Tag: Black Mask

CHAPTER 40

April 25, 2023 / Dave Heilker

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.
To me being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.
Even before I first wandered into the cabstand for an after-school job I knew I wanted to be a part of them. It was there that I knew I belonged.
To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood full of nobodies. They weren’t like anybody else. They did whatever they wanted.
Henry hill • goodfellas

THE DEVIL YOU DON’T

Rose Botanichemical’s cosmetics division was staffed by overqualified chemists. In a just world, they would be developing pharmaceuticals full-time, but as it stood, their research and development was primarily centered around extracting and synthesizing research chemicals.

Dr. Harriet Isley had provided the tour of the new facilities, which included training facilities, an infirmary, a laboratory greenhouse, on-site office space, a warehouse (“It’s just for storage, and unfortunately, I don’t seem to have the key!”) and a new distillery.

CHAPTER 38

April 22, 2023 / Dave Heilker

“I paid Houdini three hundred dollars for that trick.“
Batman • Gotham by gaslight

Gotham By Gaslight

A ruptured spleen, a torn trapezius and a hairline fracture on his clavicle. If the man in the coffin mask had been a better shot either time, Johnny Gelio, commissioner of the Gotham City Police would’ve died. Not that the internal hemorrhaging didn’t give everyone pause.

Lex Luthor thought that the crime in Gotham City stood a very real risk of migrating across the bridge. Especially with Superman’s recent fracture. He folded the newspaper, bristling that one of his editors prematurely reported Gelio dead. Mercy had seen to it that the man was fired, but it was an annoyance to know that there were gaps in some of his most powerful tools of influence.

CHAPTER 37

April 20, 2023 / Dave Heilker

So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters’ daughters will adore us
And they’ll sing in grateful chorus
“Well done! Well done!
“Well done Sister Suffragette!“
Sister suffragette • mary poppins

Home Freakonomics

“Yiannis!” Lily nearly shouted at the Gotham City Police Commissioner, who was sitting across the table from her at their favorite table at The Emperor, a jazz club owned by Gotham’s most famous restaurateur, Oswald Cobblepot.

Johnny Gelio’s stupor faded in an instant, and his eyes focused on the beauty who looked as though she were annoyed and worried in equal measure.

CHAPTER 36

March 6, 2023 / Dave Heilker

“An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why “criminals” have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category “lawbreakers” is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another.”
Angela Y. Davis • Are Prisons Obsolete?

A Serious House on a Serious Earth

The Arkham Psychiatric Hospital was once a labyrinthine manse that would make all but the largest mansions in Silverwood Barrens look provincial by comparison. It was converted to a “State Lunatic Asylum” at the direction and expense of its heir, Amadeus Arkham as the first fires of the industrial revolution were kindled.

After Amadeus’ death, Arkham had languished as a barbaric house of catastrophically unethical experimentation until it was acquired by an pharmaceutical baron, Dr. Tanner Howinger, in whose white gloved hands it became feared as a fate more terrifying than any prison, housing more than 140 residents before arson granted reprieve to the patients and justice to Howinger in 1913.

CHAPTER 32

May 28, 2022 / Dave Heilker

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed society gives them drugs. In effect drugs are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
Theodore KACZYNSKI, UNABOMBER

New Jersey Estate Planning and Probate Continuing Legal Education

Over the past month, things had become suspiciously quiet in Gotham.

The mob had coalesced around someone, and Johnny Gelio, commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, had no leads. There weren’t enough hours in a day, and he found himself more irritable.

He wasn’t getting the sleep he needed. He’d fallen asleep at his desk last night, and almost missed this appointment with his physician. Sitting in the waiting room, he considered recent developments.

CHAPTER 31

May 19, 2022 / Dave Heilker

“This place has gone to hell in a ham sandwich since they eighty-sixed the dress code!”
Col. Hunter Gathers

The Invisible Hand Of Fate

A barrage of faster-than-a-blink punches to a heavy bag.

Fury.

A strand of pearls bouncing across the street and into the gutter.

Panic.

“You can stay over if you’d like, it’s jus–”

“No, no, Bruce! You’re going through so much. I totally, well I wish there was something else I could do. If you need to talk, will you call me?”

Mourning.

“It’s at least dislocated, maybe worse. Can you move it?”

“…”

“If you’re still insisting on not drinking, then you’d better bite down on this.”

Pain.