Random Happenstance

Some time back (ten years!) we looked at Batman Adventures #5, which featured a version of Julie Madison, one of Batman's first love interests. In that, she first appeared in 1939's Detective Comics #31: she was Bruce's fiancée, but never knew he was Batman, even though she worried Bruce was a vapid playboy and may have been more interested in Batman. She's made a few appearances here and there, but Matt Wagner's Batman & the Monster Men might be the only story to do much with her. A much more popular love interest for Bats--besides Catwoman or Talia, or Wonder Woman if you're a Justice League Unlimited guy...which I am...Anyway, Silver St. Cloud! She's a much more realized character than Julie, and has a great character arc in creator Steve Englehart's "Strange Apparitions" run in Detective. (Co-created by Walt Simonson, although Marshall Rogers drew most of her stories.) Unfortunately, later attempts to do anything with Silver have largely failed, which might be because she knows Bruce is Batman and maybe doesn't want to live with that nonsense. Kevin Smith's Batman: the Widening Gyre maybe tries to reverse that, but that series...yeesh. There's a really not good scene where she gushes about how great Bruce is in bed; then she gets killed or at least gravely injured in an unresolved cliffhanger. Today's book (finally!) doesn't tie into that, but does start with Silver's death! From 2017, Batman/Elmer Fudd #1, "Pway for Me" Written by Tom King, art by Lee Weeks; and I got the Bob Fingerman cover.

This was of course one of the DC/Looney Tunes crossover books: we saw Joker/Daffy Duck previously. In this one, King makes an interesting decision: go hard noir...but with Elmer Fudd, who also narrates. Or would that be "narwates"? Like the Daffy/Joker one, a lot of speech-impediment bits, and not just for Elmer; as we see versions of several other Looney Tunes characters, as Gotham City lowlifes. Shotgun by his side, Elmer goes hunting, at Porky's bar, for a wascawwy wabbit: Bugs, who here is a bucktoothed, weaselly type. Who tries to weasel out of getting killed, for killing the love of Elmer's life...Siwlver St. Cwoud? Bugs admits, he might've done it, but he was paid to--by Bruce Wayne! Fuhweeous--OK, I'm not going to keep doing that--furious, now Elmer was hunting playboys; and dressed as a chaffeur he bluffs his way into Wayne Mansion, to shotgun Bruce Wayne.

Luckily, Bruce can apparently take a shotgun blast at least as well as Daffy, and Batman hunts the hunter down, as Elmer returns home and puts his traditional hunting outfit back on. Elmer puts up a solid fight, since he was mad as hell, and felt Bruce deserved to die for what he did to Silver. It takes Batman a second to parse her name though Elmer's voice, but he also is enraged at the thought of Silver's death. Team-up time! Bats tells Elmer that Bruce wasn't dead, but that he also wouldn't have tried to get Silver killed; and together they return to Porky's for answers, which does involve cracking some skulls. (Elmer describes the bar as "a hawd place for hawd men," which could mean something else...) After the brawl, the pair confront Bugs...and the rest after the break!

Spoiler alert: Silver wasn't dead! She had asked Bugs to fake her death: previously she had left Bruce Wayne when she learned he was "...dangerous" and left Elmer for the same reason. She didn't want either to follow her, so she had Bugs set them on each other. In the noirest of noir tradition, Silver walks out on them all: "Now I leave. And you...stay." The guys are left stunned at the bar, for a shot of carrot juice, but everybody's been drinking it, and Porky was out. "That's all folks."

This one's...interesting. I don't know that I love it, but still. Weeks as always delivers; but I don't know if Silver was traditionally the femme fatale type. I can see everybody being wrecked by her, though...Also this issue: "Rabbit Season" Written by Tom King, art by Byron Vaughns. In a more traditional animated style, Bugs convinces Elmer it was really bat season; Batman takes some more shotgun blasts there. Maybe Elmer needs to change his shot?