Batman: The Cult #1 (of 4)

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Disposable Vagrant: When it becomes apparent that the homeless of Gotham have seemingly disappeared, one cop comments that he doesn't care where they went, just that they're gone.

Love Interests • Origins • Other Media • Publication History • Recommended Reading • Storylines • Video Games • Batman Family Weeks have passed since the incident and the Gotham City Police Department have noticed Batman's absence. Robin often spends the nights at Commissioner Gordon's office trying to find a clue that would help them locate their missing friend, only to realize something major is happening in Gotham City.

This is the weirdest Batman story I have ever read, and I have very mixed feelings about it (some spoilers ahead). Batman is pushed to his breakable limits as a religious madman converts Gotham's homeless into a zealous killing force. Batman himself it captured, tortured, broken, and brainwashed into joining this deranged cult. That is just the beginning of this brutal and grim tale of the dark knight. Artist Bernie Wrightson provided the visuals for Batman: The Cult and paired with Starlin’s writing they are incredible. Wrightson was a master of the macabre, having worked on various horror titles (he also co-created Swamp Thing), and his illustrations in Batman: The Cult are superb. The next issue features a note indicating that Todd Klein was incorrectly credited as the letterer of this issue. The actual letterer was John Costanza. Searching his apartment, Batman is inadvertently aided by a cop who shows him a carpet cutting tool which Riddler had murdered the mayor with at the beginning. Realizing this tool is another clue to uncovering the Riddler's master plan, Batman cuts open the rug of the apartment and discovers via a map drawn on the floor underneath that Nashton has stationed car bombs around Gotham. No sooner has he done this than an online video of Nashton's final transmission before his capture and incarceration plays, explaining gleefully that he had cultivated an online following that plans to assassinate mayor-elect Bella Reál.

Batman gets brainwashed in this story, and we see him like never before. He mows people down with a machine gun in one instance, and acts like a coward in many other instances. when you can get your hands on some stuff by Starlin but in the distinguished competition, well, it’s not brainer to buy it right away. Batman: The Cult is a four-issue comic book miniseries. It was published by DC Comics in their Prestige Format and released in 1988. It was written by Jim Starlin, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, colored by Bill Wray and edited by Denny O'Neil.

Between their first encounter and the time of Eternal, the Deacon has taken over the body of Maxie Zeus, in attempt to regain entry into this world. [7] Tranquilizer Darts: Batman and Robin use hundreds of them during their return to Gotham. They even use them in rifles and turrets. Of course they all cause Instant Sedation. The reason the homeless - or “Underworlders” as they're referred to - are able to take over the city is mostly due to incompetence from everyone in the book, Batman included. They use the sewers as their base of operations and everyone knows this but nobody goes down there to take them out, they just allow them to skulk around and pop up. Nobody has the wherewithal to throw down tear gas and then go in guns blazing - riot police could have this situation sorted no problem.

The Others: Not sure about this one. It seemed to hold together as a story while I was reading it, but on analysis the holes are… maddening. Maybe they were supposed to be. Meanwhile in Arkham, Nashton is upset that his plan failed and wailing in his cell. A neighboring cell mate, who is largely obscured behind the steel door of his cell, proposes Nashton a riddle, asking, "Riddle me this. The less you have of me, the more I am worth." Nashton answers, "A friend." They laugh together. When this series came out in 1988 I was newly married, finishing college and working two jobs. I had made a half-hearted decision to stop buying comics. When I read this Jim Starlin series, I hated it. It was the catalyst for me to stop buying comics.

My problems with this book are many: Batman gets captured by the brainwashed homeless. Ok, so apparently homeless people become highly effective fighters once brainwashed. Batman gets caught in the most banal way, a situation he's been in countless times, but somehow falls victim to this time. Then he undergoes brainwashing which includes torture, starvation and hallucinatory drugs - he couldn't escape in the days he was chained up? It was literally a pair of handcuffs around a metal pipe, surely he could've escaped? It’s yet another situation Batman's been in before countless times which he could've easily gotten out of. But then there wouldn't be a book if he escaped- it's so contrived and out of character. The controversy comes, in part, from the murder -- the one Batman apparently commits. Armed with a machine-gun and hallucinating, Batman opens fire on what he thinks is the Joker. The dying man then changes to look like James Gordon and finally the truth is revealed. However, the murder is shown in such a fashion to one could argue Batman didn't actually do the killing. But those are just the hardcore unable to accept the truth -- Batman murdered a man while under the influence of a cult, incapable of controlling his actions or trusting his own senses. Big Guns • Brothers in Blood • A Darker Shade of Justice • Freefall • The Great Leap • The Hunt for Oracle • A Knight in Bludhaven • The Lost Year • Love and Bullets • Love and War • Mobbed Up • On the Razor's Edge • Renegade • Road to Nowhere • Rough Justice • Ties That Bind • Traps and Trapezes • Year One In the mid-1970s, Starlin contributed a cache of stories to the independently published science-fiction anthology Star Reach. Here he developed his ideas of God, death, and infinity, free of the restrictions of mainstream comics publishers' self-censorship arm, the Comics Code Authority. Starlin also drew "The Secret of Skull River", inked by frequent collaborator Al Milgrom, for Savage Tales #5 (July 1974).