Written by: Ray Fawkes & Scott Snyder
Art by: Aco
Publisher: DC
This was a really weird issue to read. So weird, in fact, that it ended up being quite hard to actually get through while keeping all of my hair still on my hand. It’s so off kilter and odd, but not in a good or novel way. To put it simply, it’s just bad. And I hate saying that, because this book hasn’t really had a bad issue yet. Fortunately this isn’t part of the main book, and likely will have no importance or impact in terms of the main DC Universe, but that doesn’t change that this is not a good issue. Ray Fawkes takes Batman to some really odd places, both literally and figuratively, and the result was a book that was nearly impossible to salvage.
Five years in the future, Batman has had his back broken by some villain (likely Bane, if you read the Batgirl one shot), and he is no longer operating at maximum efficiency. He now requires a suit of armor to perform even the most basic of Batman functions. This issue follows him as he breaks into LexCorp in an attempt to fix his back. How? Well, the issue never really tells you until the very end, at which point the book throws readers for a loop that is just dumb. And I know that may seem like a simplistic way of expressing ideas, but that’s really the only way to explain this issue. It’s stupid, and it isn’t even stupid fun.
Sure, seeing Batman going through LexCorp’s multiple levels of security is really cool, but that’s just Batman being Batman. It’s not necessarily a setting we’ve seen him in before, true, so that at least gives the book one almost redeeming quality. It’s odd to see him doing the things he normally does in other Bat books, however, because his characterization is just so off. Maybe this is how Ray Fawkes interprets Batman, and it is different, just not in a good way.
The bottom line is that this is just a bad issue. It falls completely flat on all levels, and if it weren’t for some aesthetically cool scenes, there would be nothing good about this book at all. This isn’t something worth putting any money into at all, and yet it will likely sell over 100,000 copies this month. It really bothers me that I paid real life money for this issue, because it offers almost nothing good. But I’m starting to get into ranting, so I’ll just leave it at that.
