Batman & Robin the re-Novelization

part 45

We rejoin our story with a very disjointed section that jumps all over the goddamn place because we have way too many stories doing way too many things. Not until over 20 years later with The Batman will we see a movie with such convoluted, over-plotted nonsense.

We learn nothing from our mistakes.

~

Mr. Freeze had turned the anteroom a the Blossom Street baths into his own personal ice chamber.

For those of you who aren’t fancy boys, an anteroom is a small room that leads to a less-small room, like a waiting room. Or a vestibule. It’s a room before a room so you’re more prepared for the room to come. Can you imagine? How horrible would it be to be so poor that you go through a door and you’re just in a room without a little room to help prepare yourself?

Also, “antechamber” and “anteroom” are the same thing. I advise going with “chamber,” though. It sounds a lot classier to ask m’lady to enter your chamber as opposed to your room. Although you may run into trouble occasionally as “Enter my chamber,” can lead to unwanted ass play if you’re not careful and if you tend to pick up ladies who are not so bright but very game.

Freeze breathed deeply in the frigid air as he snapped his costume into place. A new legion of Icemen had been hired, somehow, through means that nobody really understood. But this was the days before Glassdoor.com could tell you that working for Mr. Freeze was likely to end in death for the fortunate, pulped by Batman for the less fortunate, plus you have to pretend like the boss is hilarious all the time with his ice puns, otherwise he’ll freeze you in a block of ice, which super sucks. Pretending the boss is super funny isn’t all that unusual, but the ice part is typically more metaphorical, a thing where you have to freeze your emotions and sense of humor in order to survive in the workplace.

“Bundle up, boys,” Freeze told them. “There’s a storm coming.” And it was okay he said “boys” because NO chicks work for Freeze. Let’s not beat around this bush: ladies are cold all the fuckin’ time. Ladies are cold at an equatorial beach resort if they walked through a brief patch of shade 45 minutes ago. Ladies need a sweater just to survive a trip in the car when it’s dark, regardless of the temperature. God, ladies are so weak about the cold. Besides, ladies make better goons for villains like Cookie Woman and The Shoe Shopper. We all know why. Wink. Wiiiink.

Carrying his ingenuous Freezing Engine, Freeze and his battalion headed out into the night. Only one of them mentioned that BATtalion is really a better name for Batman’s hired hands. Someone else said, “Hey, now that you mention it, I bet they got at least one babe over there at the Batman’s place,” and he held his hands out in front of him as though he were carrying two giant breasts that were so big and voluptuous that they required the support of his hands. “Couple a these, know what I’m sayin’!?”

Another goon said, “Ugh, don’t you get tired of how all the women superheroes, their costumes are so impractical? Isn’t this a great point I’m making right now that nobody has ever made before? I oughta write a—” but he didn’t even bother to finish his statement because nobody was listening, and instead the guy who was pretending to carry around a huge pair of knockers was getting all the attention.

~

On the roof of Gotham police headquarters, a heavy door swung open. I guess it just happened to swing open based on the use of passive voice there, but it swung open at a convenient time because Bane and Poison Ivy stepped up onto the flat roof. Maybe the door had a sense of self-preservation and knew that if it didn’t swing open, Bane would rip it off the hinges. A sentient door seems pretty out there, but we’re in a world of Batmen and Supermen. What a wondrous thing, a living door. Hopefully we can revisit this door someday. Probably we can. Eventually we’ll run out of old villains and dropped plotlines from the 80s that we can recycle, and we’ll scrape the barrel and find this door there, waiting, worthy of a 5-issue arc. Prestige formats. Lego sets. Trading cards.

“Let there be light,” Ivy said, giggling, as Bane strained his muscles and ripped the heavy Bat-Signal from its shackles. You’d think something as heavy as a giant spotlight wouldn’t need to be tied down, especially on the roof of police headquarters. And you’d think it’d be hard for a couple costumed villains to get on the roof of police headquarters, even with the keys, as that would require you to pass through an entire building of cops. You’d think the destruction of the Bat-Signal wouldn’t really be that big a deal, it’s not like Bruce Wayne is going to have a hard time bankrolling another one. Plus, we’re like 2 years away from everyone having a goddamn cell phone, here. It’s slightly premature to do away with the Bat-Signal, but by only a few months, at best.

You’d think a lot of very sensible things, but I suspect that, this deep into this asinine story, you’ve stopped thinking and just decided to let it all wash over you like a very candy-colored wave of costume jewelry and seminal fluid.

~

“Only family can be trusted!”

Barbara Wilson repeated her uncle Alfred’s words conveniently to help us remember what nonsense she was up to. She was in her room at the Manor, the envelope he’d given her still clutched in her hand. Well, she was family, wasn’t she?

Barbara was very good at rationalizing things.

If that guy didn’t want to be vomited on, he probably shouldn’t have come to a 311 concert at Red Rocks where everyone had to be drunk and stoned enough to enjoy hearing the same song 32 times in a row before realizing, Hey, this isn’t Sublime!

She slit the envelope open and withdrew a single silver compact disc, or CD.

Hesitating only for a moment (I’m family, therefore I can be trusted, and, hey, grip strength is a more accurate measure of overall health than BMI!) Barbara slid the disc into the slot in her computer’s hard drive.

ACCESS DENIED, PROTECTED FILES, she read on the screen.

“Perhaps you didn’t give me your genes, Uncle Alfred [OR PERHAPS HE DID! BAZINGA!], but you gave me your heart.”

Patiently, methodically, she set about hacking into the disc. By which I mean, “Typing a bunch of stuff in hopes of hitting upon the password. Which would normally be impossible, but Alfred is pretty old, so there’s a great chance his password is ‘Alfred1’ or some such silly shit.”

~

Nobody at the observatory gala had been surprised when Bruce made his excuses and left for home. Specifically, the excuse he always went with, which was that he needed to “blast a mondo duke,” and that his mansion was the only kind of place that had the toilets of a type that could handle the glistening, girthy wastes of the upper crust.

Back at the Manor, Bruce hurried up to see Alfred. The old butler was asleep. He was hooked up to life support now, all kinds of machines. About half of them did stuff, the other half were decoys just in case Alfred summoned up the strength to unplug some stuff and secure his release from a lifetime of torment. Plus. a few machines thrown in there to make loud beeps and other noises that kept Alfred from every sleeping very deeply.

Alfred’s strength was weakening with every passing hour. Kind of how it goes. People don’t usually get weaker, then up a bit, then way back down, then stronger than ever. I mean, I guess it’s possible. But that would be stupid, and let’s not extend this story any longer than we absolutely must, yeah?

Bruce sighed deeply, then sighed again, waiting for someone to recognize he was the handsomest and richest in the room and ask him what’s wrong. Then he remembered it was just him and the passed-out Alfred, so he made his way down the hall. Stepping behind the grandfather clock, he stood in the secret tunnel that led down to the Batcave. You might think behind a grandfather clock, a huge thing that calls attention to itself, would be sort of a silly place to hide a tunnel. I mean, an antique grandfather clock, in this day and age, feels like something that invites innocent examination. But Bruce managed to avoid most of that because this grandfather clock was previously owned by a WWII Nazi, and therefore there was a HUGE swastika in the center where the clock’s hands met, so most houseguests, upon noticing that, couldn’t look away fast enough.

Minutes later, Bruce sat glumly at the main computer console, distraught. Memories of Alfred ran through his head — the good times they’d had together, the way the butler had been there right from the start of his life as the Batman.

Geez, you’d think we could come up with at least one actual memory. He’s known this geezer his whole life, and we, the viewers, don’t get ONE concrete memory?

Let’s see…oh, okay, there was this one time, Bruce left a bunch of toy cars on the stairs, and Alfred took a tumble down the grand staircase like you wouldn’t believe. The scream! The old man screamed for his life, like he thought This is it!

What a fuckin’ dipshit.

Alfred was part of the whole process that helped Bruce come up with the suit. “Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot,” a younger Alfred had impressed on him. “Your costume must strike fear into their hearts. And what criminals fear is nipples, HARD nipples, made ever harder by violence you’re visiting upon them.”

Bruce groaned aloud. “Old friend, I could use your help right now.”

“Right here, sir,” a brisk English voice announced.

Bruce spun around, arm outstretched in a whirling, backhand slap. Bruce would often walk around the Manor backwards, or he’d stand very close to a wall, and then when the old butler came upon him, Bruce would pretend to be so surprised that his instincts kicked in and he threw the old man over his shoulder, or broke his arm, or chopped him in the throat, or, like in this case, slapped him so hard the old man forgot what his mother looked like.

But there was no old, pasty face to slap. Instead, Bruce was amazed at what he saw. A monitor had flickered into life, the words COMPUTER SIMULATION flashing under an image of Alfred.

“I anticipated a moment might arrive when I became incapacitated,” the screen image was saying, “Therefore, I programmed my brain algorithm into the Batcomputer, screwed around online for a while, then created this simulation of myself.”

Bruce stared for a long moment. This whole thing seemed pretty unlikely, especially because Alfred was a goddamn grandpa, and grandpas can’t even manage the technology to not crash their cars through the front of a store in a strip mall. But then Bruce’s face relaxed into a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

‘What seems to be the problem, sir?”

“You are,” Bruce replied softly. “You always have been.”

The image seemed to stare back at him, then cool dude sunglasses scrolled down from the top of the screen and over his eyes. “Surely I am not the only cause of your distress.” Then a little guitar lick played.

It was true—there was something else. “Women,” Bruce said curtly. “Amirite First, Ivy had an intoxicating effect on both Dick and me and my dick. Tonight my feelings spread to someone else, sort of like how those herps did after that naked waterslide party we had that one time. I was attracted to Pamela Isley. I couldn’t even reason clearly. Still can’t.” He became brisker and more focused. “She used to work for Wayne Enterprises. Find a file, Alfred.”

“Coming on-line now, sir,” the virtual butler replied, pretty much Ask Jeeves but more repulsive looking, what with all the skin folds and the bacteria that bloomed within them.

The screen filled with photos, ranked by level of skin showing. “Dr. Isley was researching advanced botany. DNA splicing. Recombinant animal-plant patterns. Pheromone extraction.”

“Pheromones?” Bruce echoed.

“Glandular secretions from animals, sir,” Alfred explained. “Scents that create powerful emotions, like fear and rage. Joy at an old man falling down the stairs.”

“And passion!” Bruce finished for him. “And probably being bad at math!” he also said, attributing something he always sucked at to this new development. “Of course!” It was as if a lightbulb had gone on in his head, which it did because he had installed a lightbulb in his brain, thinking it’d help him see his own ideas better. “Find the photo of Poison Ivy after the Flower Ball. The one where she’s getting out of a car in an un-lady-like way.”

The image dutifully appeared beside the one of Pamela Isley dismounting a bicycle. Bruce snapped one off real quick, then mopped up with one of the masks Robin left laying around, and said, “Deconstruct and resolve.” Bruce already knew what the experiment would achieve.

Schematics of various features — fingerprints, retina scans, height and weight, cup size, list of turn-ons — lots of unnecessary shit was all highlighted and compared. All matched perfectly. Pamela Isley and Poison Ivy were one and the same person. Which, now that Bruce looked at it, should have been pretty obvious. It was a pair of glasses and a wig. That’s barely even a disguise. They talked the same, they showed up in Gotham around the same time, they both talked about plants all the time. Maybe he needed to get that brain bulb checked, make sure it was still turning on and off properly.

Suddenly, an alert started to flash, and an alarm sounded. Alfred’s simulated voice was dry as he said, “It appears, sir, that someone has stolen the Bat-Signal.”

~

In her room, Barbara was still trying to find the access code that would unlock the secrets of the silver disc. She typed in yet another attempted password: MARGARET.

ACCESS DENIED, the screen flashed.

Barbara glared in frustration. Then a sudden idea came. Fingers flying, she typed PEG on the keyboard, planning to type out the phrase PEGGING ALFRED HARD IS MARGARET’S JOB, but before she could go beyond PEG, the computer screen flashed, ACCESS CODE ACCEPTED.

Barbara nodded with satisfaction. She hit a key and sat back, shocked and amazed at the images that scrolled before her eyes.