Batman and Robin: the re-Novelization
part 47
I apologize, I missed a week in here.
When we last left off, nothing important happened. I mean, none of this is important. Does this feel important to you? It can’t possibly, right? How pathetic would you have to be for THIS to be important?
Closer to the center of the city, but not too close, medium-close. Lots of Gothamites will argue with you about what the city center really is. Is it that giant statue of a guy that’s holding up the observatory because that’s how they build things in Gotham? Is it the less-giant but still very impressive statue of a woman with huge jugs, and inside those jugs is a dairy, a monument that’s a bit on the nose but also protected by the Gotham Historical Society, which is as known for its vigorous defense of old structures as it is for its vigorous masturbatory exercises related to the depiction of a nice set of cans, making it a very effective organization for defending a borderline pornographic building?
From the perhaps-center of the city, the Bat-Signal blazed, projected on a low cloud, which was created by a cloud generator funded by a mysterious benefactor known only as “B. Wayne.”
Then something amazing happened. Get ready. I told you it’s amazing, which might have been stupid because now if it’s anything less than amazing, you’ll be rightfully pissed.
The familiar beacon began to change, its color draining away, then turning bright red. The shape within changed from a stylized bat to a stylized bird. Then there was a brief period where some REAL FUNNY GUY made a bunch of shadow puppets in the light before it stuck with its whole bird thing.
This new Robin-Signal blazed over the city, confusing everyone because why would you call for Robin when Batman was an option? Perhaps if the Bat-Signal was out there for 45 minutes and you got nothing, you’d then switch to Nightwing, perhaps? Maybe then Huntress, she seems to get shit done. Then…Ragman? Or maybe you still have that Alan Scott Green Lantern signal hanging around, give that a go?
Surely, things must be pretty desperate if we’ve gone from signaling a hero known as The Dark Knight or World’s Greatest Detective, and instead we’re calling on someone known as the Boy Wonder, which is a name better suited for a chess prodigy or male stripper than an acrobatic superhero.
Now, was that signal change amazing? Wasn’t that incredible and worth the wait? I KNEW I didn’t oversell it. Sometimes you have to take risks with this stuff, trust your gut.
~
In the Batcave, the monitor pulsed with the new signal, as did Bruce in his pants while he watched Dick throw on his crimefighter costume, a process that was a lot more complicated than it sounds and involved a lot of baby powder, which was usually applied by Alfred, but because the old man was SO SICK, Dick had to dump the contents of a powder shaker on the ground and roll around in it like a dog after finding a dead skunk.
“That’s no Bat-Light,” Robin said proudly. He know Poison Ivy had been at work. “It’s a birdcall!”
Bruce was almost as annoyed as I am that Dick called it a Bat-Light instead of a Bat-Signal. Nobody calls it the Bat-Light. And it wasn’t even clever.
“Her real name is Pamela Isley,” Bruce informed him. “I saw her talking to Gordon at the gala. She must have stolen his keys, altered the signal. But you’d know her name if you bothered to use the Batcomputer to look it up instead of just searching ‘Poison Ivy Feet’ and ‘Poison Ivy unclipped toenails.’”
“And she did it all for me,” Dick said, in a tone of admiration. “For love.”
Bruce tried to cut through his young ward’s cocky optimism. “She’s infected us with some kind of chemical extract, Dick!”
“Yeah, it’s called pussy juice. Pussy stank. Vagina-having. It’s called the natural lubricants that appear inside a vagina that allow desirable men to enter it with their penises, and which also will fail to appear and actually gum the vagina shut in a sexual assault scenario, which means I have to conclude that all victims of assault actually kind of wanted it, that’s just science.”
Bruce shook his head at his young ward’s ignorance. He was better suited for CONGRESS than he was for CRIMEFIGHTING, AMIRITE!? POLITICS JOKES! POLITICAL HUMOR! We finally did a smart in this thing! Can’t wait for this to be featured in NPR and/or The New York Times. So long, current subscribers! I’ll be switching to novelizing a comic those people like, probably some coming-of-age bullshit that makes a lot of literary references and doesn’t have any superheroes, the kind of thing nerds like, but not the fun kind of nerd, the kind of nerd who likes to talk about foreign policy or whatever.
“So, what, you think I’m under some kind of magic spell?” Dick said.
Bruce’s voice was flat as he strove to remain calm. “She wants to kill you, Dick. And not in the normal way where a woman grinds a man down to a nub of his former self over a series of decades and a campaign of buying decorative pillows. Not in the societally-acceptable way of undermining him constantly in the presence of others. Not in the way where she re-loads the dishwasher after he loads it because she doesn’t think he does it good enough, even though the end results are exactly the same, a method of gaslighting a man into thinking he doesn’t know how to do anything at all so that he becomes completely dependent on his wife before she removes herself from his life entirely. No, Dick, this is more like a stabbing or possibly a poisoning of some kind. There’s no dignity in that.”
“You’d say anything to keep me away from her,” Dick accused. The pheromones of Ivy’s Love Dust still coursed through his bloodstream, ensuring that he and his underpants stayed besotted with her. “To keep her for yourself!”
Bruce shook his head. “Would I bang her? Sure. In any hotel room in this city? Absolutely. In an alley because once in a while you want to do it dirty, and there’s very little dirtier than shooting your cum into a rat that died in the alley, torn apart by something, and its corpse is still steaming? You bet. Could we do an entire Green Eggs and Ham of I would do, could do in the park? I would do, could do after dark? Of course, although I would have a hard time finding a fitting rhyme for ass-to-mouth. But, Dick, you once said to me that being a part of a team means trusting your partner. That was hilarious and super gay. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about this particular adventure we seem to be on right now, sometimes they gayest thing is the right thing. Sometimes counting on someone else is the only way to win. Do you remember saying that?”
Dick turned his head away, not answering.
“You weren’t just talking about partners or setting me up for some light gaybashing. You were talking about being a family. Well, one of our family is dying. I don’t want to lose everyone I’ve ever cared about.” He paused, staring hard at Dick until the boy literally had to return his gaze. “I’m asking you now, friend…partner…brother. Will you trust me? For Alfred?”
The two burst out laughing. Robin wheezed and could barely get out, “Can’t…believe…you said that…with a straight face!”