Batman #44
I do my best to avoid reviews of comics that I am also reviewing lest they prejudice my own opinions. That being said, sometimes it hard to avoid the digital leviathan that is the internet.
I had read that issue #44 of Batman was a rewind of sorts that take a break from the lost Bruce Wayne and Mr. Bloom story line.
That's fine, I'm sure Snyder and DC want to prolong this particular script as Wayne adopts his new life outside the cowl and pursue the fate of Gotham as the Gordon Batman struggles to keep the city in one piece.
In doing so we make a brief return to the Bruce Wayne Batman as he gets embroiled in street level crime that leads him down a darker and larger path.
A good portion of the story involve the fate of one Peter Duggio.
Duggio is just a kid trying to make it right on the streets of Gotham that even that city has forgotten. That, my friends, is as about as low as even Gotham can go.
The internet was quick to point out the topical nature of a portion of this story and how it deals with "Black Lives Matter." Indeed, kudos should go out to Scott Snyder for including something so relevant that it sadly appears on almost a daily basis.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where violence is the first option and the police feel so besieged that they reflexively turn to the gun. It is left to the bereaved, media and the courts to sort things out.
Frankly, it is a sad epidemic mess.
Where Snyder goes wrong is his introduction of Mr. Bloom into the story.
As Snyder would have it, Bloom already exists in the Batman universe. He is not the Joker reincarnated (as I had predicted) but someone trying to make a name for himself as a low life peddler of some bizarre addictive chemical concoction.
This isn't strictly a ret-con but more a reverse introduction of a character that has always been in the Batman universe. It's just that we the readers never knew of him.
Sorry, but I find this annoying. I'd prefer Batman's world be expanded as we grow to know him and as time progresses. Not as part of a rewind. It just seems less inventive to me to insert parts to a mythology that we are already steeped in just to find out we don't know as much as we thought.
Our story takes a freakish turn when the afflicted Peter, in his zeal to escape the mean streets of Gotham, grows Bat-wings (ironic symbolism?) and finds himself nearly vaulted outside the city limits.
I thought it ludicrous.
Yes, I get it. He wanted to fly and he nearly made out of the hell that Gotham was to him.
But Bat-wings? That's a bit too on the nose.
Surely Snyder is showing us the new menace that is Mr. Bloom's concoction but the "re-invention timeline" and the wings threw me for a loop.
In the end Batman learned a hard lesson. He used this experience to connect with the forgotten youth of Gotham and it drew a through line between what happened here and the amnesiac Bruce Wayne working at the home for disadvantageous youth we saw in Batman #43. And, yes, that through line connect it all to Mr. Bloom.
But, really, bat-wings?
Batman #45
As we continue our journey into the rediscovery of Batman I get the impression Scott Snyder wants us to see Batman as something elemental, something born of youth.
Of course, the foundation of what was to become Batman started with Bruce Wayne as a youth and the murder of his parents. But I think Snyder wants to change the perspective on this old tale and see Batman through a new lens.
Bruce Wayne is an adult now with his slate wiped clean. Yet he is constantly surrounded by youth and one could say he has a naivete unfettered by his tragic past.
It's as if Snyder wants to see what Batman would be like without his youth yet have the mantle of Batman forced upon him.
That should be interesting.
Our story returns to the present with the Jim Gordon Batman battling for his life. He is nearly consumed by flames and the message seems to be Batman is, or can be, forged by the elemental nature of fire or at least the flames of combat.
While Gordon is adept at getting himself in and out of trouble it is the remotely controlled empty suit that comes to his rescue. Here Snyder may be saying the new Batman may be as much suit as the man inside it. (See my examination of the mind of Batman and his costume at the link.)
Gordon narrowly escapes death with the help of Daryl and our tale reverts back to Bruce Wayne.
Has Batman become a dinosaur? A thing of the distant past? Extinct? The amnesiac Bruce Wayne ponders the past he knows little of. Again, Snyder positions Wayne as someone looking at himself from the outside instead of within.
He knows nothing of Batman but he is aware of attack on Gotham by the Joker and the detritus left behind. Wayne looks upon the artifacts as curiosities and is at first dismissive of them.
What were once trophies are now some much garbage. Relics of a bygone era with little meaning aside from their obvious extinct nature.
However, the reach of evil is never too far away in Gotham.
As Wayne ponders the meaning of his existence his stand-in, Jim Gordon, is getting a rude lesson into the elemental nature of what it is to be Batman.
Quite literally.
The movers and shakers pf Gotham know their city is in constant danger but sadly can't see the forest for the trees.
In their quest to find the ultimate protector for Gotham they've broken down what it is to be Batman to the minutest detail.
They are so convinced of their findings they can't see that Batman is much greater than the some of his parts even at the atomic level they have distilled him down to.
As a counterpoint, Wayne believes Gotham can be saved by serving its youth.
He's taken the remnants of the battlefield and turned them into object of amusement. Why dwell on the past and be consumed by it when you can transform it into something much more benign and less threatening?
Because, as I said, evil is never that far away in Gotham.
As Gotham congratulates itself in it's reinvention of Batman, Mr. Bloom makes his grand and murderous entry.
Gotham is fortunate Gordon has a much better understanding of what it is to be Batman than the arrogant city he serves.
Batman is not just an empty suit. Nor is he something that can be reinvented by by people on the outside trying to look in.
Snyder's lens wants to discover Batman in a new way. There is something elemental about Batman. But it is organic, something found within, not recreated from without.
Wayne will have to discover what it is to be Batman again and he'll have to do it without the benefit of his youth. Instead, he'll have to see it through the eyes of the children he's surrounded himself with. Snyder's exploration into what it is to be Batman is an interesting tact.
Batman #46 should be very compelling indeed.
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