Well, I got pretty busy and never got around to posting a few comments about Batman #19. I re-read it a couple of nights ago and ... well, it didn't get better the second time around. It got worse! I paid a little more attention to the captions telling what time it was as Bane wandered around Arkham Asylum FOR HOURS AND HOURS and got into nonsensical fights with one throwaway Batman villain after another. It's so silly. I was thinking "Why are we spending so much time on this ridiculous Bane storyline that loves wasting the potential of a number of great characters (and characters who could be great with SOME GOOD WRITING) when we could be reading a good story about any one of the characters that the writer just summarily tosses into the "Bane is the ultimate fighter because of his magic super-savage fighter venom juice" meat grinder?"

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. I'll describe the plot a little. Forgive me if I get a few plot points wrong. I'm a bit hazy on some of the motivations because I have a little trouble making sense of them. I would usually be checking these things but I've already read it twice and I just don't want to go there again.

Bane has invaded Arkham Asylum, looking for the Psycho Pirate because - I can't remember. He just wants the Psycho Pirate. Batman is already there, protecting the injured super-heroine known as Gotham Girl (whoever that is; I've seen her before; she's very deus ex machina). Batman has made a bargain with the inmates of Arkham wherein many of them have agreed to help slow down Bane in exchange for ... better treatment at Arkham. Yeah, that's so weak. I could write a whole essay on how dumb that bargain is. But my plate is already overflowing with comments about all the stupidness in "I Am Bane!" Chapter Four.

So Bane is wandering around Arkham and meeting various Batman villains. Captions tell what time it is as he runs into Maxie Zeus at midnight and then Two-Face forty minutes later. Neither of these encounters is particularly dumb as Maxie Zeus recites Dante (because the writer was too lazy to find some Greek poetry that fit the story, but whatever) and Two-Face decides not to cooperate with Batman's bargain, but Bane beats him up anyway. (So, kind of dumb, really, but not when compared to much of the rest of the story. And the Harvey Dent half of Two-Face looks just like the way Dick Grayson is drawn these days.)

Then he meets Solomon Grundy and Amygdala, who are guarding Jonathan Crane (the Scarecrow) for some reason.

OMG! Solomon Grundy is a much more interesting (and much more frightening) character than Bane, but here he's just throwaway drama fodder for Bane's magic venom juice. According to the captions, the fight with Solomon Grundy and Amygdala takes over an hour, but you don't see any of it. You see Jonathan Crane listening to it (as he recites a list of phobias) and then Bane breaks down the door and beats up Crane despite his new fear gas. (Bane seems to like the new fear gas, which is a nice touch, and maybe a bit of an homage to a similar reaction by the Joker in Knightfall.)

I only know Amygdala from his brief appearance in Knightfall, so I don't really have any major quibble with his throwaway status here. (Still, based on some of the other characters so casually turned into hamburger by the Bad Writing Meat Grinder, I have little doubt that Amygdala deserves better than this.)

But Solomon Grundy is a major character, a great character, with a rich history as a frightening, nearly unstoppable swamp monster composed of dead matter dating back to the Golden Age. I don't think I'm being unreasonable wondering exactly how Bane defeated Grundy. Yes, I know he has that magic venom juice, but I'd still like to know how repeatedly hitting an unstoppable swamp monster could defeat it. I mean, I would guess that Grundy would hit back with those gigantic, dead-white fists.

I'm guessing that the Rebirth Solomon Grundy is an uninteresting, powered-down, boring version of the Solomon Grundy we know and love from the old days, made necessary by the needs of this awful awful storyline.

(I'm not even going to go into the absurdity of having Grundy at Arkham in the first place. Shouldn't he be at Belle Reve or some other institution for unbelievably powerful and dangerous supernatural creatures?)

So Bane wanders around Arkham for 24 hours, looking for the Psycho-Pirate. It's a big place! (Presumably designed by the city planners of Central City.) The captions show how much time has passed as he has bunches of single-panel fights with more and more inmates of Arkham, all eager for the better treatment promised by Batman. (Bingo Night! Pizza parties! A second helping of pudding on demand! More pretty female psychiatrists to threaten and then convert to a life of psychotic crime sprees!) 

It's fairly ridiculous. They have guys like Zsasz and the Black Spider attacking Bane! I just have my doubts that Zsasz is thinking "Yeah, I'll attack Bane and his magic venom potion for that second helping of pudding!" And the Black Spider is just one of many villains way out of his league attacking Bane, with a motive so dumb that it's virtually the same as being motiveless.

And one of the attackers is Man-Bat. So, I can see Kirk Langstrom being seen as a candidate for Arkham (because the security is so awesome that he would never go on a rampage, turn into Man-Bat and kill half the staff.) But ... maybe we should have seen the story where he was apprehended. If he's at Arkham after one of his episodes, then presumably his secret identity is known. But you know the next time a writer needs to use Man-Bat, we'll be back to the status quo where Dr. Langstrom is running around free and only a very select few know that he is Man-Bat.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb, all the way around. We also get Mr. Freeze, Firefly, Flamingo (I don't know who this is), Dr. Phosphorus, Copperhead (another one I don't know), a cooperative Riddler and an enigmatic Calendar Man.

It gets to its most ridiculous point with a panel where Bane is beating up the Mad Hatter followed quickly by a panel where Bane is kicking Hush in the face. Maybe the Mad Hatter had a weird mind-control scheme that didn't work (presumably because of Bane's magic venom juice) and got stomped by his vengeful foe, but what was Hush (in white pajamas and slippers) doing getting involved in an attack on Bane just because Batman said the Arkham staff would be nicer to him? (I'm also not clear why Hush is at Arkham anyway. The justice system in Gotham City must allow insanity as a defense for just about anything.)

So much of this comic makes no sense.

It ends at midnight, 24 hours after it started, with Bane facing Batman after a full freaking day of wandering around Arkham and beating up random villains.

TO BE CONTINUED! 

"I AM BANE!" is so bad, I almost feel like I was mean to James Robinson for bagging on Squadron Supreme so much.

Almost.

It's better than "The Widening Gyre," just to put it in perspective.