Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Killer Moth Week II, #3: Back in action!

Museum Guard Rollins has found a x-ray of two men battling in lab, which could easily reveal the secret identity of Batman! Oh, and of Killer Moth.  Not that anyone cares about that.

Huh; looks like Winslow has his pickle set on 'vibrate'.


Quick! You are Bruce Wayne!  Which of the following things do you say to solve this problem?!

(a).  "I'm Bruce Wayne and could buy and sell each of you a hundred times over.  So every body just shut up." 
(b).  "Yes, I'm Batman. And I have a file of each one of you.  Even you, Captain Kangaroo.  Act accordingly." 
(c).  "Another robbery attempt?! Rollins, you're fired! And take that stupid x-ray with you!" 
(d).  "Yeah, Van Cleer's desperately flailing limbs bumped into the x-ray machine while we were doing the nasty together during the break.  Anybody here got a problem with that...?"

Well, if you're a real fan of Golden Age comics, you'll know immediately that none of those answers is ridiculous enough and so the real answer is:


(e).  "Shut up, Rollins, you moron.  That's obviously an x-ray Prof Perkins took of the two battling cavemen!"

Words to describe the stupidity of this assertion fail me and I am left only to flail my limbs desperately as if I were "Doing the Moth".  I assumed the 'remains' Prof Perkins had been studying were, you know, bones 'n' such.  In order for that to be an x-ray taken of the "battling cavemen" they would have had to have been live specimens flash-frozen in mid-grapple by history's most rapidly advancing Ice Age.  I can just picture Anthro, DC's notoriously gay caveman, being so intent on his *ahem* 'grappling' with another caveman so long and so hard that the glaciation just kind of snuck up on him and caught him in flagrante delicto

Anyway, after that load of malarky is launched, even Killer Moth can figure out that Bruce Wayne, lying sack of poo that he is, must be Batman.  

Apparently, the fact that Wayne is the only boardmember with a youthful ward who could be Robin doesn't factor into his thinking at all. 


But in order to be sure of his deduction, he arranges for a false alarm at a bank in Gotham, while watching Wayne Manor to see whether Bruce and Dick dash off.  Because that would surely mean that they were Batman & Robin.  Or that they were late for the opera.  Or had overdue library books.  Or any number of things.

Batman is much too clever for that, however, and ingeniously thwarts Killer Moth by means of... playing chess!  Somehow. It doesn't make any sense to me.   But THAT's how smart Batman is.


No, really; I'm positive this happened on Frasier once.


This all puts the headache-inducing secret identity shenanigans to a halt, but that's okay because Killer Moth, his street cred and confidence inexplicably buoyed by his successful theft of exactly one pre-Incan moth idol, is back in action, baby!


"You like me.  You really like me!"


NOW Killer Moth is in his element! NOW he's at the top of his game!  NOW, it will be a different story!

"Now, with the aid of my--YAAAH, *SHRIEK*!!!!!!!!!!"


Let me make this perfectly clear.  Killer Moth, the 'anti-Batman', is, by this point, so terrified that he's going to take another beating that when Batman shows up he:


  • panics:
  • bounces off a wall; and 
  • crashes his body through a gigantic window (his limbs flailing desperately the whole time, no doubt).


Oh, well; I'm sure this is only a temporary setback.  After all... this is Killer Moth we're talking about here!

7 comments:

ronald said...

>>>the fact that Wayne is the only boardmember with a youthful ward who could be Robin

Well, we don't really KNOW that, do we...?

;-)

Besides, for all the rest of the world knows, Robin's just some kid Batman hired off the street. (a pretty good description of post-Crisis Jason Todd, now that I think about it)

Bryan L said...

I like that idea, Ronald. "Hey, kid, how'd you like to earn some extra cash?"

Or maybe not.

Nathan Hall said...

Aha! Those crooks sent
Out the moth signal when they
got in trouble! Good!

Only a haiku
Can show how happy he is
Stupid crooks love him!

Bryan L said...

Nathan wins!

SallyP said...

Ok, I'm beginning to understand this strange obsession you have with Killer Moth. Because this latest bit with the x-rays, and skeletons, and blackmail, and busting through walls...IS quite amazing.

Bizarre...but amazing.

Scipio said...

Sally.

It gets worse.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the one single moth idol he stole has some sort of magic power, explaining its existence. Perhaps the owner inexplicably seems more capable and less silly to those who are superstitious and cowardly.