Forever Evil Aftermath: Batman vs. Bane (DC)

writer: Peter J. Tomasi
artist: Scott Eaton

via DC Infinite

Forever Evil was an event that got a lot of bad press on the Internet, criticized for featuring a bunch of villains.  (I'm going to start calling this Internet Logic.)  I didn't check in until the end, but I never heard or saw anything that rubbed me the wrong way.

Along with every crossover event these days, not only were there tie-ins with ongoing series, but special mini-series that told side stories.  Among them was Forever Evil: Arkham War.  If you want to know where Batman vs. Bane begins, that's it.  I don't particularly care about the context myself.  The whole thing seems to be spelled out well enough here.

Basically, what you need to know is: Forever Evil gave DC an excuse to insert the Bane you'll find in The Dark Knight Rises into comics.  That Bane isn't so different from the one who was in comics twenty years ago, but somewhere along the way, it became easier to think of him only (and this is pretty ironic) as the parody who appeared in Batman & Robin, the steroids Venom freak who lacked any discernible subtlety.

As you'll notice in the panel above, this Bane comes equipped with the fur-collared coat he wore in the movie.  He strikes the same hands-clasping-on-coat pose, too.  When Batman returns, they have a good rumble, one that more easily evokes the one Jean-Paul Valley had with Bane in Batman #500 than the one Bruce Wayne had in #497 (the one that resembles the panel above).

Most of the reason I picked this up, though, doesn't really have to do with Forever Evil, but the belief and hope that Peter Tomasi would do Bane justice.  This is all but a Batman and Robin one-shot (it'll be interesting to see if it's collected as such).  Being a big fan of that series and Tomasi's excellent work therein (usually in conjunction with artist Patrick Gleason), I hoped for something spectacular.  It isn't, exactly, and so it probably does owe more to being a Forever Evil tie-in than a Batman and Robin one-shot.  Although it gives me a little hope that eventually Tomasi will do a Bane arc in the latter.  

And that, I hope all the more, will be awesome.