My reading pile is a bit all over the map these days — some stuff from the current week, some stuff from previous weeks, and some back issues are all vying for my attention (whatever that’s worth). As things shook out, I ended up reading four new “number ones” the other day, and since we talk about “number ones” a hell of a lot in this column and I’m writing it at 5:30 A.M. and have precisely no mental energy to come up with a different theme, we’re gonna stick with what we know —

Batman : Curse Of The White Knight #1 is the start of what I believe to be a six-parter that sees Sean Murphy return to his “alternate universe” Gotham for another go-’round between Batman, a once-again-evil Joker and, I guess, Azrael, this time under the auspices of DC’s purportedly “prestigious” Black Label imprint. Murphy’s art…

Whatever happened to the real underground, man?

You know the one — it specialized in lurid, obsessively-detailed depictions of squalor, depravity, perversion, and societal collapse. It not only embraced decay, it reveled in it. And it was definitely more than a little bit dangerous — back when it was around.

But perhaps rumors of its demise have been exaggerated. Yeah, you’ve gotta look harder  to find it now that high-brow art comics have swallowed up all the territory that falls outside the mainstream, but a small number of die-hard cartoonists either didn’t get the memo, or tore it up and threw it in the trash where it fucking well belongs.

Which brings us to the Forsley brothers, Cameron and Christopher, and the eighth and most recent issue of their irregularly self-published series. Tat Rat.

Everything about this comic is just plain intense — hyper-detailed woodcut style illustrations, rich inky…