Mark's Epic Blog of Randomness

By Mark Rodriguez The Court of Owls have sent their army of Talons across the city as many of them attack Wayne Manor. The Bat Family took care of most of the Talons and Batman has finally fought his way through them and defeated the ones that invaded his home. Now back on the streets, Batman drives towards Arkham Asylum to rescue one of the people on the Court's hit list- Dr. Arkham himself. ‘Night of the Owls: The Owls take Arkham’ begins at 8:26 PM with some cops watching the asylum when something bounced off the hood of their car. Due to Gordon’s orders, the place is under lockdown. Inside the asylum, Jeremiah Arkham actually feels safe in his little madhouse and doesn’t want to leave, despite police saying he should leave due to his name being on a hit list. Arkham says he has work to do, as he continues to walk and look over his patients, Mr. Zsasz, Steeljacket, Fright, Clayface and Nocturna. Just then a cop tells him that Roman Sionis, the Black Mask, is ready to end his hun...

By Mark Rodriguez Both Detective # 8 and The Dark Knight # 8 suffered from the same problem. They were both supposed to be 2-part stories but were suddenly cut down to one-shot stories due to all the #9's to all Batman related titles having to crossover with the events of The Night of Owls. I guess the different teams working on the different Bat-books don't keep enough tabs on each other... but I can't say much since I have no idea how working at a comic company with tons of people and different teams on different books would work. Let's see what happens as it seems the Scarecrow is up to his old tricks. ‘Scare Tactics’ opens as we Catwoman falling through a window. Apparently she was hired by someone to steal some hazardous materials, but she is now under the effects of the Scarecrow’s fear toxin.  She sees a monsterous form of Poison Ivy attack her… which is really Batman giving her the antidote.   It's weird how Catwoman's fears would involve Poison Ivy. It ...

By Mark Rodriguez It turns out that Bruce's girlfriend throughout the Dollmaker story, Charlotte Rivers, turned out to have an evil twin sister named Jill Hudson. Jill murdered her way to Penguin's new Iceberg Casino for some sort of underhanded plot. Meanwhile Penguin is trying to recruit new up and coming villains. Last issue, Jill's partner, Snakeskin, stabbed Charlotte in the arm repeatedly. Batman came in to save her, but Snakeskin managed to trap them both in the room and eject them to the chilling ice outside of the Casino. What will happen now? "The Snake and the Hawk" opens with Jill punching Jack's face into pulp, angry that he killed her sister. He tells her that she knew sooner or later one of them had to go and Jill yells that it was her call to make. Jill regains herself and remembers she has to be strong so they can both succeed in their plane. Jack and Jill kiss and get ready. Batman is hanging on to a cable while holding Charlotte as a spinnin...

By Mark Rodriguez Batman is on the trail of a faceless killer, which leads him to Penguin's casino. Meanwhile, Charlotte River, Bruce's current girlfriend, sneaks into the Casino and disguises herself as the staff. This did not escape the Penguin's notice and he sends his girls after her. What will happen next? Why does penguin look like the Joker here? It doesn't help that he's basically wearing his outfit with the yellow vest and purple pants "Kill Game" opens on a private beachfront property known as Gotham Dunes, where a couple watches over the Iceberg Casino which they comment looks like a diamond floating in a black pool. The guy says he wants to get in there since the Penguin's been hold up in there for too long. The woman hands him the Golden VIP pass to the Casino. He asks her how she had that pass and she says never mind how she got it, which reveals that she was faceless killer from the previous issue. The woman looks exactly like Charlotte ...

By Mark Rodriguez So even though Batman defeated Dollmaker, or at least stopped his plans for now, the villain has him up for auction. It just so happened that Penguin was one of the potential buyers. Batman takes this as well as you'd expect, and with Dollmaker gone, The Dark Knight now sets his sights on him. "Wheel of Misfortune" opens with Batman watching over a crowd or Joker supporters lobbying outside of City Hall. They blame Batman for cutting Joker's face off and his sudden disappearance. This has been happening for several nights and the mayor now blames Batman for this and wants him removed. Batman finds his target, a guy named Axel Bellany who recently hijacked a truck with hazardous chemicals. He's dealing with another criminal named Boris Gorky. Before Batman can make his move, a crazy clown tosses a throwing star into one of Gorky's eyes. He then leaps down and kills two of Gorky's men with knives. Batman jumps in to stop him but the clown s...

By Mark Rodriguez Batman is trying to stop the new mass murderer in Gotham, the Dollmaker, who cut off Joker's face. During this, Batman gets captured and is held up by strings like a puppet alongside a lot of fake Jokers. Dollmaker intends to sell Batman (or his organs) to potential buyers and wants to show off the merchandise.  Issue 4 concludes this saga with ‘The Main Event’ and things get kinda sloppy here… We begin 72 minutes ago in Crime Alley, with Batman beating the crap out of a police informant named Raju for info on Dollmaker and his little auction. At the station, lt. Forbes (same guy from Internal Affairs that is harassing Bruce and Gordon about Batman in Dark Knight) is asking about murdered cop, as well as who activated the bat-signal in Gordon’s absence, since they don’t know that Olivia did both. Bullock sees Olivia’s note on Mercy Hospital. Back to the present, Batman fights the fake Jokers. Olivia shows up where Gordon is being held captive and tells him Dollmak...

By Mark Rodriguez Batman finally tracks down the new villain, Dollmaker, the one who cut Joker's face off. Commissioner Gordon went inside first and got captured. Dollmaker tosses Gordon back to Batman, who now looks either dead, or all sliced up. Issue 3 starts with 'Cold Blood' as Batman discovers that Commissioner Gordon was a fake. Surrounded by Dollmaker's goons, feeling numb on his left side due to an injection he received earlier, Batman still tells them to 'BRING IT ON!' Dollmaker warns that soon all of him will be numb, and while Batman proves that this Gordon was a fake, he confirms he does have the real Gordon captive. He expects a lot of high bids on both Batman and Gordon. Batman fights his way through all the creeps and freaks. One of them, Jack-in-the-Box, is wrapped around Batman, and won’t let go, so Bats smashes through a window with him to escape. As the police arrive, Batman escapes with Jack-in-the-Box.  Elsewhere, at an abandoned hospita...

By Mark Rodriguez The New 52 started Batman off with some very interesting adventures. His main book, Batman, has his deal with the Court of Owls, while Detective comics gave us the shocker of The Joker having his face cut off. What will happen now that The Joker can hide in plain sight? Detective # 2 is called ‘Playtime’s over’ because, yes, we have a title this time. Bruce Wayne is climbing a man-made mountain, as he’s told by Luscious Fox that he has a meeting with a Hugh Marder. Hugh seems as fit as Wayne as he takes his shirt off and climbs the mountain barehanded. After discussing business while rock-climbing… Bruce’s secretary reminds him of another meeting.. one with news reporter Charlotte Rivers…. which he messes around with. Keeping in mind that Bruce is also dating Jaina in the Dark Knight comic, and nailing Catwoman as Batman in her own comic, Bruce is a busy boy. After tending to Ms. Rivers, Bruce, now as Batman, heads off to Arkham Asylum, pondering how the Joker got...

By Mark Rodriguez We go back to the New 52 which started in 2012. It apparently never stopped being New since even years later the comics still had the New 52! label slapped on it. While most characters got rebooted, Batman's history got streamlined. He also had 4 comics come out at the same time, Batman, Detective, Batman and Robin and Batman Dark Knight. In this title-less story, Batman is on the prowl looking for the Joker and he tells us that the Joker has killed 114 people in the last 6 years. There’s been a series of murders with people being mutilated and missing organs, and Bats now gets a lead on a motel room, east side, around 15 minutes ago. In said motel room, we see some guy with random flesh on his face, like Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, beating the crap out of the Joker. Considering that he grabbed the Joker by the neck… he somehow bit him across the throat… how does that work?   Anyway, Joker stabs the man to death, as this random freakshow considers hi...