Fries in this semi-kinda-sorta-I-guess-oh-whatnever canonical Legends of the Dark Knight arc, here a scientist who tried to save his medical disorder'd wife with his cryogenic effect device, only to discover the settings'd been tampered with in a bid by his bosses to weaponize it:



... look, Seth Fisher's on art, whaddya expect?



Fries, newly enmaddened, dons a protective suit and cryogenic gun and kills all his co-workers with the exception of his weaponizing boss Derek Parke.

Batman and co. find out about it:



this won't bite you in the ass, Bats, not at all...



the initials thing works, somehow.



Jim Gordon: smarter than the average bear.



donuts, bats? well, i suppose the amount of energy you expend on a daily basis.. either that, or leftovers from days on end at your terminals.



but when they go to find out how Peter Scotta's mixed up in this (turns out he was trying to pay off Fries' boss to sell him the cryotech under the field, in a bid to up his own power), they kinda fuck up a Gordon-run sting operation by being detected by the cops and having Daalen try to resolve the situation in his own way:





oh, Bats.

alas, Scotta gets off the hook and Jim Gordon goes off on Batman.





they are.

as Scotta threatens Parke over how he hasn't gotten his cold ray yet and the group listen in, Fries enters:



and Scotta's written out of the plot (I did say he had an afro):



Batman is soon on the scene:



TRACKER!



back at said office, the team is frazzled by Fries, and considers breaking it off.

Daalen, however, decides to go after Fries on his own thanks to that TRACKER!:



But the poor-condition roof comes down with a KRAK!, so:



and:



anyhow, divorced of Batman, the team set out to stop Fries on their own, but not before leaving a note:



Batman goes after Fries, reconciling with Jim in the process:



while the soon-to-be-fired team discovers Fries's device:



looks like a glowing light bulb.





... oh, that's not gonna end well for her arm.

Only a few more pages left in the plot, so exit Victor Fries:



And the notion of Batman's support team:



we close on Bruce deciding that a subordinate team isn't so good for him, that maybe he needs a trusted partner... while he looks at an article about the Flying Graysons.

(hey, atleast it wasn't about the Red Hood's crime sprees or a hamhanded attempt to show Harvey's face half-shadowed.)

bonus: Red Eyes shows us that no matter how elite a mook you are, you'll still be dumb and expendable.

Comments

[statham1986.insanejournal.com]

As downright trippy as this is in parts, I somehow like Fisher's depiction of Nora as this weird muse who Victor hallucinates and essentially gets told what to do by. It's not as powerful as say, the Animated Series version initially was, but it is an interesting idea. Plus, I just love the visual contrast between the two - Victor's all cool blues and she's warm yellows.

I also like how they call bullshit on 'Batman and Robin', in that someone who gets frozen is still going to be really messed up by being thawed. 'Bat-lasers' my ass.

[(Anonymous)]

Would the messup be that bad though? I mean... frostbite in general takes time to set in and do real cellular damage. Most cold-based weaponry we've seen in comics (very much aware that I'm inviting trouble by trying to work real-world physics into a comic book, bear with me) seems to work by freezing water vapor around a target... you'd shock their system badly by having them immediately suspended in subzero temperatures, I imagine, but there shouldn't be significant tissue damage just by being flash frozen for a bit?

Mitigating circumstances though -- this comic specifically states it was done on the cellular level. But the only villain I'm aware of who could do immediate damage in the short term is Captain Cold, and only because it specifically states (at least in a recent revision) that his weapon works by inducing a state of absolute zero.

[halloweenjack.insanejournal.com]

I don't know about the relative properties of the cold guys' guns, but I do know that the damage done by freezing is due to ice crystals forming within cells that are big enough to rupture the cell walls. Freezing very quickly should avoid most of that damage.