Batman and Robin #13

[superfangirl1]

tags:creator:Grant Morrison,creator:Frazer Irving,Title:Batman and Robin

Comments

[punishermax]

Perhaps smashing him on the head with a crowbar isn't the best way to get coherent information Damien?

I think you need some help with interrogation, speak with my associate Eliot Stabler.

[bariman]

Never start with the head. They get all... fuzzy.

[icon_uk]

The Police reaction to the Joker's cry for help is refreshingly... probable.

And an interesting comment from the Joker there, perhaps if Dickbat manages to stop things going completely ghastly, the Joker will return to his normal insane approach since he'll have proved to himself that Dickbat is worthy of being treated the same way as the old Batman.

[arxh]

Dickbat makes me giggle

[shadowpsykie]

some where Jason Todd is weeping for Joy

[janegray]

This XD

[pyrotwilight]

It's funny, I remember someone saying they'll probably fake us out by the end of Damian's story and says he's Jason's son, I can see it.

[janegray]

Damian is 10, Jason is 18-20. Sure Jason was a street kid and all, but come on.

[jcbaggee]

Frazier continues to draw people like a pot of cold mashed potatoes, but this is probably the best I've seen him.

[espanolbot]

"You sound just like him."

Ahaha, I kinda think that the Joker's Batman obsession is reasserting itself onto Damian instead, and that Damian's going to end up with something kinda bad happening to him soon as a result.

There has to be a twist, otherwise Damian just figuring out how the Joker works after having only known him in person for, what?, twenty minutes of comicbook time together just seems a bit too pat.

Like a new character showing up in Gotham Sirens and lecturing Selina about how her thievery means that she sucks as a person, which makes her cry. Something silly like that.

[blake_reitz]

I doubt Damian has figured out the Joker. If anything, the badass lines and massive violence are just his way of dealing with any situation, and is probably exactly what the Jokers wants.

[blake_reitz]

I love the Joker's expression in that panel "You sound just...like him." It's almost enraged, practically giddy. Like the Joker implies, Dick can't be his archnemesis (Dick even says "I had you figured you out when I was 12." It's not that Dick actually knows the depths of the Joker's psychology, it's that he doesn't care to).

But Damian? Damian's going to be relentless. Damian won't stop until he wins. Damian, just like Bruce, will bring himself to the edge to stop the Joker, which is just what the Joker wants.

[icon_uk]

I'd rather see Dick acknowledged as the principle nemesis rather than another ruddy "Damian can do something better than Dick" notion, especially when it comes to the Joker.

Much like Terry in BB:RotJ, Dick's lack of interest in the Joker as a nemesis should infuriate the Joker in a positively villainous way.

[midnightvoyager]

Aw, Joker's delusional! Because I cannot see that coming out of the real Batman's mouth. Sounded vaguely silly, really. And the art is killing me more by the second.

[shadowvalkyrie]

WORD on all of that!

[darkknightjrk]

Some of his human faces are odd at times, but godDAMN can Irving draw a creepy as fuck Joker. :D

[mullon]

That's right Grant...er, Damian, keep being the poster child for bad self-insert fanfic.

[acton]

Hmmm. Somebody needs to send Jason a video of the Joker being beat up with a crowbar.

[jlroberson]

He'll never go outside again though.

"Again. Again. Mmm."

[jarodrussell]

Damien makes me want to read Batman comics again.

[sistermagpie]

Damian did two things this week that would have gotten him fired by Bruce. Though I've no doubt Bruce, too, will stick to the special rules for Damian code when he returns.

[benicio127]

Damian has done a lot of things in his Robin career so far that would have gotten him fired.

This whole "I've proven myself, haven't I?" in Red Robin seems a little bit like crocodile tears when Damian hasn't really proven himself, IMO. He still doesn't follow orders. When the other Robins disobeyed, they were either fired or put on hiatus.

[jlroberson]

VERY nice. And yes, Damian does sound like Bruce, very much, and looking back, he has all along. Except that Bruce doesn't kill.

Too bad for you, Joker.

[proteus_lives]

Liking Damian more and more.

[jlroberson]

This, I think, is what GM has been building to. I think it makes sense he saved it for the Joker.

That one "you don't know what chaos is" bit is my favorite. Well, that and the Joker being hit with the crowbar.

I'm just about to read the whole thing. Looking forward to it.

[perletwo]

I used my own scans, but since all the pages are in this post, I thought I'd put up the couple of Damian icons I made from this ish:

[icon_uk]

The art on the Brat Wonder one is HIDEOUS... not your fault I know, but just... UGH!

[minyandu.livejournal.com]

I can almost see Jason send Talia a lot of flowers and a big thankyou card and pay for all Damian's spine transplantation fee...

[darkknightjrk]

"PLEASE tell me you still have that camera thing in his head and you caught it all on film!"

[an-idol-mind.livejournal.com]

So...the Joker is the new Worf? Because it seems that whenever a writer wants to show off how badass their new pet character is, they go and have them beat up the Joker.

[jlroberson]

Like Denny O'Neill in "Five-Way Revenge?" Like pudding, there's never a bad time to beat up the Joker.

But I must wonder how he keeps those teeth. I've seen them knocked out before. Must be Miller logic: there are always more.

[silverzeo]

[jlroberson]

I've noticed some remarking on how the Joker is/isn't crazy now, or where this "super-sanity" thing went, Damian's tone, and other stuff in that vein. I actually have Dark Knight on in the background, and I should be drawing, but instead I got thinking a tiny bit and here's what I think, for what it's worth.

A few things. The Joker needs Batman more than Batman needs the Joker. Some of the best takes on the Joker, like in DKR, go so far as to make it like a stalker relationship. But that's in other places too. In "Five-Way Revenge," he can stomp an unconscious Batman's head, but does not because it isn't worthy of the moment--he got in a lucky shot. He'd envisioned it happening because of his carefully planned machinations. So he walks away. (and accidentally leaves a clue that brings Batman to him)

That goes to what Damian says here, which, apart from the severity of the beating, does sound like the way Batman talks to the Joker. Dick here is more amiable, more familiar. Bruce is usually much more final, more severe, and more dripping with contempt. Which Damian does here. Bruce takes pleasure in refuting the Joker's very self-conception, snaring a man who wants to pretend he can defy logic IN logic and breaking him.

The Joker is to some degree "insane" by choice. But the thing is, he doers know what's right and what's wrong, he just wants to take a perverse attitude toward them. He would not know how to HURT if he didn't understand most don't think it right.

He carefully plans everything, which he shares with Batman; you could almost say in a way Batman taught him, because that's the weight class he's been working in all this time. There are mentally disturbed people who do that--in such a way it can work. Maybe. But they'd be among autistics.The Joker is evil. But he is not insane. He just likes to do awful things. In KILLING JOKE, he tries to prove to Batman that he's RIGHT. That's not the same thing as crazy, to me. Socio or psychopath? Maybe. But that's not quite the same thing. He's too highly functional. It's something else.

That's just my feeling though, I'm only someone with an interest in psychology.

But he goes on in this scene, just prior, about the signature event that began Morrison's run, the shot, from a fake Batman, that caused his face to be stuck smiling before he cut off his lips. See, the lips thing was a capitulation to it, a moment of "seeing the joke" like when his face was first destroyed. Incompetent doctors destroyed his nerves and muscles, forcing him to always have that smile. The lips thing was just, in a way, him taking it out on something that wasn't his face anymore.

His face was finally, truly stuck that way. More than just coloring. And it seems to have brought on something like what happened when, in GM's JLA, he briefly held that Whirlogog thing and became sane. And it nearly crushed him.

I think, now that he really is stuck that way, the shock and having the motivator--Batman may have been the Joker's way of escape from thinking about everything from That Night to now--around that works, boredom has set in, then a hint of "sanity," then realization, then this. It's really sunken in, perhaps, that he's just a man with a deformed face, and he can't handle that.

Anyway. Some babble.

[blake_reitz]

I agree with this.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Yyyyyyeeeeaaaah-hh... this is a tad beyond the pale. I mean, I know this is the JOKER we're talking about, but when you get right down to it, he's still a helpless, handcuffed man being beaten with a crowbar in a police interrogation room. I already knew that Damian was a little bastard who has no patience with protocol, but still, this is a bit much for someone who wears the Robin costume. I do not approve.

[icon_uk]

Many would argue that the Joker is never truly helpless, any more than Batman is ever truly helpless.

[mad]

Am I the only one who kinda feels like Damian hitting the Joker with a crowbar is something he hasn't earned the right to do yet?

Haven't really been following much of B&R though, so maybe I'm missing something.

It also seems kind of silly to have the Joker fixate on Damian as a replacement for Bruce. Sure, okay, maybe Damian sounds "just like him", but as a foil for the Joker, he'd suck, because he's not Bruce in his morals or methods. Part of why the Joker is so obsessed with Batman is because Batman is so absolutist in his views on crime and killing to the point where he won't kill anyone, including the Joker, no matter what. Whereas Damian would happily chop the Joker's head off in a heartbeat.

Does not compute.

[r0b666]

The clues that told Dick it was the Joker are just more of the usual bullshit Morrison "look what I can pull out of my ass" obscure fare.

And once again Damian is the super awesome-est and Dick Grayson is just a place holder until Dan Dido gets his wet dream of killing him off to finish his utter destruction of the 80's Teen Titans.

Fuck you Morrison. Fuck you.

[alienist]

...Yeah, Damian sure sounds like a ten year old there.