Step right up, Barbara Gordon. Can you be the one to get through to the grumpiest Batman we’ve seen in a while? This isn’t going to go well for her, is it?
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Illustrated by Cliff RichardsWhat deal would you make to bring someone back from the dead?
And in this issue, it’s Batman vs. Batgirl!
In the wake of Damian’s death a few months back, Batman is still out busting heads around Gotham while the rest of the Bat Family takes turns trying to reach him. This time it’s Batgirl, who catches up with him in the middle of a drug bust. She sees Batman as being colder than ever – someone who strikes just as much fear into her as he does into the petty criminals of Gotham City. Batgirl is a haunted figure herself, for a variety of reasons, but most recently for what she allowed to happen to her brother James (if you’re not reading “Batgirl”, she catches you up here with a lengthy narration). With a mother that left her, a brother who’s a little touched in the head, and a father who constantly puts his life on the line for Gotham and his family, Barbara has been through plenty of tragedy – never mind the paralyzation act from the Joker, which still very much hangs over her head at almost all times.
The emotional connection between Batman and Batgirl is a very strong one, but Batman is too far gone for it to matter much. In “Batman and Batgirl” #21, there lies a Batman character that actually borders on unpleasant to read. That’s not entirely a negative criticism – perhaps he should be extremely unpleasant at this point. Perhaps that’s the only way to keep this story from feeling hammy. Batman has always been the gruff avenger. Short of his no-kill policy, he has no love for the criminal kind. But he has always doled out tough love to his teammates and innocent bystanders. Even Harvey Bullock has never been treated the way that he’s treated by Batman within these pages. It’s a little alarming, in most of the ways that it should be, but at the same time there is the lingering feeling that we’ve seen this all before.
Comics are cyclical. We all know that by this point. And for many, ‘The New 52’ will be the first time they’ve ever read a Batman comic, so they certainly haven’t seen him deal with tragedy before. So, let’s pretend it is your first “Batman blames himself” tale. This storyline will work okay, save for the fact that this is all being a little stretched out over many months. As Batman goes through therapy with every member of the high-selling Bat-related titles, it can’t help but seem to be formulaic in that way. Batman is running through the 5 stages of grief, but he’s also running down the list of every character that has fought alongside him. It’s a formula that some might be attracted to, but it leaves room for very little in the way of surprise, flexibility, or brevity – things that another “angry Batman” story would benefit from. On the positive side, his Barbara has very much the same voice as she does over in Gail Simone’s book. She goes over her own scars before attempting to understand Batman’s, which was a nice way to frame things. Also, Batman as an unpleasant nightmare of a man is something that we don’t get very often and the fact that it was so uncomfortable says something about how much gusto Tomasi went for with it. Still, it goes a little far in trying to get across just how out-of-sorts he is. At a certain point, we get it. Beyond that, the way that Barbara actually approaches Batman to try and help him deal with what he’s going through doesn’t feel quite right. It’s obvious that Barbara doesn’t know exactly what Bruce needs to hear and that Bruce isn’t listening anyway. There’s not much sense that any of the characters learned anything or changed at all over the course of the issue, which is something that these meet-ups with the Bat Family seem like they should be doing.
Continued belowPatrick Gleason is the regular penciller on “Batman and Robin.” He took this issue off, but he deserves to be mentioned because his work on the title has been severely underrated. Gleason plays with symbolism, themes, and motifs in his work and it always enhances the story being told through the script. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s like a sledgehammer to the forehead, but it’s always beautiful. Cliff Richards, on the other hand, is one of DC’s most called-upon fill-in artists. He’s doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary here or make much of an attempt to cull much symbolism out of the script. He’s a man who does clean, attractive-looking work with a good handle on action and sequential storytelling, but does not go for the iconic panels and recurring motifs that Gleason goes for in his every issue.
Batman is supposed to be in “the bargaining” phase, but it kind of feels like he’s still just totally lost in the weeds (woods?) at this point. We’re not seeing much of a growth trajectory for our characters here. Bouncing Batman off of the Bat Family could have shown a variety of sides to the character of Batman and his colleagues, but everyone is out of sync in a way that makes the exercise feel fruitless. The fill-in art makes the book feel a little less special, because Gleason has been known to spin emotional gold with these characters. Then again, it might be prudent to just wait it out. Where Batman goes from here will be much more interesting than where he is now, which is in a book that’s in something of a holding pattern.
Final Verdict: 5.7 – Browse. The post-Damian therapy stuff isn’t quite hitting its mark.
