Despite being seemingly more popular than ever, Batman doesn't seem to enjoy ketamine at all in today's book: from 1996,
Batman: Shadow of the Bat #52, "Safe as Milk!" Written by Alan Grant, pencils by Dave Taylor, inks by Joe Rubinstein. (I'm not sure that title actually appears in the issue!)
New bad guy Narcosis got Batman last month with a blast of hallucinogenic gas, which Bats seems to know the mix of from his hangover the next day: he's been dosed with a lot of stuff over the years! He knew Narcosis planned on releasing his drug on all of Gotham, but how...I know! In the ink of the
Daily Bugle--nah, that'd never work. But what...
Bats has a momentarily relapse with his coffee, but it still takes a bit more puzzling with Alfred and Robin before he realizes, in the milk! Batman and Robin make a rare-for-the-era daytime appearance, since Narcosis had taken over a dairy. Robin has to stop the delivery truck, while Batman chases the villain over rickety and precarious railings, that seem more suited for Axis Chemicals than a dairy. Batman unmasks Narcosis in the fight, since he had no clue who the guy was: not a disgruntled employee or anything simple. Still, he can't place the face, or lack of same.
As a child, Narcosis's parents had been "a lush and a thief," and while he loved them just fine, child protective services took him away. And kept him safe as houses--for about a week, before he was left unattended in a kitchen, and managed to pull a boiling hot pot onto his face. Ten years in a hospital, skin grafts that didn't take, nightmares...Narcosis's grudge against the city seems more reasonable all the time! (Still, like I keep saying, just because something bad happened to you, doesn't mean it should happen to someone else.) Trying to cave in Batman's skull with a pipe, he goes over the side, into a vat filled with his mix, and gets megadosed, seemingly trapped in a nightmare forever.
Not a bad villain for a throwaway! Although, he does vaguely resemble Dr. Destiny, another villain with a sleep connection and face problems. Also, there's an ad for
Twister--the movie, duhr--on the back of this one; I wonder if there will be ads for
the sequel on comics this year.
4 comments:
Well there you go kids, if you ever wanted a sure fire way to tell Batman & Moon Knight apart, this is it; Moon Knight loves ketamine. Batman does NOT.
While poisoning the milk supply was a pretty good idea, his reasoning for becoming a bad guy was not. Not even close. I mean I f’d around & found out and accidentally spilled a pot of boiling hot water on my arms as a kid too, but I didn’t use that as an excuse to become a dick to the world…..so far, but we’ll see what happens in the future, lol.
That’s no way to talk about the villain behind the milestone 50th issue of Shadow of the Bat!
Ok, yeah he’s a bit lame. Surprisingly, he showed up again around Cataclysm. Granted, they brought him back just to kill him off but that’s more than a lot of these guys get.
Aw, really? I'd kind of prefer if Narcosis was treated like Two-Face: Bats maybe doesn't have the personal relationship with him, but still understands the guy is broken and needs help, even if help sometimes takes the form of getting punched out.
I don’t know- these ‘scarred in an accident so I want revenge against humanity’ guys are a dime a dozen. If Bats spent his time feeling sorry for every one of them, he wouldn’t have time for the guys with good plans or gimmicks.
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