Lewis Lovhaug: Linkara

Quotes 

• Linkara : It's the conclusion to "All-Star Batman and Robin"! And no, I don't believe it's ever coming back! Shut up and don't jinx it! But, since this is the finale to this long-running series, let's take a look back at those "great" moments from this book.

  [we cut to black, then cut back to Linkara after a brief pause] 

  Linkara : Yeah, I know I didn't show anything. That's because there weren't any!

• Linkara : "All-Star Batman and Robin" is one of the worst books ever to bear the Dark Knight's name on it, standing alongside such dreck as "Batman: Odyssey", "Fortunate Son", and, well, let's face it, pretty much any terrible crossover event he's forced to do a tie-in issue for. The name was so tainted by association with this that I don't even call him that in this book, preferring my theory that it is instead some homeless person suffering from homicidal delusions that he is Batman, whom I referred to as "Crazy Steve". The best praise anyone could give to it is that it's so bad that it's hilarious, damning it with faint praise, since in order for you to have that "hilarious" part, you have to remember it's still really bad: bad characterization, bad dialogue, bad pacing, bad fight scenes, and most especially, bad scheduling! Ten issues over the course of a few YEARS! And oh so much happened in those ten issues! Why, it took them a whole *nine* issues to actually have Robin in it, and not just Dick Grayson, age twelve!

• Linkara : It has been eight years since this issue came out, and yet, DC is still trying to get it going again. They've been talking about bringing it back as "Dark Knight, Boy Wonder" since 2011. Still nothing released in another five years! Here's an idea: don't announce something unless it's done! And yet, according to Wikipedia, Frank Miller said at New York Comic-Con in October 2015 that he had just started working on making a sequel series to this with Jim Lee. Oh, great! A sequel to a series that was never even finished!

• Linkara : Want a plot synopsis? Too bad! It's Issue 10, and there still isn't any sign of a plot! Crazy person abducts child, calls things retarded to show how mature he is, laughs as he beats up people; the Joker doesn't smile; Batman's more worried about having a pissing contest with Green Lantern; and I'm pretty sure, with all the bizarre timestamps on this thing, that Dick Grayson was kidnapped several hours before his parents were murdered. But hey, at least I'll never have to read another Frank Miller-penned Batman story, and we can finally move on to some of his other works and...

  [the cover for "DK: The Master Race" appears] 

  Linkara : OH, FOR THE LOVE OF...! And yeah, I'll get to that one eventually, although, amusingly, even Frank Miller has admitted that he barely wrote the damn thing, that Brian Azzarello pretty much did all of it, meaning that it's actually better than "The Dark Knight Strikes Again", but that's not saying much. And even though it took them three years to release this book, it's taken me *seven* years to review all of it. Longer, if you count the original text reviews.

• Linkara : We open...

  [reads text] 

  Linkara : "One Week Later..."

  [singing to "One Week"] 

  Linkara : It's been one week since Robin almost killed a man...

  [stops singing] 

  Linkara : Can't wait to see the fallout and consequences from that! Oh, wait, there aren't any, since why would there be?

• Narrator : Gotham floats, a cloud city...

  Linkara : Considering Billy Dee Williams was also Harvey Dent once, I can believe it's a cloud city.

• Jim Gordon : You know, I've been reading a lot about that Superman they've got over in Metropolis. Lane's been eating up every front page of the Planet with that exclusive interview she got out of him.

  [a clip of "Superman IV" is briefly shown, showing a newspaper whose headline reads "SUPERMAN SAYS 'DROP DEAD' TO KID!"] 

  Linkara : Gordon talks more about Superman, about how, in the interview, he talked about the Fortress of Solitude, which Gordon likes.

  Jim Gordon : I think we all - or a lot of us, anyway - have our own places like that. Maybe we'd go crazy if we didn't. It might be the corner saloon. Or a spot in the woods that nobody else visits. Or a forgotten stretch of timeless waterfront, like this one... When I walked the night beat back in my Chicago days, there was this stretch of nothing a few blocks away from the Cabrini Green projects. I'd hit that stretch at two AM sharp. There was nothing there, nobody, just one boarded-up storefront after another, just me and a whole lot of nothing...

  Linkara : [sarcastically]  Yeah, I can't imagine what a whole lot of nothing feels like in relation to this comic.

• Linkara : [about Gordon's monologue]  I actually think it's really damn good. It really does bring to mind the neo-noir success that Frank Miller had when he created Sin City; this kind of nihilism and poetry about the human condition or, hell, any kind of humanity that's been sorely lacking in this book. There's no stupid repetition of phrases, just a cop talking, finding an all-too-human idea from a superhuman source. And Lord knows it's very much needed from a book that thinks rampant violence, both physical and emotional, is the solution to all of life's problems. Buuut, here's the problem: Gordon is here to drop off a note for Batman, one that sounds like it's, you know, critical and important, and he's too busy navel-gazing to get the job done! Even the narration says...

  Narrator : It's about goddamn TIME...

  Linkara : ...like Crazy Steve himself is sick of Gordon's rambling.

• Linkara : [about Gordon]  He talks about a police officer who found Catwoman in an alley, beaten up badly, and saying she needed to get a message to Steve.

  Jim Gordon : She refused help. She was, he noted in his report, pointedly rude to young Officer Stavros.

  Linkara : Well, maybe that's because Officer Stavros was reaching for his gun against the bleeding rambling woman in a purple cat costume!

• Jim Gordon : This cat-woman handed a wad of crumpled-up cardboard to young Stavros. She seemed to fall backward. But that was a trick. She'd slipped into the shadows, like another costumed nutcase I know makes a habit of doing.

  Linkara : Yeah, but Batman usually waits for people to stop looking at him before he does that. Catwoman in this is apparently Shadowcat! Oh, never mind, the panel clearly shows a trail of blood leading into an open manhole. Stavros is just really bad at his job.