A Close Shave in Gotham City

Dreamed about Batman last night, so that’s a win.

Of course, the context of that dream was pretty unusual. It started out normal enough: a crime scene, and Batman was checking out the body of the murder victim. He’d been scalped, and part of his scalp was on the floor of the warehouse next to his body. Batman could tell—and therefore, as the audience, I could tell as well—that the murderer was no ordinary hair-thief, scalping innocent victims and wearing their hair on his head. Instead, from the position and condition of the leftover scalp piece, Batman knew that the murderer was using the dead man’s hair as pubic hair.

I recall thinking, “Of course, they can’t say that outright, because kids might read this. But it’s pretty clear to a grown-up.” Ah, the magic of sequential art.

Cut to the office storage closet that Batman operates out of. (Editor’s note: This story takes place in the days before the Batcave!) As he’s analyzing clues on the Bat-computer, he notices that there’s one less fine red felt-tip pen on the shelf than he expected... and there were red dotted lines at the edge of the incision point on the victim’s head! Which meant the killer was inside the office!

My alarm woke me up before Batman could do a company-wide pube inspection at Wayne Enterprises, so I’ll never know who the killer was. But giving it some thought this morning, I wondered what his (or her) supervillain name would be. And then it hit me: The Merkin Psycho.

The only problem is, which one will Christian Bale play in the movie?

Rob