Gotham Knights 022 - Bugged Out

For introduction, it's a few word about one of the main characters in the story: Stephanie Brown is a teenage girl and an amateur superhero under the name of Spoiler. She hangs on together mostly with Robin (Tim Drake). She will be Robin and Batgirl too. If my blog will go long time, we will meet her good many times.

The story begins in the most sterile office(?) apartment(?) of Gotham where a guy just gets rid of the last dust particles, when an insecticide rings to him to offer his services, but he doesn't need insecticide because he is the best insecticide of the city. Meanwhile, the talkative visitor says everything about the essence of the Joker: Last Laugh. Then, after he has left, a ton of cockroach pours on our hero's neck from the ventage, and they completely engulf his body.

Meanwhile, Batman tries to keep the order in streets of Gotham from the Jokerized felons. In absence of suitable assistance, he is forced to enlist the not too steely Spoiler who is entrusted to guard. After all the cockroaches have climbed in our hero, he stands up like a zombie and leaves the house.

He is sits in his car and starts to race through the city over several pages (while, you can listen Spoiler's endless speech for narration just like the donkey in the Shrek), until he crashes into his own insecticide chemical warehouse, which is destroyed by a huge explosion. Spoiler is just here and immediately notifies Batman, who is just smashing a Jokerized villain gang. By Batman's order, she begins to follow the leaving intact cockroach-zombie through the roofs. They get an alley where our friend rips off a homeless' head. Spoiler is watching everything from a fire escape and informing Batman (that she has became ill from the sight) without taking notice that the cockroach-zombie has sneaked behind her.

Fortunately, Batman arrives in time.

After the zombie has fall down, the cockroaches go away leaving behind only a skeleton.

Devin Grayson's story is simple little horror story just like from the Twilight Zone, but it is a strong similarity with the first part of the MIB. It is not really background or explanation of the mystery. He has written the story professionally but with too much cliche, but this is not at all disturbing. So he has get the most out of this little something. It is not really connected to the Joker: Last Laugh, although there has been some indication that the cockroaches were jokerized. RogerRobinson draws with a lot of shade, sometimes I think that he conceals with this his drawing deficiencies (especially at the face):

But there's nothing wrong with it, he get the obligatory, I could say it if I didn't experience that how many people didn't get. So he rather belongs to the better.

The original Hungarian blog post is here.