Batman is the lone resistance to Gorilla Grodd, who not only controls just about every mind on the planet, but has also finally successfully seeded earth's atmosphere with synthetic Kryptonite, driving Superman (and Lois, and a few others) off-world. While children are occasionally able to resist, they are immediately discovered by Grodd, who sends kill-squads out for them: Batman saves a child here, but knows he's only bought his family a few days at best.
Deep in the sewers of Gotham, Batman still works to undo the Kryptonite saturation. While Bats is able to resist by virtue of the assorted meditations and disciplines he'd learned over the years, the aged Alfred resists just by virtue of being a really good butler. But when he suffers a fatal heart attack, the moment of grief breaks Batman's concentration, like sending up a flare for Grodd to find him, and his squads do, capturing him. He is brought before Grodd, who keeps the uncontrollable but broken Joker as a jester; and the reprogrammed Luthor as an administrator. Grodd says removing resistance from Luthor had been tough, but that wasn't going to work on Batman, so he's going to kill him in front of a stadium full of mind-controlled drones. Grodd laughs at the thought of Batman inspiring them to resist; but Batman says "inspiring" wasn't his job...
Superman had received Batman's message: he had found an antidote to the synthetic Kryptonite. Grodd looks a little worried at first, but doesn't give up; and while he talks a big game, that fight honestly goes two pages longer than it should. Either Supes is letting Bats get some hits in, or they're playing to the crowd to break the mind-control. With Grodd beaten, Superman will take Grodd into exile, then help earth rebuild...
OK, so by now you're waiting for the reset button: Alfred dead? Can't be! Oh, and the rest of the JLA, too; but it was too big of a status-quo change. This one was just a simulation, run by Batman on his new servers. Alfred is both annoyed by Bats ignoring another meal, but also finding this a touch "morbid." Still, Bats packs it in for the night, asking Alfred to reheat what was probably a gourmet meal once.
Grodd gets the cover this time around, since this was some kind of villain month? I thought Solomon Grundy got the cover for this series on that one, but may have just been thinking of a later issue. The GCD is down as I type this, but maybe we'll see before it posts. (And it's back, I was thinking of a later one!)
Ah, another of those classic Silver Age-;ke fake outs I see. Sounds good though, despite being so brutally depressing. Kinda curious to see this world explored more, especially with a mentally broken Joker as the ultimate jester.
ReplyDeleteSeeing shit like this, even in the mane of being prepared for ANY possibility, it makes you wonder how often Bruce does this on a nightly basis. I think he actually likes to get depressed about these sorts of things, which isn't all that uncommon to become used to, and even relishing being depressed or in a bad mood/mindset. Emotions man, they can be real bitches sometimes.