Batman and Robin: The re-Novelization
part 38
Let’s see, where were we…ah, I see. Nobody cares! Seems you were all pretty caught up in one of those Precedent Selections you’re all going on about all the time. Isn’t that just the way? You write this carefully crafted re-novelization of a hit film, you glue together masterful sentences, sand them down, varnish them just so, and for what? So everyone can watch numbers on a TV screen with motion graphics that tell you, “Well, turns out people are dumb!”
I could’ve told you that. I’ve BEEN telling you that! How else does one explain the existence of this movie?! AND the fact that it made $238 million at the box office? The same summer people could’ve gone to Air Force One, or Men In Black, or Air Bud, the movie that taught us so long as there isn’t a specific rule disallowing a specific event, it’s acceptable in the context of high school basketball.
People have always made bad choices. Why is this such exciting news to everyone?
Oh, well. Let’s not get political. Although I’m told ALL art is political. So I guess sit back and enjoy another highly-politically-relevant chapter in the novelization of this movie, which corrects several important things and makes it a much better celebration of human sexuality and stupidity.
An hour after Freeze’s daring early evening escape from Arkham Asylum, a dozen police cruisers had converged on the Snowy Cones Ice Cream Factory. The Batmobile was also there, parked out of sight in a shadowed alleyway, blocking the deliveries to a local pierogi spot, which was fine because they didn’t really make pierogis, it was just a money laundering situation. Batman had tried to bring it down once, but when the owner made a very pathetic, “Don’t hit me,” plea while crumpling to the floor, Batman decided this wasn’t as fun as punching someone who kind of wanted it. I mean, it was still PRETTY fun, and the pathetic-ness of the shop’s owner didn’t stop Batman from knocking the shit out of the guy, but it fell pretty low on the priorities list.
While Gotham PD forensic units went over every square inch of the factory in search of clues, kind of in a rush because they realized they probably should’ve done this when Freeze was arrested, not when he broke out, Batman and Robin examined the interior of the ice villain’s lair. So far, at least, there appeared to be no indication as to what Freeze intended to do next. Usually a villain will leave behind a whiteboard with lots of stuff on it, or maybe one of those corkboards with lots of tacks and red string connecting things. A Detective Goldfarb from Gotham PD once suggested opening up a Red String Wholesale Outlet that sold nothing but red string, figuring every customer would be a villain or, at the very least, dangerous conspiracy nut trying to prove that fluoride is a commie plot.
Goldfarb was always coming up with annoying ideas. He fancied himself a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. In all the most annoying ways. Yes, including the fucking hat.
Police Commissioner James Gordon produced a portable monitor, and the videotape running on it showed the villains’ daring aerial escape. “We pulled these off the surveillance cameras at Arkham,” the police chief said. “But what makes you think Freeze will come back here?”
Oh, Christ, here comes Goldfarb, sashaying in while playing his own intro music on the violin. Here we go…
“Commish,” Goldfarb started in with his typical, competent whine and affected accent that was really more Perth than it was London, “Couldn’t we have just told Batman that Freeze escaped with two accomplices? Did we really have to haul all this 1997 equipment out here, including a VCR and a diesel generator, to show Batman this 5 seconds of footage?”
Batman thought Goldfarb wasn’t totally wrong. Keeping people in Arkham was Gordon’s problem. Putting criminals in there, usually with several contusions and occasionally with something Bat-shaped crammed in their rectum—that was Batman’s job. His holy war.
Gordon said, “I don’t know Goldfarb. Batman, do you really think Freeze will come back here?”
Batman gestured around the lab. “His freezing engine, his weapons, his gems. They’re the keys to his power.”
Goldfarb stepped in again, sniffing a lot and with a suspicious white cocaine under his nose. “Say, if these truly are the keys to Freeze’s power, wouldn’t it be best to divide them up, send one piece to Metropolis, one to Keystone City, and one to Denver (the fictional DC Universe city where Martian Manhunter lives, probably because he really likes weed and city council meetings where he can advocate for not putting multi-family housing into his neighborhood under the guise of the buildings not matching the neighborhood aesthetics, and also because he loves Dave Matthews Band, but he’s a little more secretive about his music tastes, even though being a Martian is a pretty good explanation for why someone would like that bullshit)? If Freeze couldn’t really do much, he’d still be an asshole, but without his gizmos, he’d be kinda useless, right?”
Gordon interrupted Goldfarb’s thoughts by palming his face and pushing him away, then Gordon thrust a photograph towards Batman.
“From the security camera at Gotham Airport,” Gordon said. “A few nights ago.”
The shot was grainy and slightly blurred; it showed a cloaked woman walking alongside a giant form, also in disguise. “These two arrived on a charter from South America,” Gordon explained. “They put ten security guards in the hospital, left a businessman dead of organic poisoning, and stole his limousine.”
Goldfarb had his back turned and was making a very loud cocaine sniffing sound. Then he said, “Lemme see that picture.”
He studied it briefly before saying, “Wait a minute. We didn’t know who these guys were, so why are they in disguise? Like, why would anyone wear a disguise if they were, I don’t know, essentially people who had been born the day before? Surely there’s no criminal record or other things associated with them, so what would be the point?”
“That’s the same pair that sprang Freeze,” Batman said grimly. “But why would Poison Ivy help Freeze escape?”
Goldfarb again pushed his way back into the conversation: “And why was someone taking this picture? Why would anyone just be taking a picture of two random-ass people getting off an airplane? How was the photographer even on the runway? Was he expecting a South American celebrity on that plane from…Air South America? Seriously? That’s a legitimate airline down there?”
Robin said, “She helped Freeze escape because she’s evil.” He said this emphatically, as if that explained everything.
Goldfarb: “Even if this picture was taken, why would you have it as Chief of Police? Why would a photographer take this picture and then say, ‘This is a police matter!’? He can’t know they broke Freeze out of Arkham, Batman only just found this out, and only because you made this huge effort to bring him the tape. The big guy is wearing a wrestling mask, but, c’mon, we see weirder stuff than that all the time. I don’t understand how or why this was taken, how someone decided to give it to you, and why we’re talking about it now. What difference does it make that they flew into Gotham a few days ago? WE ALREADY KNOW THEY’RE HERE! This is well-established! What context does this photo provide that we don’t already have!?”
Robin waited until Gordon and Goldfarb walked off together, Goldfarb repeatedly questioning Gordon’s methods, punctuating each point with a sting from his violin, then Robin continued, quietly: “It’s weird—for a while, Ivy was all I could think about. It was almost like I…loved her. Like ‘Standing 69’ loved her. But then…”
Batman nodded as his partner’s voice trailed off. “I know. The feeling just vanished.” The team puzzled over this oddity, almost as though they had never fought a crime clown or a hideous penguin man or a guy who invented a giant blender that sucked out people’s brains through the TV.
Robin said, “I can’t believe we’re fighting over a bad guy.”
“Bad, yes,” Batman nodded. Then he full on reared back and punched Robin in the stomach. “But he ain’t a guy! That’s an evil WOMAN, okay? Not a guy. I don’t have feelings like that about dudes. It’s gross to think about dudes that way. Ew.”
Robin, wheezing, gestured that Batman was right.
Batman continued, “Sometimes I don’t even like to look at myself in the mirror, it’s too gay. I had Alfred paint a black bar across the mirror where it shows my crotch, I’m THAT straight.”
Robin wiped the snot from under his nose and nodded.
Batman didn’t stop: “When there’s no crime, I’ll go out and beat up the handsomest dudes I can find, just in case they’re gay and I might find them attractive. I’ll disfigure them for life just to erase even the modicum of a chance that I would, for even a second, think a dude was attractive. That’s how much of a man I am.”
Robin staggered to his feet, “Well, I’m totally over her. Positively.”
“Me too,” Batman agreed.
But even as they spoke, the faint, lingering image of Poison Ivy flitted through both their minds. Specifically, for Batman, the image of him railing her on the hood of the Batmobile while hoovering a line of Goldfarb’s best shit off her jugs. Specifically, for Robin, a years-long foreplay they labeled as “Step-sister” shit, but we all know that’s really code for ACTUAL sister shit, which is pretty gross, and also cowardly because if you’re going that road, why not go all the way with it? If you’re going to be gross, at least be gross brave, not gross cowardly.
Batman walked over to the large walk-in freezer and examined the wall of food there. He thought for a second, then his hand closed around a frozen Chinese dinner. “Open Sesame Chicken,” he read off the box. Just the sort of thing that would appeal to Freeze’s sense of humor. What a fuckin’ dipstick.
Then he saw the very racist caricature of a Chinese chef on the box, and that made HIM laugh because that appealed to HIS sense of humor, which didn’t force him to laugh at stuff like this, but if you saw it, you’d laugh, too. It was that funny.
C’mon, admit it. You’d laugh.
Batman lifted the box, and the entry to the secret vault swung open.
The two heroes entered, and they saw the frosty sarcophagus before them. They realized at once that here was the solution to the mystery of Nora Fries, a mystery that no one but Detective Goldfarb cared about, and even then, it was mostly a good excuse for him to look at pictures of Nora Fries online while he tipped a tiny coke spoon into his urethra, his standard preparation for long stakeouts.
“She’s still alive,” Batman muttered. “He’s adapted his freezing technology to reverse McGregor’s Syndrome.”
How Batman figured this out from looking at this frozen bitch is unclear, but, whatever, he’s the world’s greatest detective as long as we’re talking about the category of detectives who only occasionally use cocaine and who consider punching someone so hard that one of their eyeballs explodes in a shower of creamy juices “detecting.” Batman is legitimately great at that aspect of detective work.
Quickly, he flicked through the notebooks stacked nearby—the records of Freeze’s every experiment. “He’s even found a cure for the early stages of the disease.”