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Batman Eternal #3
Written by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV
Illustrated by Jason Fabok
On the Cover: Jason Fabok draws the Batmobile narrowly escaping an explosion, despite the issue featuring very little Batmobile and no explosions.
How is the story progressing?: This issue is divided into three main stories: what is happening at Gotham Police HQ, Batman inquiring about Falcone, and Stephanie Brown’s introduction.
The GCPD story is the one that feels the least fresh, at least in terms of what we’ve seen in the first three issues. Gotham is practically synonymous with corruption, so seeing the Mayor, the acting police commissioner, and a crime boss in cahoots isn’t exactly a stunning revelation. This part of the story is chock full of tropes you can find in any dime-store police story: the idealistic new kid, the sarcastic/jaded/gruff detective who still cares deep down, the “keep quiet and collect your hand outs” company man, etc.
The scene between Batman and the Penguin is the most interesting in the book, because of the relationship the two men share in the scene. Sure, Batman gets in the room by throwing a thug through the door, and yes, he chokeslams Cobblepot through a table, but there is an unspoken understanding between the two. Batman is coming to him for information, and his last line to the Penguin is telling: “If I find out that you’re working together…” – it is almost as if Batman would be disappointed in the Penguin for working with Falcone. This dynamic has been slightly teased before between the characters, but this seems to be an amped up version of their understanding that the other is just “doing their job.”
Last week, Vince very ably brought us all up to speed on Spoiler, aka Stephanie Brown, and here we get to see her for the first (chronological) appearance. She falls into the Jason Bard category of “talking to moms on cell phones about the relative dangers of Gotham” in their New 52 debut, and then stumbles upon her father’s super villain meeting. As Vince noted, she appears to be a very similar character to what she was pre-“Flashpoint,” with a very similar origin and father. This was all handled well, and set up an interesting dynamic for the character going forward.
New 52 Debuts: Meeting with their pals Signalman and Firefly, Lock-Up and Cluemaster make their New 52 debuts here. Cluemaster, aka Arthur Brown, is a villain who, unsurprisingly, leaves clues to tease authorities to solve his crimes. He was always a pretty minor villain until his daughter burst onto the scene, and here appears to be part of a particularly low-rent gang.
Lock-Up is, like Harley Quinn, a character that debuted on Batman: The Animated Series before jumping over to the comics. Lock-Up is a sadistic security expert who is obsessed with law and order, making him one of the many antagonists who is unaware of his villainy. Perhaps his most important, continuity wise, appearance is in “Infinite Crisis,” where the Society of Supervillains uses his knowledge to break metas out of prison, which sets up the big finale battle of that book.
“Batman Eternal” Debuts: Lots of characters join this book for the first time, from Mayor Hady and the aforementioned Stephanie Brown, to the Penguin and his merry band of misfit villains (Imperceptible Man, Mr. Mosaic, Hypnotic and Mr. Combustible), and the final two revealed members of Cluemaster’s gang, Signalman and Firefly.
Visuals: This is the last of the Jason Fabok-illustrated issues for a few months, and his run of consistently good issues continues. His Bat-characters all look like slightly more attractive versions of the characters you know and love, and that contributes to the cinematic feeling he gives the book: everyone’s movie-star handsome.
Continued belowThis issue continues to reinforce the Bard/Gordon parallels – here, they even appear to be mirror images of each other:
Fabok’s detail-heavy style is surprisingly adaptable, and doesn’t fall into many of the same traps many prior Bat-artists fall into. I do wish that the coloring was more dynamic and inspired, as its somewhat drab palette doesn’t do too much for me.
Overall, Fabok’s work is solid and works well for this book, which sprawls all over the Bat-verse. His instincts for Gotham seem spot on, and while his work can look slightly generic at times, the quality picks back up without fail, keeping the pages satisfying, even if they aren’t as dynamic or stylized as some of the other artists on this book.
Three Big Questions:
1. Who is in the shadows? Cluemaster and co. are getting instructions from someone standing off in the shadows of the Brown house. It appears unlikely that this is Falcon or Penguin – the two big crime bosses we’ve already met in these pages. Any guesses?
2. What’s on the white board? DC loves nothing more than a chalk/white board with clues/hints all over it. What is featured on this board?
The cold cases seem to be clues at future plotpoints within “Eternal,” don’t they? We know Talon will be showing up, and I can’t imagine the “ultimate” Batman story without a Joker appearance.
This little bit ties the series into the aftermath of “Forever Evil” and sets up the status quo for “Grayson.”
Icarus/Elena Aguila are both elements of the new Francis Manapul/Brian Buccelatto “Detective Comics” run.
Charise Carnes was a big mystery to me, until our intrepid commenter Keith Justin Dooley pointed out that it was “Charise Cames,” the Batgirl villain Nightfall. Thanks Keith!
3. Are they this hard up for covers already?
This cover screams “whatever we originally had Fabok do didn’t work.” One of the best parts about DC’s first weekly series, “52,” was the iconic work done on the covers by J.G. Jones. Fabok’s covers for #1, 2 and 4 are all very much in line with what I would have expected for this series. But this cover seems like a rush job or, perhaps, a piece of unused art from Fabok’s tenure on “Detective Comics.” This image has absolutely nothing to do with what is inside the book, which begs the question: if they can’t make the first 3 covers all great, how bad will covers #39 and 47 look?
Final Verdict: 6.5 – This feels like the passing chord between the verse and the chorus of a song – it isn’t unpleasant, but isn’t anything to write home about either.
Batman Eternal #4
Written by John Layman
Illustrated by Dustin Nguyen
On the Cover: This is Fabok at his most Jim Lee-inspired, showing a mid-air confrontation between Batman and Batgirl.
How is the story progressing?: This issue is really all about parents and their children (both genetically and metaphorically), and how the sins of the father can shape, specifically, the daughter.
The main story is all about Barbara Gordon, and how she’s dealing with her father being on trial: poorly. She can’t handle it, and is taking it out on any thug that gets in her way. She, even more than Jim himself, believes him innocent, and isn’t dealing well with the (more) corrupt Gotham.
Across town, Stephanie Brown is trying to come to grips with her dad being a supervillain, and turns to the wrong person – her mother, who it turns out is aware of, and complicit with, her ex-husband’s criminality.
Extending the metaphor further, we see how the “Godfather” Falcone deals with those who would call him that, we see Bard as the moral child of Gordon, and we have a confrontation about a parent/child relationship in the space where a grown man dresses as a bat because his father once did.
Continued below“Daddy Issues” really could have been the name of this installment.
New 52 Debuts: As far as I could tell, just about everyone in this issue has appeared before, somewhere, since “Flashpoint,” or, in the case of Leo from the final page, are an entirely new creation.
“Batman Eternal” Debuts: This issue features a whole slew of minor Bat-villains and supporting characters popping up (mostly in name only), especially in the Blackgate finale: The Wrath, Agatha Zorbatos, Emperor Penguin, and Amygdala all pop up, and show that the Eternal crew is pulling from the deep vaults of Bat characters, but also that they are fine with taking ideas that aren’t theirs and incorporating them into their story. Zorbatos is a Peter Tomasi creation, and seeing her inclusion is a nice tip of the hat to the other folks in the Bat-office.
Visuals: This issue is illustrated by Dustin Nguyen, and the change in artist totally shifts the tone of the book. Gone are the cinema stars of Fabok’s pages, and in are the animation-inspired, highly expressive characters that Nguyen does so well. His Bullock looks about 400x worse than Fabok’s did, but it all rings true.
Perhaps the biggest visual difference in the book is the coloring – #3, colored by Brad Anderson, had the same desaturated house style that so many DC books subscribe to nowadays. #4, colored by John Kalisz, is much more vibrant looking book, while still retaining the shadow-heavy look that defines the Bat-books. Between Nguyen’s pencils, Kalisz’s colors, and the inks by Nguyen’s frequent collaborator Derek Fridolfs, this issue’s art makes another somewhat slight issue, storywise, really shine.
While I think Fabok’s art is a good fit for this series, Nguyen’s skills as a storyteller are unparalleled. This issue, more than the first three, has a range of emotion and a diversity of art sorely missing from the first three.
Three Big Questions:
1. Does DC think we don’t know that Barbara Gordon is Batgirl?
In the first act of this issue, when encountering her on the rooftop, Batman calls her “Batgirl” 4 times, even after she talks about “her dad.” Sure, he shouldn’t be calling him Bruce, or referring to herself in the third person (“Babs is mad!”), but the weird insistence of him calling her by her superhero code name, instead of just, you know, talking to her, feels really weird to me.
But that got me thinking – does DC think that they are getting new, non-Bat fan, readers to this series or, perhaps, readers who had fallen off with the New 52, and therefore had to let people know who is under the Batgirl cowl? This strikes me as silly thinking – is a new fan, with almost no Bat-history, going to dive into a weekly comic?
2. How much is Catwoman going to be a part of the book?
Falcone makes it clear that he is back in Gotham, in part, for revenge on Catwoman (the artist behind his scar). This will extend the cast even more so, and continue to make the book very female-heavy on the cast, something that is a nice change from the usually male-dominated event books.
Advance solicits show us that Catwoman comes back in a month or so, but is she going to be a major player in the series? If Falcone is goign to remain the big bad of the book, then I would say she’s probably in the top supporting cast, but I had a feeling that Falcone is a red-herring. We’ll see.
3. Is Jim going to spend time with his son?
The last panel of the book shows Jim Gordon, bespectacled, in the shadows, looking an awful lot like James, Jr. Couple that with the cover to #13, and we may have the return of the star of Scott Snyder’s finest hour as a Bat-writer.
Final Verdict: 7.9 – An improved effort, but even a more unique visual palette and a new voice behind the script can’t help the issue feel a little thin on content
The Series So Far: 6.6 – Each issue has had its good and bad moments, but thus far, after a first issue full of action, the last three issues have been spent, more or less, reacting to the two big reveals from #1.
