Hey, the Bat Signal is Lit!

Yeah, it took me to Chapter 2 of Cat-Tales #68 to figure out I could FLASH A BAT SIGNAL to announce a new chapter.

It’s been a long time coming, but the Bat Signal is finally lit in Cat-Tales with Commissioner James Gordon standing there beside it.  It’s a big deal to Batman and Jim as much as it is to us readers, but unlike us – well unlike me who went and made a special graphic just to celebrate – they’re not going to spend a lot of time on it.  Expect a small gift and a manly exchange of grunts, then on to the business of the night.  More than a few plot points were dropped in the last chapter, one was bald.

For those who’ve forgotten, Lex Luthor was President when Cat-Tales began, just as he was in DC Comics.  His resignation as reported in Strange Bedfellows and credible papers like Gotham Times didn’t quite jibe with the Gotham Post’s more sensational coverage.  What both accounts agree on, however, is that after Luthor was elected, he turned LexCorp over to Talia Head (aka Talia al Ghul) to run in his stead, which ended in the end of LexCorp.

You can’t keep a Luthor down for long, however, and when magic failed him in String Theory he set about building his empire – both financial and criminal – the old-fashioned way.  The way he’d done it before.  The way that worked the first time.

In War of the Poses, he was plotting against the League again with all the ingenuity and scientific knowledge we’ve come to expect from a Luthor, but he was reduced to using chartered planes, rented limos, and a moth-balled government installation as a base rather than his former Lex-Branded Everything.  By Comedy of Errors, Superman reported that Luthor’s resources were back to  pre-Headache levels, lacking only the trappings.  There was no longer a corporate HQ that was the iconic silhouette on the Metropolis skyline.  There wasn’t a fleet of LexCorp-manufactured jets, and so on.  Clark said it like it was unimportant, as the lack of ‘trappings’ would be to him.  To Lex, however, we knew he would not be content until he has his status back as well as the money that buys it and the power it represents.

Which brings us to NMK Inc.  Chapter 2: Positive Carry