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Batman Eternal #17-19
Written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes, John Layman, and Tim Seeley
Illustrated by Dustin Nguyen (#17), Andy Clarke (#18), and Emanuel Simeoni (#19)(“Batman Eternal” #17)
Years ago, Gotham City faced a power Batman could barely overcome…Now, deep beneath Arkham Asylum, he will rise again, and the city will know his wrath…(“Batman Eternal” #18)
Batgirl, Batwoman and Jason Todd race to find evidence that may save Commissioner Gordon!(“Batman Eternal” #19)
Jason Bard and Batman are forced to help Killer Croc when his followers are attacked by demonic monsters from The Black Maze!
Notes, news, and debuts:
In issue #17, we finally got to see Deacon Blackfire in the flesh, as we remember him from “Batman: The Cult”, George Carlin (an ironic comparison, considering the personalities) ponytail and all. This makes for not only his first appearance in “Batman Eternal”, but in all of ‘The New 52’. It’s worth noting that this appearance is a flashback to the events of “The Cult” themselves, albeit they play out slightly different, with an entirely new script – as is often the case with reinterpretations or flashbacks in comics. They made Batman a little tougher and resistant when compared to what actually played out in “The Cult”, which is a little disappointing.
In issue #18, we get the long-teased first “Batman Eternal” appearance of Killer Croc, out to exact a little punishment on the bat.
Issue #19 shows Batgirl attacking Red Hood under the influence of a knockoff of Mad Hatter’s mind control device. Batgirl sees Jason Todd as The Joker. It’s not exactly a super hidden easter egg or anything, but it is pretty clever and would make sense that Barbara sees her worst enemy and that Todd would be the subject of it, given The Joker’s own past as the Red Hood and the murderous connection between the two of them as well.
Am I the only one who pictured the scene of Dark Helmet playing with his Space Balls action figures when they showed Dr. Falsario and his Batgirl & Red Hood toys? I am? Okay, moving on then.
And for those of you that don’t speak a little Spanish or didn’t feel like using Google: The company named “Mais Divertido Toys” translates to “More Fun Toys”
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t give Dustin Nguyen major props for the “Deacon Blackfire-as-Goro-from-Mortal-Kombat” design. Attaching Blackfire to Maxie Zeus was a stroke of genius.
Five Eternal Questions:
1. Who will be the one to break the bat?
Major villains like Carmine Falcone, The Penguin, and the long teased Deacon Blackfire have shown up to this point. Some, like Bane and The Joker still remain as name-dropped teasers still hanging out there somewhere, and we can’t be sure when or if they’ll even show up. The writers have even introduced a new villain character or two to the proceedings. So I can’t help but ask: just who is going to be the one to break the bat? We saw Bruce Wayne strung up on a broken bat signal in the very first issue of “Batman Eternal”, but how does it happen?
My money remains of Deacon Blackfire, just because he’s such a historically great villain for Batman despite having only been used as a true villain in one story in Batman’s history. He’s broken Batman before and his return has been built up with such ceremony that I have to think he’ll be a major player in Batman’s downfall again.
2. Ancient aliens?
Batman makes an overly specific point to note that the creatures that are flying around and kidnapping people are not netherworld beings from beyond the grave or anything traditionally “supernatural.” Instead, he specifically refers to them as aliens or “extra-dimensional beings.” Does this mean that they’re from one of the other “DC Earths”? What constitutes a “dimension” versus an Earth, because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard seen those terms used interchangeably at times.
Continued below
But beyond that, calling them aliens kind of flies in the face of the idea that they might be coming from or connected to Deacon Blackfire’s return. I suppose they could still be summoned by Blackfire and his followers, but by directly denying that they’re supernatural, I feel as though the writers are trying to suggest that they don’t come from whatever is going on with the cult activity below Arkham. So what are they and where are they coming from?
3. What’s the deal with Sergei?
“Batman” #28 revealed Harper Row as “Bluebird”, Batman’s latest non-Robin sidekick. We’re starting to see the beginnings of her training with Sergei here in “Batman Eternal” #19. We know that Bruce underwent this training, and it’s implied that the Robins did, as well. It’s only fitting that Harper Row, who already has a penchant for tech, gets the same treatment.
But that still leaves the fact that his tech is floating around Gotham, wreaking havoc. Red Robin doesn’t trust him, but I think we can. It doesn’t make narrative sense to make Sergei into such a major enemy at the same time that he trains our heroes to do their job. So who stole Sergei’s technology from all the way in Japan to Gotham? Is it the same person who commissioned the Dr. Falsario?
Better yet, could it be someone that Sergei himself has trained?
4. Where is Stephanie Brown?
The rest of the stories in “Batman Eternal” are starting to align or at least end up in the same neighborhood a little bit. All of them except for that of Stephanie Brown. We haven’t seen her in several issues and I’m still not sure how Steph versus her father (Calculator) is going to intersect with what’s going on now. In another nod to “Batman” #28, we saw that she and Catwoman will be major players in the battle for Gotham City from the prelude to “Eternal” in “Batman” #28, but how and why?
5. Why go to Rio De Janeiro for your mind control tech?
You’re telling me that the only place that the person who set up Gordon could find something similar to the Mad Hatter’s tech was in another hemisphere? Unless this was done for the express purpose of being more difficult to track (man, that backfired, didn’t it?), it’s strange that they went so deep to find what seems like fairly common technology in the DC Universe. Is there a connection to Brazil that runs deeper? Since they’re in a toy factory, could The Joker have anything to do with this? After all, I seem to remember the Joker hanging around toy factories in Batman: The Animated Series. I suppose we’ll see soon enough, as I can’t imagine we’ll be hanging around the toy factory for much longer. Whatever the case, the Brazil sequences have provided us with some comic relief and some really cool art, at times.
