Monthly (Comic) Book Club - February - Batman: Road to No Man’s Land20368
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| Next up is a one-Shot, Batman: Huntress/Spoiler - Blunt Trauma. This one mostly takes place several hours after the earthquake after the Blackgate criminals, including Cluemaster and Ratcatcher, were able to escape the island via the temporary land bridge. They decide to head to the mall to grab civilian clothes but have some conflict over leadership and one of the heavies is knocked out by another at Cluemaster’s order. Caught in the quake, Stephanie Brown dons her Spoiler persona. Apparently she’s been trained by Robin in the past but had a falling out with Batman and was told to stop. Given the magnitude of the destruction, she decides to defy him, don her costume and help where she can. While saving a young child at the mall the platform she’s on crumbles and she falls and is saved by Huntress, who has just gotten out of the underground tunnels, still with her wounded arm. Elsewhere in the mall, one of Cluemaster’s goons is in a gunfight with the mall cops and Huntress and Spoiler intervene and stop him. Spoiler seems impressed by Huntress’s skill and notices she is more brutal and merciless with the thugs than Batman and Robin were. They stop another of the prisoners, either names Pyro or just called that because he was starting fires. All the Blackgate prisoners are either in prison outfits or civilian clothes so it’s hard to tell who’s who. Anyways, after knocking him out, Spoiler has to stop Huntress from leaving him to die in the fire he started. The two argue a little about giving the criminals what they deserve and Spoiler reflecting some of Batman’s philosophy. The guy the criminals left unconscious on the beach comes to and steals an SUV and goes off in search of Cluemaster et al. Meanwhile, Cluemaster and his group come across an abandoned bank and try to make off with the cash when Huntress and Spoiler catch up to them. Cluemaster sends their biggest guy to kill them. The two do eventually knock him out just as the goon from the beach bursts into the mall trying to run down Cluemaster. Spoiler reveals that her dad is Cluemaster and asks Huntress not to kill him but she tells Spoiler that criminals don’t get a break because they’re related to you, referring to her own criminal family. Cluemaster and the goon in the car catch uo to the two. Huntress jumps on the car leaving Spoiler with her father, who tries to tempt her with the money he’d stolen and how that would help her mother. Ratcatcher is able to intervene and he and Cluemaster try to escape. Huntress is able to divert the car, it’s not super clear exactly what happens, but she makes the car drive off the second floor of the mall and it explodes with Huntress barely slescaping. Spoiler is able to stop Cluemaster and Ratcatcher, knocking out Ratcatcher while her father pleads with her not to leave him to the Huntress who he knows will kill him and is making her way back to them, clearly ragged and run down after the recent fights. Spoiler lies to Huntress saying he got away and helps the clearly injured Huntress out of the mall as rescue personnel arrive. I’m not super familiar with Spoiler but the issue does a good job of establishing her inexperience and how she’s still deciding what kind of hero she wants to be. She’s been trained by Robin and clearly reflects some of his and Batman’s ideas on crimefighting. She also admires Huntress’ skill but is somewhat scared or put off by her brutality and mercilessness. |
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| Detective Comics 721 mostly deals with the continuing hunt for Quakemaster. Quakemaster still has the seismologist captured and she confirms that he had nothing to do with the quake and that he needs her to feed him terms that make his threats sound credible. Quakemaster responds that once he gets the ransom he’ll have no use for her. Afterwards Quakemaster hires some henchmen to “collect” the ransom from the GCPD. Batman and Nightwing have a brief run-in with Huntress when Batman stops her from killing some goons. They comment that she’s injured and tired and she says the earthquake has made her certain her approach is the right one, given all the death and destruction and there are still those trying to take advantage. Oracle informs Batman and Nightwing that her father had gone to city hall to speak to the mayor when she lost contact, not knowing that that had been taken hostage by Quakemaster’s goons. Batman, unable to spare himself from search and rescue sends Nightwing to investigate Gordon’s radio silence. Robin, Bullock & Montoya, and Oracle all following different leads that lead them to an old park. Their leads were never fully explained but Bullock & Montoya discover that the goons Batman captured shared a cell for a week with somebody and Robin picked up something in Quakemaster’s speech pattern. Once Robin, Bullock, and Montoya arrive they stop short as the detective that went ahead in Oracle’s place has been captured by Quakemaster’s goons |
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| Catwoman 57 begins with Catwoman on anti-looting patrol when she finds Poison Ivy at a WayneTech fertilizer plant. She overhears Ivy talking to some lab tech she’s enthralled. Ivy has designed a special fertilizer and through the fertilizer plant has had it delivered throughout the city. Cateoman watches as Ivy tastes the fertilizer before dropping some special seeds into it which wuickly grow into massive vines that begin strangling the tech. Catwoman tries to leave , figuring its not her problem but her conscience gets the better of her and she tries to save the tech but fails. Ivy sends her vines after Catwoman which makes things personal for her. She tracks Ivy to the GCPD where she’s planted another seed and begins to grow. Ivy tries entrancing Bullock (I guess setting this sometime before the DC 721 above) but Catwoman is able to snap him out of it. Ivy is able to escape while Catwoman and Bullock uproot the giant plant that sprouted. Using a fertilizer delivery schedule she pulled from the lab tech, Catwoman tracks ivy to Reservoir Park where the two get in a fight. During the scuffle, Ivy drops her vial of seeds but Catwoman catches the vial before it lands in the reservoir. Unfortunately for her, she’s hanging over the water and Ivy is threatening to cut her away. Having seen her previously taste the fertilizer, Catwoman figures its now in her system and smashes the vial of seeds in her face which immediately begin sprouting from inside her. The pain of the sprouting has Ivy babbling incoherently and Catwoman delivers her to the GCPD. This is the second higher-tier villain we’ve run into after Bane and like Bane, Ivy was captured at the end of the issue, taking them out of the action for the near future. The next issue is a one-shot set in Arkham Asylum so we’ll finally see what Gotham’s worst have been getting up to. |
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| Shadow of the Bat 77. It's apparently 'weeks' after the earthquake now. I was curious how long it takes to recover from something like that, so I looked at the wikipedia article for the San Francisco fire of 1906. It's regarding as the deadliest in US history; it was a 7.9 earthquake (estimated, as the scale didn't exist yet) that also caused a series of fires. Over 3000 people died and 80% of the city was destroyed. Between half and three-quarters of the city population were left homeless. Refugee camps were open into June of 1908 and the article says that city reconstruction was 'largely complete' by 1915. The issue is split between the current time and 15 minutes ago, although they converge fairly quickly. I'm not sure that organizing it that way buys the story anything, but it is a little different and variety is the spice of life I suppose. Batman is wrapping up more looters when he chases one into a classroom where a professor has cracked and is 'teaching' a group of dead students. He also has a gun, so he takes the looter hostage and forces Batman to walk a steel beam blindfolded. His idea after the earthquake is that evolution is based on luck, not skill or genetics. I'm not sure what his idea for Batman is meant to prove exactly, but I guess it doesn't have to make sense when you're crazy. Batman works it out and it's on to the next crisis. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Batman 557. Some guys hire Ballistic to find a locked suitcase stuck in a building in Gotham. They tell a story implying that they're Feds, but pretty immediately give it away when Ballistic says that he always does his own investigating. He runs into Batman, they take out some goons, and blow up the 'evidence' when the suitcase is full of drugs. It's a quick read without a lot of conflict, since Ballistic seems to avoid killing people despite carrying a Deadpool worth of weapons on his person. Having never heard of Ballistic before, I looked him up. Apparently he was introduced during the Bloodlines event and got his powers after being bitten by some kind of alien dragon. He did some stuff with Jean Paul Valley Batman (as mentioned in this issue) and then didn't show up much at all after that. |
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| Detective Comics 724. In the numbers game, apparently over a million people died in Gotham. That would make it an unfathomable tragedy on the scale of natural disasters. Again going by wikipedia, the deadliest natural disaster (not including epidemics or famines) was the 1931 China floods; that event included three months of flooding due to odd weather and nine different cyclones. A different river in China flooded in 1887 and killed somewhere around a million or two people. Nothing else world-wide has hit a million; the deadliest natural disaster in the US was the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed 6-12 thousand people. Something like the Gotham earthquake would be completely unknown in the country and one of the worst events in recorded history. As for the issue itself, it continues the trend of not having any supervillains in the mix. Instead it contrasts Batman/Bruce Wayne to a different rich dude named Davenport. While Batman is running himself ragged and Bruce is spending as much money as Wayne Enterprises has, Davenport is angry that his power keeps going out and won't let the city clear one of his buildings that fell down. Batman drives a big machine through it so that there's a better road for crews to use. I'm not sure that the comparison was necessary given that basically every issue has shown that Batman is doing everything he can while others are looting and taking advantage, but it's always nice to see a jerk get his comeuppance. |
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| Arkham Asylum: Tales of Madness is a one-shot. It follows a guard on his third day at the Asylum. He and two other experienced guards have opened Killer Croc’s cell to gather the laundry when the earthquake hits. Unlike the other issues, there are no scenes of mass devastation. Instead, the Asylum’s sensors automatically locked down the asylum with steel shutters and the emergency generator maintains power though they are still cut off from outside communication. Croc kills one of the experienced guards and intends to do the same to the remaining two when Joker calls to him from his cell and asks to be let free. Once loose, Joker decides who he’s going to let free for a little “party.” He passes on the likes of Maxie Zeus, Zsasz, and Charaxes and releases Scarecrow, Riddler, and two female villains Samantha and Voz. This is apparently both of their first appearances. The loose villains find the two guards and threaten to torture the new guy. The older guard pleads for the new guy’s safety but when Jeremiah Arkham calls trying to get an update, Joker kills the senior guard with a high-powered taser to the head. The villains argue over who gets to kill the remaining guard and Joker settles on a scary story competition. The villains will each tell a story and the guard decides which story scares him the most and that villain will have the honor of killing him. Each story is told in a very different art style. Voz’ story is first and she tells about a young girl watching her abusive parents interacting and inflicting those same abuses on her little brother. One day her mother attacks her father with a broken bottle and the voices in her head tells her to do the same to her little brother. Riddler’s story follows. His is illustrated to look like an old comic or cartoon, think Looney Tunes or Asterix & Obelisk. His story has him and his goons attacking a religious HQ for the money when Riddler becomes suspicious that Batman hadn’t arrived yet. The religious guru walks in and knocks Riddler out cold then uses batarangs to knock out the goons, revealing himself to be Batman. Croc’s story has him wrestling alligators in a ring in the swamp when some guy starts heckling him so Croc grabs him and feeds him to the alligator. Samantha’s story is illustrated almost like an old woodcut. She tells of a young girl in old Salem accused of being a witch. She’s tortured until she admits to being a witch just for the torture to stop. As she’s being burned at the stake she vows vengeance on everyone present, memorizing all their faces. Now reincarnated, she swears the guard was there and that she’s destined to make him pay. In between the stories the villains often argue among each other for whatever reason. Voz, who’s voices in her head love seeing the fighting, releases Charaxes to cause trouble. He scuffles briefly with Croc but is quickly knocked out by joker with the taser. Scarecrow’s story is next about a happy family that had the misfortune of having the devil move into their basement. He makes the family fear for their kids’ safety, so they lock the doors and bar the windows. The Husband is afraid his wife will leave her so he chains her to the fridge. The Wife is afraid the husband will leave her so she chains their wrists together. The two small dogs, their bowls empty, are afraid they won’t be fed, kill and eat the parents. The Joker’s story is last. He commits a mass murder with paintballs filled with acid after which Batman and Robin arrive to stop him. They are both hit with Joker’s laughing gas and both laugh maniacally as Joker tells bad jokes before stabbing Robin to death, then Batman. Finally the villains pressure the guard to choose the most frightening story but he snaps and says they all scare him. The villains move in on him and everything fades to black. A some time later Arkham and heavily armed security enter the wing. They find the two dead guards and blame their deaths on Charaxes as all the other inmates are locked uo. They find the new guard and the story cuts to a week later. The guard’s fiancée demands to see him and Arkham finally relents. In a cell, the guard is naked with the names of the villains scrawled over different parts of his body. His narration tells us he faced the world’s most dangerous lunatics and survived. But he belongs to them now. They call him the Jigsaw Man and that one day they will come back to claim him. While I won’t call this an essential classic like A Serious House on Serious Earth, this is a great issue. It is perverse and grotesque and uses intentionally corny, ironic humor and levity to make it feel more unsettling. It feels almost like an episode of Tales from the Crypt. As far as the overall Cataclysm narrative goes, it doesn’t add much except to establish that Arkham remains relatively secure, explaining why we haven’t seen many of the major villains making an appearance in the other books. |
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| Robin 52 Concludes the Cataclysm storyline, which honestly is what I had intended this month’s reading to cover but I wasn’t aware that the trades split it off from the rest of the No Man’s Sky storyline. Anyways, the story picks up with Robin, Bullock, and Montoya facing some goons that have a GCPD detective hostage and Quakemaster taunting them from cctv screens. Robin tells Quakemaster he knows who he is and challenges him to say his name, which Quakemaster can’t seem to do. The hostage GCPD detective distracts the goons allowing Bullock and Montoya to take them out. Meanwhile Batman is crawling under rubble trying to find survivors while Nightwing rescues Gordon and the mayor from Quakemaster’s thugs. Back at Quakemaster’s base Robin finds Quakemaster, revealing that Quakemaster has been a literal puppet of the Ventriloquist the whole time. I guess the Ventriloquist has some speech quirks I’m not familiar with? Anyways, Robin is able to knock the Quakemaster puppet from the Ventriloquist’s hand who then pulls the Scarface puppet out from his trunk and opens fire. Nightwing is fighting a particularly stubborn goon when the unstable tower they are fighting in begins to collapse, forcing Nightwing to rescue the goon. Robin and the GCPD detective chase down Scarface when the power lines come back online. unable to pursue, the detective takes one shot and hits the Scarface puppet in the head and the Ventriloquist begs for them to get medical attention for the puppet. Back at the GCPD Alfred reaches out to Oracle, letting her know that Batman, Robin, and Nightwing are on their way back and they sum up some of the devastation Gotham has suffered: many of the outer boroughs are completely wiped out, part of the city is isolated, the major bridge will be out for years, and survivors face months without regular water or power. Batman, Robin, and Nightwing ponder the work ahead that’s needed to get Gotham back up and Robin mentions that over one-hundred thousand are dead as of the last count. Just as Batman proclaims “at least it’s over” an aftershock shakes the stower they’re standing on. |
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| So overall, I really liked the Cataclysm storyline. I’m glad that it didn’t turn out to be a villain-instigated event and was just a natural disaster that would’ve happened regardless. I think the storyline stopped with the “this is where I was when it happened” stories at the right time before they got too repetitive. It touched on quite a few characters and I quite enjoyed the chapters focusing on the minor heroes like Huntress, Azrael, and even Spoiler. I also really liked that they resisted repeating the Knightfall plot point of having a massive breakout at Arkham, though they did have a major one at Blackgate, the focus was primarily facing the disaster. The Quakemaster story was a little weak compared to the rest. I think they could’ve done without it but being a superhero comic I can see why they may have felt compelled to include some “super”-villainy but even Batman couldn’t be bothered with facing the Quakemaster himself. The backdrop is there for some compelling storytelling. Gotham’s infrastructure is gone. Day to day life is gone. So the status quo Batman has fought to enforce is gone as well. What will Batman’s purpose in this Gotham city be? What will villains do? |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Shadow of the Bat 78 and 79. This one has a couple of super-villains but mixes it with an earthquake-related story. On that side, big company owners have a meeting to discuss pulling out of Gotham. Bruce recruits a guy from the shelters to come and tell his story, and how he and everyone else want to work if they just have jobs, but the other CEOs are unconvinced. After the meeting the guy pitches Bruce on the idea of funding a bunch of people to start businesses, saying that even if most fail there will still be a good number who start the critical businesses of the future. Frankly, this is the more implausible story of the two halves. Any business that could afford to keep going during a disaster will own Gotham after it rebuilds. If he put it in the loan contracts that he gets a piece, Wayne will own so much 5 years down the line. The businesses that leave are basically betting that Gotham will fail as a city, or that they'll be able to get back in later on after someone local has already replaced them. It's pretty foolish. Look at someone like Dan Gilbert in Detroit; you come in and buy stuff when a city is having it rough and pretty soon you own as much as you want. The super-villain side has the Mad Hatter recovering some hats and a guy I've never heard of called Narcosis. It's still pretty low-key villainy so far, so that fits with the style of the storyline. 79 focuses more on the super-villainy and less on the earthquake stuff, so I guess that makes it a departure. Narcosis does have a big plan to drug the city, and Mad Hatter takes it over to try and make some money along the way. Batman stops them but at the apparent cost of Narcosis and a couple goons' lives. Some gas nearly gets out but with Oracle's help it's contained and blown up. |
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| Post 35 • IP flag post | ||
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Batman Chronicles 14. This one covers several short stories. The first has Alfred fending off burglars looking for whatever riches are in Wayne Manor. It's a story in the tradition of the occasional reminder that Alfred is a good match for Bruce in terms of his past training and skills. The second is a Huntress story, and the second one to throw cannibalism in the mix. It's fine. The third is actually mostly a prose story, with one illustration per page. I don't know if they did that because the writer, Greg Rucka, was mostly a novel writer at the time and didn't have a comic script or if they just liked the story but realized they didn't have room to illustrate all the text. It's also really a war story as told by Montoya's brother. But I enjoyed it all the same. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Let's wrap this up! Batman 558 is basically a breather or taking stock issue. It's about how grim things are in Gotham and how those trying to help are looking for hope where they can find it, particularly Batman. Talk of mass exodus is starting, and continues in 559. Despite Vesper's talk of the police sticking it out better than lots of other services in 558, apparently in 559 they're starting to leave too. 559 ups the tension by having a gang try to break into the hospital to steal drugs. Bullock and Montoya are doing what they can but Batman and Robin have to come to the rescue. They beat up the gang members but the bad news is that one of the bridges collapses with a bunch of the leavers on it. I haven't paid too much attention to the artists across all the issues, but I checked 559 because Batman looks too skinny/stretched to me. Booo to Bob Hall. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Detective Comics 725. That's a big, round number so it feels like it should be a double issue or special in some way. It does feature Batman and Nightwing having a deep conversation about what they can do and how they can best serve their city, briefly reflecting back on the 'simpler' times. It isn't a whiz-bang of an anniversary story, but I do think it works a bit better than Batman 558, which served basically the same function. Detective 726 is one of the rarities in terms of featuring a big villain, and in this case it's the Joker. The story is also odd in that it really has nothing to do with the earthquake. Joker influenced the inmate next to him into kidnapping a little girl and stowing her away in a car trunk. The car is on a ferry full of goons. They say whose but it doesn't really matter. But it fits with the previous issue in terms of being more of a psychological play; Joker easily tells Batman where the girl is so he can rescue her, and therefore have a future hope that any kidnapping victim is alive when he used to assume they were dead. Batman will be crushed in some future situation where the victim is dead against his hope. |
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| This was a different read. Not a lot of super-heroics, not a ton of action per se. But they were mostly solid. It makes me want to watch The Batman again, which ends with Batman realizing that maybe he can't punch his way to every solution. It reminds me that I'm curious what they'll do if that ever gets a sequel. | ||
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