You REALLY Want To Talk About "Jokers", Batman?

Today's blog will actually be a shorter than normal one... and technically it could have been a "Friday 'Funnies' Foolishness" entry, but after finishing this particular two-parter, I HAD to expand my thoughts about a certain character in an individual posting.  Now I admit, I've not exactly been terribly charitable to Marvel Comics for my postings, thus far.  But today proves that even a more DC-centric person like myself can still find things to nitpick in my favored universe.  Case in point: "Batman #289-290", and a "delightful" villain known as Cosmo "Skull" Dugger.  ... Yes, you read that name, correctly.

Batman's rogue gallery may be one of the most iconic gatherings of villains in comic history: The Joker, The Penguin, Two-Face, Catwoman, Bane, Killer Croc, Mr. Freeze... etc.  But for every iconic villain Batman squares off against, we also have occasional two-time losers... like today's entry.  You see, Cosmo Dugger suffers from a condition known as anhedonia, the inability to experience joy.  (And if you looked like the love child of Charles Xavier and Thaddeus Sivana, you might not be overflowing with joy, either.)  So this drives Cosmo to the heinous drive of creating a device that literally robs people of joy, used in the moment where the victim experiences the apex of joy.  The device is shot at the victim's forehead, and after having suffered heart attack-like symptoms, they are left deceased with a skull mark on their forehead.  Cosmo later takes the stolen sense of joy, and sips at it like fine wine.  Hmm... a person that essentially works as a joy vampire... You know, I think I've had a few ex-girlfriends like that. 

 Aside from wanting to prevent further murders, Batman himself suffers the effects of the joy-robbing ray, which does not kill him... because this is Batman's book, and he can't be destroyed in such a pathetic fashion... but it leaves him near paralyzed, every movement Batman commits in the goal of fighting crime causing him intense pain.  ... Which implies that swinging around from crime scene to crime scene, and causing physical pain on people who are admittedly committing terrible deeds, brings Batman joy.  Normally an average schmoe like the rest of us would be placed in psychiatric care for voicing such thoughts... Anyhow, the way Batman gets around all this to ultimately put a stop to Cosmo's crime spree is he tricks another lame villain, Dr. Tzin Tzin, to grant him one hour of physical immunity to anything, so that the Doctor can be released from prison.  Having been freed from his physical pain, Batman then confronts Skull Dugger, who after a lab-thrashing battle, writes his own fate by electrocuting himself against his broken joy storage/release unit.  But the most annoying thing of this entire story is... Yes, Batman does discover the whys of how these people are dying, but the skull-mark?  That remains an unsolved mystery NO ONE decides to look into, after Skull Dugger meets his maker. 

This story DOES have some decent points, though.  As is the case for most Bronze Age Batman stories, they do have some great action sequences, and this period does mostly feature the Batman I personally enjoy the most.  He's determined, but not obsessed, in his Batman persona, and can even make time to crack a small joke every now and then.  And the artwork in these two issues, EXCELLENT.  Mike Grell put in some great touches on the Dark Knight Detective, and I would've loved to see him have an extended run on some Batman adventures.  This is also despite the fact that his work is inked by the killer of generally great artwork, Vince Colletta.  But what did this two-parter teach me?  Not even Batman is spared from having some general losers in his life... and that if Skull Dugger really wanted to be efficient in his joy thievery, he should have become a producer of Adam Sandler movies.  Wakka-wakka!