Four grueling hours of all out war had passed, and the Batman could barely stand, his bruises had bruises, and blood gushed from his eyes. The Batman was absolutely confounded. He had never faced opponents so brutally repetitive and without motive. These three guys made The Joker seem sane.

Four hours ago, The Batman was responding to reports of suspicious hoodlums roaming through Crime Alley. He sat atop a grim stone gargoyle waiting, listening. It was difficult to differentiate the gargoyle’s scowl from the Batman’s. After all, crime fighting and statue-like stillness are serious business and requires intense brooding.

Within minutes, he spotted an oily thug in a Zoot suit. His walk was best described as a wacky half-limp, half-shuffle, accompanied with an odd rhythmic slurp. As the Batman leapt, descending down with the help of the Bat-grapple hook®, he got a closer look at the peculiar man. He could not help but feel pity on the ugliest man he’d ever laid eyes on. Little did he realize that this pathetic man went by a name equally pathetic, Shemp.

The Batman kept a safe distance while greeting him with his patented gruff voice, “What are you doing in my city?”

Shemp could not speak. Maybe it was his superstitious fear that paralyzed his vocal chords; maybe it was the fear trickling down his leg; maybe he wasn’t comfortable with the sound of his voice. So instead, he responded by bobbing his head up and down, blinking his eyes madly, as if suffering a stroke. Accepting this as not an answer, The Batman punched him squarely in the face.

The sound of fist meeting face made an odd sound, an exaggerated “boing”. The Dark Knight examined his fist, while Shemp wiped his face profusely as if rubbing the pain away.

Shemp claimed that he was nobody’s fool every chance he could, but the fact remained, he was everybody’s fool. Being a man of such muddled logic, he fled into the junkyard. Batman threw a Batarang®, missing him. Shemp took this opportunity to turn around and say, “Nyah, you missed me.” For good measure, he stuck his tongue out. On cue, the Batarang® struck him in the back of the head. PLONK! Shemp’s eyes crossed, his body swayed side to side, he dropped to his knees, and fell backwards. The impact shook the ground, jostling loose a rack of bowling balls above him. One by one, the balls fell on his slicked back hair, the musical tone of NBC® chimed accompanying each PLONK. As Shemp’s eyes closed, he smiled succumbing to unconsciousness, chirping birds flew around his head.

The Caped Detective rubbed his chin, “This is disturbing. Too cartoonish. What have I stepped into?” Before he could finish his thought aloud, someone tugged on his cape. “Say, you can’t do that!” The Batman turned around to face the second ugliest man he’d ever seen, which is saying a lot considering his gallery of villains, Man-Bat®, Clayface® and Two-Face®.

His new assailant had two large brown Brillo Pads® on either side of his glistening baldness. He had a dangling chunk of flesh in the center of his face, probably his nose, misshapen from either cocaine abuse or constant molestation from tugging, perhaps both. On closer inspection, there were scars and markings inside his nostrils. It looked like they may have come from a pair of pliers.

It was Larry Fine. A couple of things you need to know about him. He was headstrong and stupid. Combining these two traits, Larry lowered his head and attempted to ram the Batman with a running start. Instinctively, the Batman sidestepped the attack with great ease. It was apparent that Larry was about to take a nasty spill, so the Caped Crusader tried to catch him, but only grasped a handful of kinky hair. It sounded like fifty pieces of Velcro® being yanked at the same time as it ripped out of his head. As Larry dived towards a junk heap of a car, the Batman found himself with a wad of curly schmutz. It was gross. Meanwhile, gravity did its thing and Larry met the chirping birds beside the still unconscious Shemp. Lo and behold, three bowling balls fell on Larry’s head. Plonk. Plonk. Crack.

The Batman instinctively tensed as he heard fast approaching footsteps. It was Moe, and he was not happy, which is the nice way of saying he was pissed.