BIZARRO BREAK #11 – Batman 5.0

BIZARRO BREAK #11 (Batman 5.0)
“Batman: Upgrade 5.0”
By Dean Haglund & Peter Murrieta
Art by Don Simpson
Edits – Joey Cavalieri


It’s been a minute since our last #BizarroBreak… and, it looks like I was pretty well overdue (apologies in advance!).


These certainly aren’t the most popular or loved posts at this ol’ site, but… desperate times call for desperate measures.  This week, time’s sort of at a premium for your humble host… first, I’m a grad student, and… it’s finals week.  Second, it’s the last week of the month, which means I’m elbow-deep in another of my “creative endeavors”.

Baptisms by Baubier… and much, much more! From Claremont to Claremont: An X-Men Podcast, Episode 2… this Saturday!

I don’t usually “cross the streams”, so to speak between my audio and written works… but, heck… why not, right?  Some of the readers may know that I’ve just launched a pretty extensive podcast series called From Claremont to Claremont: An X-Men Podcast, which looks at all of the X-Men/X-Related books from the time Chris Claremont left the X-Books in 1991 to his return near a decade later.  We’re about to launch the second episode (hoping to have a semi-steady “first Saturday of the month” schedule)… and, there’s just a ton of material here.  The first episode was ten hours long… and, after well over a hundred hours of prep, scripting, and recording… it also took me about 13 hours to edit!  So… with all that having been said, time is a crunch this week… so, Bizarro it is!


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We open with Batman receiving a package from ACMESoft… which, doesn’t inspire a whole lot of hope, does it?  It’s his brand-new 5.0 Operating System, with which he’s certain to catch even more criminals.  And so, he sets to the arduous installation process.  He’s given the option to register the software, but decides he’ll come back to that later… only to learn that he can’t install the stuff until he actually does register it!  I… get that this is sort of “relatable”… buuuut, does that make it funny?

Anyhoo, Batman goes ahead and registers… and gets back to the installation.  Twenty-minutes later, after the OS finally makes itself at home on the Bat-Computer, our hero is informed that, before all changes can go into effect, he’s going to have to… restart his computer.  Again… we’ve all been there… but, is watching Batman suffer the same install-waiting-game something we need to see?

Of course, one difference between Batman and we common rabble is… his computer is a lot cooler than ours, and is actually hardwired to a nuclear reactor.  And so, when he restarts, it risks a whole lot more than “lost data”, if you know what I mean.  We jump ahead five hours… after Batman has dealt with a near-nuclear-meltdown.  He’s ready to try out his new OS, only to discover that… wonk, wonk, wonnnnnnk… it’s incompatible with just about everything he already had on his system!  All of the new features are either useless or wildly inconvenient.  Heyyy… that’s like a lot of updates we get in the real world… wakka wakka.

Batman has no choice but to engage with… something probably less pleasant than even the Joker: PC tech support.  Of course, this is a belabored process… and, again… we’ve all been there!  Gotham City literally burns while our hero sits on hold.

He finally gets a “live body” on the line… and their first question is: “Is your computer plugged in?”

This sends Batman into an absolute rage… and before we know it, he’s inside the ACMESoft offices beating the holy hell out of some poor tech support geek.  The End?

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I’ve often said that, when setting to write a story, if you start your pitch with “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?”, the answer is almost always “No.”


It feels like so many times I’ve been in the comic shop, and I’d overhear conversations that begin with that “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?”, and damn near every time it results in a cringe.  It’s always something that puts the heroes on a similar plane as we mere mortals, or struggling with the same mundanities we do… and, while it may be amusing to think about in a fleeting moment, it certainly isn’t something that should ever be committed to paper.


The one I recall hearing most often is “Wouldn’t it be funny if… Batman got stuck in traffic?”.  The answer, of course, is No… that wouldn’t “be funny”.  Sure, we can chuckle to ourselves about how bizarre something like that would be… but, you gotta ask yourself: “Then what?”  Sure, we had a giggle… but, then what?


I mean, surely I’m thinking too hard about this… I mean, this is a Bizarro humor story, and it isn’t really doing anybody any harm… but still, I just don’t find this to be near as clever nor humorous as I believe it’s intended to be.  The art’s nice!  I’ll give it that.