Mindless Ones

PREVIOUSLY IN BATMAN AND ROBIN 666….

In the aftermath of the Sensei’s attack on Nu-Gotham and a near lethal , three pronged assault on their friends by super-assassins contracted by one of the shadowy forces vying for control of the city, Batman and Robin are forced to make some tough decisions.

With his secret identity compromised and Lucius Fox hospitalised by the dreadful killer Action Figure, Damian Wayne decides its time to go public and unmask.

It’s the morning after the last of the assassins was defeated and most of the team are shored up in Bat Mountain, Batman’s hidden fortress folded into the architecture of Wayne Tower, but Nico the puppy-girl and new recruit Judah Runningdog are starting to get restless…..

This is what happens next….

PREVIOUSLY IN BATMAN AND ROBIN 666….

In the aftermath of the Sensei’s attack on Gotham city and a near lethal , three pronged assault on their friends by super-assassins contracted by one of the shadowy forces vying for control of Nu-Gotham, Batman and Robin are forced to make some tough decisions.

With his secret identity compromised and Lucius Fox hospitalised by the dreadful killer Action Figure, Damian Wayne decides its time to go public and unmask.

It’s the morning after the last of the assassins was defeated and most of the team are shored up in Bat Mountain, Batman’s hidden fortress folded into the architecture of Wayne Tower.

This is what happens next….

It’s four years after the events of Batman 666, and Batman, aided and abetted by a new Robin (a re-wired Dollatron: Damian Wayne’s best pal, supertank and portable batcomputer rolled into one), Ace the Batmobile (half bat-themed Godzilla, half mobile fortress with a detachable head that doubles up as a car) and the kind of technology one would more commonly find in an Ian M Banks novel find themselves battling a new breed of villain in a city teetering on the edge of madness.

The Gotham of tomorrow is a fusion of all its previous incarnations: the playground, the gothic wonderland and the hardboiled urban sprawl. Half its population have floated away into it’s virtual reality suburb, Toytown, and a sizeable percentage of the DCU’s magical community have relocated to its outer fringes. Then there’s the influx of other even weirder immigrants from as near as the Plateau of Leng and as far away as 3,000000,00000,000000000 BC. Throw in the increased degeneration of the natural environment globally, just for good measure, and the city’s beginning to feel like a pressure cooker, where all the lunacy confined to Arkham in bygone years is spilling out. Gotham’s certainly at the centre of something, it’s just that, as yet, nobody seems to have any idea what that might mean.

In the first story arc, Snake Charmer, the Sensei unleashed a reality virus programmed to destroy Toytown and cripple the city by plunging its users/inhabitants into an apocalyptic virtual world in which the new Batman never existed. This virtual assault threatened to fry the brains of Gotham’s online citizenry, until Batman and Robin managed to rewrite the virus’s programming from inside the virtual hell, turning it against its makers and preventing the Sensei and his wife, Agrat Bat Malhat, from detonating a nuke in the city’s docklands. Why did the Sensei decide to show his hand after all this time? Nobody knows, but it’s clear he had a hidden agenda. The word on the street is: ‘apocalypse’.

A BIT MORE PREAMBLE AFTER THE JUMP

This week, instead of the usual preamble, I thought we might go for a straight up ‘story so far’ blurb. Afterall, most of our regular readers will have made up their minds about this strip by now and nothing I can say or do will convince the skeptics, the haterz, or the just plain old don’t-give-a-shitters among you that they should read it. But there’s always newbies flooding into Mindless Ones who deserve a little context, even if they can’t be bothered to read what came before. Do bear in mind though, guys, that there’s an awful lot of stuff you won’t have a clear idea of, a lot of context you WILL miss, and a huge amount of panel description that might not make any sense if you opt to drop in at the top.

THE STORY SO FAR….

And so ends part one of our batbook. I hope you like it. I can’t tell you how fun it is writing this stuff, and in my not so humble opinion, it’s a million times better than most superhero comics out there. But then, like all fan-fic people, I’m writing it because it’s what I want to see. This one over-runs by a few pages, but hopefully the book’ll be so popular by the time we get to the fourth installment DC editorial won’t mind! I know I should’ve reigned this monster in, but I want you to be able to read the uncut version. And I wasn’t ripping off Grant – I wrote it before…. YOU KNOW ALL THIS……

There’s lots of fighting this time. Some secrets are revealed. Others will have to wait. There is an overall arc to this stuff.

I’ll get back to some real criticism next week

Hello again.

We start with more apologies (sorry Pillock).

Okay, to begin with, I reiterate: I finished scribbling down this and the next ish at least a couple of days BEFORE I read Final Crisis #7, so any similarities in theme and/or imagery are ACCIDENTAL.

I do not give a fuck for ripping off other writers. Morrison just seems to be ransacking my head at the moment.

OUT, DEMON !

Also: sure, I admit that this one’s pretty continuity heavy, but Damian does emerge from another continuity and I promise this’ll be the last time I bog the story down with it – there’s too much good shit going on in Nu-Gotham to bother with fusty old Brucey for more than a couple of issues. And, yeah, it is all a bit confusing, but this is the penultimate episode of the first arc and things are always supposed to get a little strange at this juncture. I’ll explain everything away next time I promise.

Well….. maybe.

So what have we got this time: bat-zombies, magic spells, more TNT and flying masonry than you can shake a stick it, Supermen Sans Frontieres, the Sensei’s winter retreat and zero fighting.

Something we’ll rectify with #4

Don’t worry – I haven’t gone all Brian Michael Bendis on your ass