artist: Patrick Gleason
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| via Inside Pulse |
It's great fun, Pete Tomasi tackling the Justice League, which is depicted in its current incarnation (which is why I chose to represent the issue with that particular image, featuring post-Forever Evil members Lex Luthor and Captain Cold, their exchange in that final panel a brilliant encapsulation of the new dynamic) as the big Batman and Robin event continues.
So often we're told that Batman has ways to defeat everyone, even his best and most powerful allies. Most often, however, verbally he's reserved. This issue is all about confrontation, however, a war of words. Even when Superman shows up, Batman still has his way with the situation, acting contrite, conciliatory, and...then the final image leaves that whole conversation spun around. Scott Snyder took such pains in "Death of the Family" to shatter the Bat-family trust, which was immediately turned around in the "Requiem" issues following Damian's death. Lately I've been reading gushing recaps of Snyder's "Zero Year" arc, and everyone still seems pretty convinced that the top-selling Batman is the best Dark Knight comic being published at the moment, an instant classic. But for me, Batman and Robin is the undisputed best and best-argument-for-instant-classic series in the family.
Is it a gimmick book? It's a team-up book, now more than ever, but unlike most team-up books Batman doesn't necessarily actually team up with his guest-stars, as exemplified all over the place in the past year. These are stories Tomasi gets to tell as he explores a more intimate look at Batman and how he relates to the world around him. If he's still grieving the death of his son and still trying to find a way to get over it, whatever that happens to mean, I applaud the effort. Too often, comics can be like a lot of television, episodic, one story completely unrelated to the next. For a character like Batman, who's been around for three quarters of a century, the temptation is great to keep the storytelling like that, so as to not damage the franchise, tie it down with developments that can't easily be disentangled without being outright ignored. And yet, what Tomasi is doing here has its roots in Batman's own history, following the second Robin, Jason Todd's death and eventual rise of the third, Tim Drake (as explored in the "A Lonely Place of Dying" arc), except this time, Batman is being pushed further and further past his comfort zone, into the very territory that until now was really only the subject of fanboy fever dreams. Now it's real. And it's better than you ever imagined.
Like Tomasi, Gleason plays by his own rules. He can play larger-than-life (his Kalibak) or a low-key Bruce Wayne in a cemetary, a Superman cape that dangles loosely around the neck, a montage of iconic images featuring Batman's colleagues forging the so-called Hellbat armor, Frankenstein in a minimal appearance speaking a thousand words with three while walking away from the reader.
DC is ramping up the Fourth World once again across numerous titles. It seems presumptuous for Batman to declare war on Darkseid when this could provoke the annihilation of Earth, but Tomasi captures his reasoning perfectly. How it all plays out could tie in with what happens elsewhere. Then again maybe not. It's doesn't matter.
It's good stuff.
Is it a gimmick book? It's a team-up book, now more than ever, but unlike most team-up books Batman doesn't necessarily actually team up with his guest-stars, as exemplified all over the place in the past year. These are stories Tomasi gets to tell as he explores a more intimate look at Batman and how he relates to the world around him. If he's still grieving the death of his son and still trying to find a way to get over it, whatever that happens to mean, I applaud the effort. Too often, comics can be like a lot of television, episodic, one story completely unrelated to the next. For a character like Batman, who's been around for three quarters of a century, the temptation is great to keep the storytelling like that, so as to not damage the franchise, tie it down with developments that can't easily be disentangled without being outright ignored. And yet, what Tomasi is doing here has its roots in Batman's own history, following the second Robin, Jason Todd's death and eventual rise of the third, Tim Drake (as explored in the "A Lonely Place of Dying" arc), except this time, Batman is being pushed further and further past his comfort zone, into the very territory that until now was really only the subject of fanboy fever dreams. Now it's real. And it's better than you ever imagined.
Like Tomasi, Gleason plays by his own rules. He can play larger-than-life (his Kalibak) or a low-key Bruce Wayne in a cemetary, a Superman cape that dangles loosely around the neck, a montage of iconic images featuring Batman's colleagues forging the so-called Hellbat armor, Frankenstein in a minimal appearance speaking a thousand words with three while walking away from the reader.
DC is ramping up the Fourth World once again across numerous titles. It seems presumptuous for Batman to declare war on Darkseid when this could provoke the annihilation of Earth, but Tomasi captures his reasoning perfectly. How it all plays out could tie in with what happens elsewhere. Then again maybe not. It's doesn't matter.
It's good stuff.
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