Batman visits that old Monastery and discovers a large Cathedral hidden behind a trick door. There he sees…

He sees…

HE SEES…

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Vol. 1), Issue #9 [July, 1990]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“The Hangman’s Tale”

…doesn’t matter right now. We’re in downtown Gotham, a location of extreme debauchery and depravity, where a hostage situation is underway! A gaggle of police are pointing their guns and telling a man named Hooper – who has a gun pointed to a young girl’s head – to get the fuck out of the building. “You hear me, Hooper?” Fat Mustache Cop yells through a bullhorn. “You can walk out of there or we can carry you out in a bag! What’s it going to be?”

I like Hooper’s undercut. He tells the police to BACK OFF, MAN or else he’s going to fill this kid’s head with very fast-moving metal stuff. We don’t get to see that, though, unfortunately, because the Dark Knight appears before them. “Children are not to be threatened,” he tells Hooper wisely.

BLAAAAHBBB!! BLRHLRHB!!! The kid runs free, Hooper is like “NOOOOO”, and then he gets tossed out like a sack of sugar with a sticky note on his chest that has a Batman symbol drawn on it.

“I guess the Bat-Man is back in town,” the cop observes. NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BAT-MAN, and whatnot.

Morgenstern puffs his pipe in his suite, looking out through his window at the majestic, smelly cityscape. “I’m an empire builder, that’s what I am. An empire builder. Now that Ottavio’s out of the picture, I’m going to run this city. Like clockwork.”

Yeah! Into the ground you pile of crap. Morgenstern’s sitting pretty as long as that Mr. Whisper guy doesn’t start whisperin’ around these parts. A man’s gotta do his thing unfettered by pesky assassins.

Morgenstern turns around and his assistant is prostrate on the floor. Yes, “prostrate”, not “prostate”. His prostate is not on the floor. “What’s the matter, Morgernstern?” Batman grins, apparently having had RUDELY let himself into the suite.

Well, finally, Morgenstern is a little jumpy. This Whisper chap has really gotten under his skin. All his friends dead. He’s next. It’s enough to make a guy lose his appetite from nerves. *chomps on a giant Dagwood sandwich*

“I need information,” Batman growls. “Tell me about Mr. Whisper. Tell what happened when you killed him the first time.”

GULP. Go fuck yourself, Dark Knight. Morgenstern ain’t talkin’ and he has nothing to hide and he ain’t talkin’!

So then he starts talkin’.

It was 20 years ago, so by my math that would be 1947. Morgernstern and the Boys were making a pretty penny off of their less-than-legal ventures. Problem was, some jerk slaughtered a bunch of kids and now the cops were everywhere. The heat was on! How is a guy supposed to sell black market fringy doilies with Hawaii 5-0 on their tails? Fuck that noise!

So they decided to try to find this killer themselves and slaughter him right back!

They spent a month trying to get information from all the bums and heroin addicts and mimes on the streets. Finally, a tip-off led them to an abandoned apartment building that reeked of cats and hobo piss and pornography-related fluids. There they found Mr. Whisper hunched over a bed with a knife in his hand. There was someone, or something, wrapped in a blanket on the bed. Shots were fired, Mr. Whisper was thrown through the window, and they all thought he was murdered gangland style! “But he was still alive. Still alive!”

At this point the gauntlet was down! Someone named Jack Kane started going after Whisper with an axe, but the guy just wouldn’t die! Like a bad dream, man. Michael Malloy. Just can’t kill him. They were eventually able to tie him to a comically cartoony anchor and send him sinking to the bottom of the sea. Problem over. *dusts off hands*

Morgernstern tries to strike a deal with Batman: meet at the old chemical works on the waterfront. Whisper is going to be there, and this is the chance to really get him, you know?

Batman’s gone though. Oh well. He’s getting his ass back to the Batcave where he can punch in questions and get answers on his 1990 TCP/IP, infecting his computer with DOS ASCII pornography.

“…and how was Austria, Master Bruce?” Alfred asks, reminding me that this guy actually went to Austria for an entire issue. Batman doesn’t really answer the question, he’s too busy thinking about gothic architecture.

What did Batman discover in that Lake Dess cathedral?? Here’s the reveal! Blueprints! A schematic of the cathedral, laid over a schematic of the Gotham cathedral, shows an almost perfect match! WTF! Bananas!

Batman lays down some gothic architecture knowledge. The buildings were designed so that all the framework’s internal forces and stresses of the building pointed upward toward God, because screw that guy and he deserves all the stress that we on Earth can give him. Paybacks. Also something about building acoustics and spiritual alchemy and similar such nonsense. If buildings can direct forces, and they direct evil forces? That is the question! I guess.

Something funky is gonna go down at the ol’ Gotham Cathedral.

Batman refreshes Alfred’s memory about his days getting caned at school by Mr. Winchester. After not being able to take it anymore, Bruce snuck out of the school and phoned home like E.T. His father came to pick him up and tried to have a heated argument with Winchester. As Bruce puts it, his father’s face was pale when he came out of the office.

Whatever, though. Bruce was going home. Only good times were ahead! A future of open possibilities! Then his parents got killed, because upon Bruce’s arrival back home, the family would celebrate with a trip to the old moving picture theater! Yippee!

At the Gotham cathedral, a guy named Mr. Wicker is creepin’ around. The cathedral guard recognizes him and is not phased by this weirdo lurking about. It’s the same guy who was talking to the short-haired nun back in Issue #8. He claims he’s opening a “time capsule” in the building, that he’s an “expert”, and that’s “why he was hired”. I’m out of quotation marks.

Nah. Here are some more.

“See? I found this fascinating piece of cord,” Wicker says right before strangling the guard. Then he walks away whistling, I’m guessing, “Gold Digger” by Kanye.

Batman took Morgenstern up on his offer and is walking around the waterfront’s chemical works. “Morgenstern? Morgenstern, I’m here.”

He shuffles into a room where a dozen dead dudes hang by their legs on the ceiling rafters, including Morgenstern. He was tricked! Mr. Wicker/Whisper is there to murder The Bat Man!

Batman throws a batarang at the guy. He’s barely scratched. Whisper throws a large pullet at Batman, which knocks him off the catwalk. Down he goes.

He wakes up strapped to conveyor rollers

“20 years, eh? You were to be my next victim, did you know that?” Winchester/Wicker/Whisper tells Batman. “You would have been Child Number Eight…”

“You should have killed me then. I’ll make you regret that you didn’t,” Batman grimaces, clearly without anything better to say at that moment. Bruce’s father was on to Winchester, but Winchester was very quick to snuff out any notion Father Wayne had of exposing him to the police.

Winchester remembers seeing the headlines the day after Bruce’s parents were murdered. He pities Bruce, but he tells him not to worry. He’s here to finally put the whiner out of his misery. Winchester set up a complicated, unlikely to work Rube Goldberg device that will eventually crush Batman’s head with a hanging oil drum. “It’s nothing personal, you understand. I do this simply because I cannot allow you to prevent what must occur.”

26 hours from now, at the stroke of midnight, the devil is gonna come to give Whisper a relief from some 300-odd years of continued life! Peace and tranquility in Hell! Not a chance! That ain’t happening!

He produces that stranglin’ cord and talks some cockamamie ramblings about how it holds his soul. He never knew that someone was gonna come by the cathedral, snoop around and maybe find it. That was rude. He had to get it before someone else got it, and that was also an annoying inconvenience.

Wicker begins telling his tale of 300 years ago, back when he started his fucked up narcissistic cultish ways. When he realized the Devil kept his side of the bargain and three centuries of immortality his future, he decided he wanted to figure out how to cheat the devil! Hide aces up his sleeve, you might say.

So how did he cheat the Devil? Apparently by dragging a whole bunch of plague-ridden dead bodies over to England and then spending the first 100 years there for fun. He “perfected his architectural talents”. He couldn’t build a cathedral in England, certainly not! That’s preposterous! So he traveled to Gotham, the second-best choice. He dragged the dead bodies with him that were still not a pile of non-plague-ridden skeleton bones for some reason.

Here’s the reason: He used the plague to make a DEADLY ELIXIR. It’s like a Covid thing that spreads through the air undetected, killing Herman Cain. The Gotham Cathedral was finished in 1790, right after George Washington became the First Emperor of America Town. “I’d designed the architecture of the building so that it would act as a ‘soul-trap’ such as those used by the American Indians. A soul-trap on a massive scale. An occult geometry towards which the souls of eight million dead would be drawn like bees to honey.”

This sounds absolutely convoluted and dumb, doesn’t it? What the fuck is this guy even talking about right now? Where’s Alfred? I wanna hear from Alfred.

“I hid my own soul cord in the foundations of the cathedral, safe from Satan’s power. All that remained was to prepare the magical architecture of the cathedral.” OK, Harry Potter. Do some alohomoras or something. Oh wait, no, the spilling of innocent children’s blood. That’s what does it, man. It’s all starting to come together.

The plague will be unleashed when the bell tolls for thee. 26 hours. All of Gotham will die, their souls will be trapped in the cathedral, and Wicker will offer these souls to the devil in lieu of his own. Cheating the devil! Ace up the sleeve!

He walks away, leaving Batman strapped in a provocative pose on the rolling conveyor. He looks sad.

Final Thoughts

HOW’S DANG OL’ BATMAN GONNA DANG OL’ GET OUT OF THIS ONE?

They really threw a lot at you here at the end. It’s not enough that some mysterious guy who literally can’t die has been picking off the crime bosses one by one, he needs to unleash a plague upon the city as well.

I am impressed with the storytelling, though. It’s not often that these comics leave clues early and tie it together later. Usually they’re like DICK GRAYSON’S AT THE CIRCUS AND PEOPLE WANT TO KILL HIM AT THE CIRCUS or RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS ARE DOING NOTHING FOR SEVEN ISSUES. At least this one has some thought put into it!

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