Phantasm (DC Comics)

[Abishai100]

This is a very dark Gotham (DC Comics) fan-fiction, inspired by a very unusual fictional urban menace named Phantasm (Andrea Beaumont), a great feature in a 1990s full-length animated film which I encourage anyone looking to become a Batman fan to watch...and declassify! Thanks for reading (signing off),



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Let me tell you about my great dark city of Gotham, a place beset by narcissism, crime, and power structures of corruption. This is the legacy of WWII, with unresolved matters between Jews and Muslims, now brached out from histories of ethnic conflicts and religious differences between Protestants and Catholics, Italians and Germans living in Gotham (America), and powerful urban warlocks creating temptations for evil and extortion. What crystallizes is a natural social desire to capitalize on the poison inherent in profiteers using communication to make Gotham a hotbed for mischief...and malice. If a human society chooses to go down this path of seemingly invisible masked darkness, a city like Gotham requires a masked crusader of the night, a dark knight like myself. That's what I am in Gotham --- a dark knight.



One of my adversaries is the corrupt Gotham profiteer Max Shreck, a man of capitalist means, using monetary labyrinths and foreign terrorism cells and narcotics dominions to stamp himself as a generic overlord of urban criminality. This guy's envisioned a city where the poison of communication can yield great products of social subversion such as eco-terrorism oriented chemical weapons, wielded by rogue underground groups that his municipal office has subtly pardoned for the sake of channeling profits. Max Shreck has turned poison into a machinery for Gotham design.



Of course, I love Gotham City. I'm its patriot. I'm not an ordinary or normal crusader or vigilante or crime-fighter. After all, I dress up like a winged-creature of the night, a 'bat-man.' That's what I call myself --- Batman. That's what this city needs, really. It needs a prowling soaring nocturnal watcher. I've tackled and confronted Gotham's new elite of crime, including the fear-toxin wielding Scarecrow and the seductive eco-terrorist Poison Ivy. To me, Gotham is a place where infiltration of the underworld requires reptilian or nocturnal thinking and almost dark imagination. I watch over Gotham as if it's some king of capital laboratory of tunnels of profit-driven dementia. I'm not only its dark night, but also a 'thief' of crimelord havens. I steal from the evil to give to the bewildered. Gotham is a colored city of modern vertigo.



THE RED-SHIRT GANG: We assert Batman's just a thief of gems, and we'll maintain our code of evil!



I don't have any friends, really. However, I do commune with the Gotham City Police Department chief (Jim Gordon) commissioner's daughter (Barbara Gordon) who helps be detangle some of the more nefarious urban cobwebs of this forlorn city of hell. Barbara is my official sidekick, an undercover 'bat-girl' who tells me how the evil sirens and mistresses of Gotham bad-guys have become fortune-tellers of the profit behind modern crime. Bat-Girl (Barbara) informs me of the 'aesthetic dangers' of overlooking the potency and prowess of these Gotham sirens and mistresses of hell who no doubt have a solid 'fix' on the nature and scope of urban ambition. Where does this all lead for life in Gotham City? Who're these sirens serving?



THE PHANTASM: I'm the newest criminal mind in Gotham, and I'll strike doubt into the heart of Batman!



The Phantasm is the newest addition to my inane Gotham family. The Phantasm is a masked stranger, and I have reason to believe the person behind the mask is a young woman! However, Phantasm uses a voice-detention device to make it/him/her sound more robot-like, making it impossible to determine this human-creature's actual gender. Phantasm is here in Gotham to add terrible 'spice' to this described equation of hellfire in this dark city. I already have to deal with the concept of frightened youngsters confused about their true place in this city of crime-minds, and the Phantasm is offering a new brand of art, catering to the underworld fascinated by the general scope and scale of Satanic dialogue.



However, I remain vigilant and confident. I remain hopeful that as long as I confront and deal with this Phantasm super-villain as simply an inventive agent of hell-mouths, I can approach the real problems of Gotham City with a sense of real conviction. I won't let Phantasm disturb my faith and focus in the methodology of innovative vigilantism, necessary to approach new era gangs and gang-lords with a presence of almost-samurai like disattachment!



GOTHAM GAZETTE: We believe Batman's our best hope in diffusing the deformations of Phantasm.

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)

 

[Abishai100]

Game of Death*



One addendum to the dystopian ode to the darkness of DC Comics' Gotham City, and this one explores the endless pseudo-romantic diction between Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Catwoman (Selina Kyle). This on-and-off relationship in modern comics/storytelling I think speaks to our human fascination with crime-folklore oriented social daydreams. Thanks for reading (and enjoy!),







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CATWOMAN: I love you, Bruce.
BATMAN: How'd you wager I'm Bruce Wayne, Selina?
CATWOMAN: Same way you wagered I'm Selina Kyle!
BATMAN: Well...aren't you?
CATWOMAN: I'm the Catwoman.
BATMAN: Well, then, I'm just the Batman to you.
CATWOMAN: I hate you...but I love you...Batman.
BATMAN: Ditto.



Of course heroism in Gotham City was not all romance and storytelling. No, and Batman and Catwoman understood this well. They'd both grown up with a special angst towards wrought justice in a dark city requiring more active forms of anti-crime intervention. Batman really was Bruce Wayne, the iconic socialite-businessman and head of Wayne Industries, currently developing an anti-chemical warfare program with Lockheed-Martin in D.C.! Batman and Catwoman were like soaring ravens in Gotham, looking to deconstruct the Game of Death constructed by the city's legion of doom, a new axis of united super-villains. Batman was often seen soaring through the night with his super-sharp mind.



BATMAN: I do love Catwoman, and I don't know if she's actually Selina, but I don't want her involved deeply!



CATWOMAN: Batman thinks I don't care enough about vigilantism, and it's because we disagree.



Batman and Catwoman decided to go up on the Gotham Bridge tower one dark night and proclaimed their marriage vows to each other, each still not sure what the real-life normal world identity of the other was, since of course, they'd made love to each other with their masks on, even if nothing else! That night Batman/Catwoman destroyed a new warehouse lair in which the gathering of the assembled legion of doom included the likes of the Joker, Riddler, and Fish Mooney, the Afro-centric underworld syndicate female boss. Batman and Catwoman despised the legion of doom but had to respect just how they commanded a new line of social fear regarding the unified motion of homegrown terrorism!



BATMAN: The worst member of this new axis of evil in Gotham is the masked maniac Scarecrow.



Batman and Catwoman decided to dress up like members of the villainous Red Hood Gang, a bank robbing team in Gotham City, and went into the Gotham Bank and stole the blood diamonds stored in safe-box #445 in the vault-room, claiming they'd been sent by the Red Hood leader to disintegrate the city's corrupt and vile blood diamond traffic, stretching all the way to Europe! The bank guards weren't able to block Batman/Catwoman, and the two clever super-vigilantes used the press garnered from this strange blood diamonds heist to claim falsely but persuasively that the dark legion of doom in Gotham was nothing more than a modern-day troop of pirate-detectives.



LEGION OF DOOM: We're happy to report we've assembled an army of masked axe-warriors called X10.



JULIET: I'm engaged to Bruce Wayne, and I remain patient, though I now suspect he's actually the Batman.



If Batman (Bruce Wayne!) was to uphold his loyalty to both Catwoman (Selina Kyle!) and his new fiancee-bride Juliet, he'd have to play this new legion of doom Game of Death in Gotham City well and hopefully without going cross-eyed with Catwoman, who was sometimes just a tad outside the borderlines of normal vigilantism. After all, Catwoman once tried to scratch out the eyes of the brutish super-villain Bane, a chemically-enhanced (steroids!) freak, claiming that a blind Bane was better than a visionary Bane. However, Batman became furious with this, since he advised Catwoman that such tactics could dangerously martyrize the legion of doom. That's why Batman rode alone in Gotham in his bat-mobile, now intent to somehow balance all the dystopian forces of murder and piracy created by the dogged legion of doom. His bat-mobile was as symbolic to democracy as Catwoman!



CATWOMAN: We'll see if the gallant Batman rejects my brand of fighting as we court this Game of Death!

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)