Monthly (Comic) Book Club - February - Batman: Road to No Man’s Land20368
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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - February - Batman: Road to No Man’s Land Batman #555-559 Batman: Shadow of the Bat #75-79 Detective Comics #722,724-726 Robin #54 Batman Chronicles #14 Reading Schedule TBD Discussion topic ideas: * Thoughts on the story or artwork * Details in the story, artwork, or presentation * References to outside events or other works of fiction * Making of/Behind the Scenes details * Editions you will be reading from * Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection |
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 Staple topics, nice.
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| Looks good. | ||
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| Okay, this is the reading order in the Omnibus (among quite a few more issues it collects). I’m assuming the order should be the same or at least very similar in the other tpb collections 1/29-2/4 Batman: Shadow of the Bat 75 Batman 555 Detective Comics 722 2/5-2/11 Batman: Shadow of the Bat 76 Robin 54 Batman 556 2/12-2/18 Batman: Shadow of the Bat 77 Batman 557 Detective Comics 724 2/19-2/25 Batman: Shadow of the Bat 78 Batman: Shadow of the Bat 79 Batman Chronicles 14 2/26-3/3 Batman 558 Batman 559 Detective Comics 725 Detective Comics 726 |
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| Okay, I don’t know if I can do it but I’m gonna try to plow through the omnibus instead of focusing just on the specified reading. First Issue is Detective Comics #719. This issue includes two stories. The first and main story has a prisoner recounting his run/in with Batman while being transported to Blackgate prison. As he tells it, he had gathered a top-rate crew armed with the best gear and intel and they pulled off an armored car heist like clockwork. A giant, seven foot tall Batman tried to stop them but the prisoner overpowered him and beat him to a pulp, stopping only when 12 police officers pulled him away. Side by side you see what actually happened; that the robbery was a low-rent, bungled mess and he didn’t even get beat up by Batman but by Robin instead. Pretty fun read but not quite connected to the month’s selection. The second story is only about four pages. A couple of teens looking for their dog up on a hill run i to a seismologist taking readings. Suddenly her equipment starts going off and she calls the emergency line to her employer saying a massive tectonic event is heading toward Gotham. On the other end of the line the call echos through an empty Bat Cave. |
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| Batman: Shadow of the Bat #73 The issue begins with Bruce Wayne wishing good night to Alfred so Batman can begin his evening’s work. In the Batcave he’s speaking with Oracle about her effort to track down a murderer. Suddenly the feed is lost and alarms start blaring. The seismic alarms. The ground begins to tear apart and the ceiling begins to collapse. Batman tries to escape the cave but every exit is blocked and the collapsing roof crushes the Batmobile. An underground river crashes through the cave walls and washes Batman away. Above, in the manor, Alfred is cleaning the silver as the house begins collapsing around him. Oracle feels the shaking and is knocked out as she is tossed to the ground. Further away, Harvey Bullock is buying some cigars when he spots the very same murderer that Batman was tracking. He goes for the arrest when the ground begins to shake. Anarky, who tried to swing in to help Bullock with the arrest is almost killed when his grappling hook breaks away. He and Bullock take shelter together while the earthquake passes. Bullock makes a quip about how Anarky is an escaped criminal to be arrested but they both run off to help the earthquake victims. Oracle wakes up. Her building was reinforced against earthquakes so she’s okay but stepping outside, the city is unrecognizable. People are dead in the streets and the Gotham PD is absolutely demolished. She rallies a shellshocked police officer to action to start helping others. The issue ends with Batman, unconscious, hanging from his cape over the edge of a chasm that has opened up in the Batcave…and the cape is tearing. I really enjoyed this issue. The art was a bit hit and miss with Batman often looking a little too exaggerated like a cartoon but I thought the rest of the characters were depicted well. It really sold the danger of the earthquake when Batman, prepared for any contingency is completely at the earth’s mercy. The issue definitely goes for shock as Gotham is reduced to rubble in seemingly seconds. There are a lot of characters we haven’t touched on, Robin and Commissioner Gordon, for example. To say nothing of the villains. I’m curious to see how Arkham has held up. |
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| I don't have the omnibus so I'm going with the reading list. I'm looking forward to the background from the other issues though! Shadow of the Bat 75: The art is by Mark Buckingham, who did Fables, so that's sort of a nice coincidence since I was reading that recently. That said, I feel like it's a little cartoony (or something along those lines) for a Batman story so much about death. Fables is certainly serious, but it's also about childhood stories, so the art works for me. It didn't as much here, especially with the guy on the roof at the very beginning. That said, I do like how his Batman is basically a pool of black. The store names with other comic folks is a nice touch as well. I don't know what happened in the issues before this, but it seems weird for it to say Batman slept for 15 hours. He's a guy who famously works on microsleeps. Sleeping 15 hours is more realistic though. After a week of dealing with an earthquake, I'd want to sleep for 15 hours at least. On top of that, he has to put up with Mr. Freeze and Clayface, who has some fire powers I was unaware of. It also seems a little weird that Batman is announcing all his actions (phosphor flares! explosive charge!). Maybe his tech is voice activated at this point? But I did enjoy the story overall. Turning the villains on each other when completely outmatched is a big-brain hero move. |
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| Batman 555: I wonder if they ever addressed why Gotham had an earthquake. It's supposed to be on the East Coast, and we don't have much in the way of earthquakes here. The villain this time is Ratcatcher, a dude who used to kill rats until he decided that people were worse. Batman runs into him while trying to save people trapped in a subway car, and then needs him to lead the way out of the collapsed tunnels. Apparently people didn't really think Batman existed at this point, as the people in the subway and the reporter on the news refer to him skeptically. I guess I'm just not up on my late 90s Batman. |
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| Detective Comics 722: no supervillains in this one, really, just a focus on a girl who can't find her mom. Sadly, the mom was taking the earthquake as an opportunity to skip town and disappear, abandoning her daughter. Robin helps find some spare money (the mom's stash, thanks to karma) and her grandparents. On the whole I'm enjoying the one-off nature of the stories so far. It might get a little old over 15 issues but let's see where it goes. |
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| Nightwing #19 begins in Bludhaven with news of the Gotham earthquake on the news the earthquake was a 7.6 with an epicenter about 10 miles from the city. For comparison, the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is estimated to have been a 7.7-7.9 with an epicenter 2 miles from the city. The news says the phone lines are down, water supply is threatened, and that the news station itself is running on temporary generator power. On hearing the news, Grayson is rushing across the city to get to Gotham and make contact wth the Batcave. With the roads destroyed he has to go in by water and as he approaches the city all he sees is pure devastation. Bridges are collapsed and great swathes of the city are on fire. When he finally gets to the city he picks up a 911 call from a bus that fell into a fissure. Grayson arrives and has to evacuate the people one at a time as the fissure fills with water and begins to close. He pushes himself to exhaustion trying to get everyone out in time and only very narrowly gets the last person out. He takes the victory knowing there won’t be many. He is so exhausted he hast to walk the rest of the way to the Bacave. The issue does a great job of conveying the massive scale of the devastation and making the heroes seem incredibly small and powerless in its wake. There were a couple of pages in the issue about a blonde teenager in Bludhaven trying to pick a hero name and ending with him looking out to a marquee sign with the word “Shooter” on it. Not sure who this is but maybe we’ll see him again soon |
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| Batman 553 begins with Lucious Fox in one of the Wayne buildings when the quake hits. We’re told that all of Wayne’s buildings were retrofitted to survive quakes of up to 8.5. Meanwhile buildings all over the city, including the 4 tallest in Gotham, collapse killing hundreds. At Gotham PD, the roof partially collapses and the bat signal crashes through Gordon’s office, pinning him under rubble. Barbara Gordon arrives at the station and starts organizing the police and rescue operations. With water mains destroyed all over the city, firefighters have to run their hoses for miles to get water from the bay and rivers to the fires in addition to only have 4 fireboats in the city. Batman still hanging in the cave finally regains consciousness and digs Alfred out of the rubble but they are now both trapped in the Batcave. Bullock arrives at the station but with everyone busy he has to pull a pipe that had stabbed him through the arm out himself, disinfects it with some booze from his desk, and bandages himself up. He goes off in search of the commissioner and is able to free him from the rubble in his office. Meanwhile, Batman figures the only way out of the cave is to get his scuba gear and follow the floodwaters and hopefully to an exit. Alfred is fearful of the plan but Bruce feels there is no other option. Bruce suits up and dives in. Shortly afterward, an aftershock hits… |
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| Whoah, I think I might not get to week 1’s reading till next week. There’s still some 16 issues before I get to Batman 555. I must say that I am enjoying the story so far. Granted it has not proceeded beyond the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. Still, it has done a great job of establishing the magnitude of the event. As a survival story, it has been an interesting read but like the Arkham breakout leading up to Knightfall, it creates fertile ground for bad actors to do bad things |
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| Azrael 40 is a fairly quick issue. Azrael is delivering Bane to the Gotham City police. During the flight Bane is taunting Azrael to release him, suggesting there is some similarity in the two; them being vicious predators. Azrael famously fought Bane in the Knightfall arc but I’m unsure if that is the conflict Bane mentions throughout or if he means the fight we just missed when Azrael captured Bane. My guess is the latter but I’m sure some of the tension of the former is meant to linger in the reader’s mind. Anyways, shortly after the police offload Bane, the earthquake hits and Bane uses the opportunity to escape. Azrael pursues Bane as the earthquake destroys the city around them. The chase is intercut with clips from the news about the dangers the earthquake has created just as Azrael encounters them. Azrael tracks Bane to a Bank and in the vault Bane tries to pay him off with the piles of cash inside. Azrael refuses and the two fight it out. Just then an aftershock hits which throws Bane against the wall of the vault, allowing Azrael to get the upper hand. Throughout the issue, Azrael makes mention that he is still funding out who he is, I’m assuming referring to his previous brainwashing as part of the cult, and about a promise he made, I’m assuming to Batman. Anyways, after beating Bane unconscious Azrael is left to drag Bane back to the police as the city crumbles around them. This was the first issue to involve a proper villain. I really liked Azrael in Knightfall and it was nice to him face to face with Bane again. I don’t know if the two have fought since Knightfall but there is clearly some conflict within Azrael and history with Bane. It would’ve been nice to see more focus on that but it might have been addressed in the previous issues when Azrael captures Bane. |
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| DC Comics 720 begins, again, with the earthquake. This time we’re following Helena, aka Huntress, in the subway when the earthquake hits. The driver is killed, the train derails, and the power goes out. Quickly changing into Huntress, she tries to take control of the situation but she happens to be on the train with a mobster who ignites his lighter too close her activated night vision, blinding her. The mobster, thinking she’s there to capture him, pistol whips the stunned Huntress and shoots at her, hitting her in the arm as she flees until her vision clears. After killing a passenger that tried to reason with him, the mobster leads the remaining passengers out, having them crowd around him to protect him from any police ambushes. Above, detective Montoya escapes her taxi just before it gets crushed and pulls her gun to stop some would-be looters. When the subway passengers seem like they’re nearing their way out, the mobster threatens to leaves the passengers underground in the dark. Huntress makes her move. During the struggle, the aftershock hits, trapping the mobster under the rubble. Unable to move the rubble due to her injured arm, Huntress briefly reminds herself that she’s “on probation” with Batman but decides to leave the mobster to die and get to the surface to help who she can. Back in the Batcave, Alfred is waiting on Bruce when Harold is able to get into the cave using a small bulldozer. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is trying to make is way through the underground river to escape. During which he laments not having the mansion retrofit against earthquakes like his other buildings but he was afraid that workers would inevitably find the Batcave. Deciding that Alfred’s life is worth more than his secret, Bruce promises he’ll get heavy equipment in to dig Alfred out of the cave, unaware of the extent of the damage to the city. A current sweeps Bruce away and he notices the water is warmer and sees the lights of Gotham up above. He realizes he’s in the bay and swims to the surface to find the city in devastation |
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| Catwoman 56 begins with Catwoman stealing a pair of nightvision binoculars from a department store for a heist she wants to pull off later. As she’s making her way out through the elevator shaft, the earthquake hits, swnding the elevator careening down the shaft. She’s barely able to get off on one of the floors shortly before she hears the elevator crash and the smell of blood fill the air. On the store floor Catwoman’s trying to focus on herself but she is forced to keep an impaled little girl talking while the guard searches for other survivors. The girl unfortunately does not make it and her death shakes Catwoman who begins to desperately looking for a way out. She finds an open window and using her binoculars to scan the skyline sees Gotham in ruins. She decides to go back for the guard and remaining survivors and helps lead the group to safety. Afterwards she decides to catch her breath, deciding that she will search for more survivors and breaks down crying. |
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| Robin 52 in the omnibus is just an excerpt. In the Nightwing issue, Nightwing had mentioned that Tim Drake was safe in Europe. Apparently Tim Drake is on the plane back to Gotham. He gets off a phone call with his father telling him he has something important to say but that it can’t be said over the phone. Apparently Tim is going to reveal his Robin identity to his father. As they approach Gotham, the Captain announces that they are being diverted to Bludhaven. Drake wonders what could be the reason since it is too early for snowfall. He looks out the window and gasps in shock as he sees Gotham in flames below them. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I was a little curious when the issues I read had 'aftershock' on the covers and started a week after the quake. I think there are also multiple collected editions. Sounds like they really made hay out of the earthquake idea, which is appropriate for an event of that magnitude (no pun intended). |
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| Yeah It’s such a massive event that it makes sense that everyone in Gotham (and I feel like Bludhaven, as close as it is, probably should’ve felt some shaking as well) would’ve been impacted all at once. I do feel like the character reactions have been different and appropriate to the character. Catwoman’s probably a bit more sensitive about it, Bullock’s the hard-boiled cop, Huntress is a vigilante willing to let the “bad guy” die, and Nightwing trying to be the hero in the face of his human limitations. Again, we haven’t really seen any villains in the story except Bane and his appearance was pretty brief. The bext issue in the omnibus seems to be a one-shot set in Blackgate. It’s no Arkham so we probably won’t see the heavy hitters quite yet but seeing a massive earthquake hit a major prison facility is yet another angle we haven’t seen in the event |
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| Blackgate: Isle of Men feels like it could be a pre-code crime comic. Batman makes an appearance but only barely. The story begins at 6:52pm with a random prisoner, Jared, who is set to be executed 1 minute past midnight. He’s maintained his innocence since day one and he’s venting his anger at his imminent execution to his lawyer and a nun, both of whom believe that he is innocent. We get a brief look at some of the d-list villains housed at BlackGate. I think the most notable one being KGBeast. We also get a look at a cross-section of the guards. Some trying to be good, some afraid, some cruel. At 7:01 the earthquake hits and miraculously Jared’s cell is the only one damaged enough to free him. After the quake, Blackgate is pounded by several massive waves, causing massive flooding. The guard in the control booth is swept away by the flood, leaving the prisoners trapped in their cells to drown. Jared finds a temporarily safe place for his lawyer and the nun while he dives underwater to the guard booth and flips the switch to open the cells. Many open but many are also too damaged to function. With so many prisoners now loose, the remaining guards to regain control but are overpowered and taken hostage by the prisoners who release yet more prisoners, including KGBeast while Jared and the two women continue making their way to the upper floors of the prison. A guard is able to send a distress call to the GCPD and Barbara is able to dispatch a couple of SWAT chopers. Jared is patching up the nun’s minor injuries at the infirmary when KGBeast finds them, angry that Jared did not release him from his cell. Jared fights KGBeast to allow the teo women to escape but is thoroughly trounced. One of the prisoners, Catman, appears and distracts KGBeast to allow Jared and the two women to escape. At this point, Batman is rising out of the waters of the bay. He starts receiving the transmissions from the SWAT choppers that are being fired upon by prisoners on the toof of Blackgate. Batman figures that there are plenty of people to help disaster relief in Gotham but only he can really help pacify Blackgate so that’s where he heads. The quake has collapsed one of Blackgate’s outer walls and has created a land bridge to the mainland that many prisoners use to escape. Batman enters through the collapsed wall and begins to fight his way to the roof, allowing the SWAT choppers to land. Meanwhile, Jared and the two women have taken shelter on the top floor of the prison where KGBeast finds them again and tries to crush them by pushing over a large chunk of rubble. Batman arrives and fights off KGBeast as an aftershock hits, collapsing the land bridge prisoners were using to escape and leaving Jared holding up the large piece of rubble to save the two women. Jared urges the women to escape but they refuse to leave him, Jared confesses that he committed the murders he was accused of and the women back away in shock. Part of the walkway collapses but Batman saves the falling nun and then the lawyer. At one minute past midnight, Jared’s strength finally gives out and he is killed by the collapsing rubble. The SWAT teams retake control of the prison and we’re told that 239 prisoners are escaped or dead. As the two women are preparing to leave the island they realize that Jared had lied but don’t know what the lie was. This was a fairly solid story and to some degree I kind of feel that Batman’s appearance was unnecessary. Jared’s story was fairly well done and Batman’s appearance felt more out of obligation so they can give the book a Batman title. |
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| Shadow of the Bat 74 starts with Batman coming ashore after the riot at Blackgate. There is a small continuity error in that Batman arrives on shore at 10pm 3 hours after the quake while in Isle of Men he was on the island when Jared died at midnight. I certainly don’t mind giving a bit of leeway for the benefit of a good story. Batman’s hit with a wave of helplessness as he see the city in ruins but immediately gets to saving those he can and directing them to the GCPD. As many people as Batman helps, the enormity of the work to be done is too much but he gets an idea and zips off to parts unknown. Tim Drake lands in Bludhaven and “borrows” a motorcycle from a courier service in order to get to Gotham. Meanwhile, Jolene, the seismologist from way back at the start of the book is trapped in her apartment by a jammed door when two thugs break in and lead her away at gunpoint to their mysterious boss. Back at his club, the Penguin is planning to send his goons out on a spree of looting when Batman arrives and informs the Penguin and his goons that it is martial law in Gotham and that police will be shooting looters on sight. Instead, Batman makes the Penguin and his thugs a better offer: Penguin’s thugs help him and Batman won’t make it his mission to utterly ruin the Penguin. Penguin agrees and Batman go out into the city helping everyone they can. On the final page the emergency generator at a tv station kicks in and a shadowy person calling himself Quake Master claims he triggered the earthquake that hit Gotham and wants $100 Million to not crush what remains of Gotham. |
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| Batman Chronicles 12 is a collection of short stories that don’t feature Batman directly The first story begins with a group of survivors trapped in a basement for 10 hours. The young boy among them imagines Batman will come to save them. In the floors above a group of mobsters, possibly from different gangs are trying to find a way down to save them. They fight among themselves as the work they’re doing is very different from their usual, bound by some contract their boss cut with some unknown CEO that requires them to save everyone they come across, not use guns, etc. They argue about the importance of keeping your word, especially in a city like Gotham. When they finally free the survivors the young boy asks if they were sent by Batman and one of the gangsters says he was. When asked by another gangster why he said that, he’s told to read an article in the contract. The last frame of the story is an excerpt from the contract requiring them not to rob anyone of their faith or hope with the CEO revealed to be Bruce Wayne. The second story is told from the perspective of Ras Al Ghul observing the events in Gotham from his lair. He is musing to himself how Batman has finally met his match, that the earthquake transcends Batman’s definitions of good and evil yet has caused more pain and tragedy than all the inmates of Arkham. As he watches Batman fail to save a woman trapped in a burning building, Ras muses that Batman’s tools and methods are now useless in the unstable rubble of Gotham; Batman having lost precious time saving the woman by being unable to grapple up to her. Ras wonders how long it will be for Batman to take his place at his side now that Batman has finally lost. The next story follows a man in a white suit, seen only from the torso down as he walks through the city. As he does, people cry out for help, each one inevitably asking that they would do anything for help. To which the suited man asks what they do for a living. The first says he’s an accountant. The man i white says he will pull him out and in return he will find him and ask for a favor. The man agrees and the man in the suit digs him out. When asked what he does for a living, the second man responds that he’s a grade school teacher and the man in white just keeps walking. The next story starts with a man pinned alone in some dark location illuminated only by a small reading light. Robin is on the surface scouring for survivors using a surveillance headset. He gets a signal and convinces some rescue workers to help him dig for it. The trapped man hears them digging and starts yelling to make himself known. Robin digs through the ground and rescues a small boy.l and they move on to find more people elsewhere The trapped man wonders why he can’t hear them any more. Wonders why they stopped. As his reading light goes out he wonders if anyone will be coming for him. The next story begins with Two-Face injured, possibly dead in a sinkhole. The earthquake apparently hit while he and his crew were about to hit the Second Bank of Gotham. Looking down at his body and at the bank, their score, completely demolished, the henchmen decide to turn in Two-Face’ body for the reward money. Two henchmen climbdown into the sinkhole to tie a rope around Two-Face’ body while another hoists him up. Just as Two-Face is being lifted out of the sinkhole, an aftershock hits. Two-Face grabs hold of some rubble and using the tope pulls the remaining henchman into the sinkhole, which is now rapidly filling with water. Now free, Two-Face takes their attempt to collect the reward on his head as a betrayal as they beg for him to save them. Two-Face flips his coins and the henchmen in the hole sound very displeased at the result. In the final story, a young boy is holding a lunchpail with a choo choo train on it as the building collapses around him and his parents. We next see him alone in the wreckage, clearly in shock, holding only the handle of that lunch box. A rescue worker tries to help him but the child refuses. A gray-haired woman then presents him the rest of lunchbox and introduces herself as Leslie and she carries the boy out i to the wrecked city. Chronicles has always been a title with stories on the periphery of the Batman world and I think this event is perfect material for it. The setting is also fertile ground for short, punchy stories. There’s only small victories, if any at all, in the aftermath but when you’re focusing on everyday people a small victory can mean a lot when you’ve lost so much. |
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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 76: I really like the cover. Good job, whoever Orbik is. Batman journeys into an unreachable neighborhood in Gotham to look for survivors in a completely collapsed part of town. There are looters, and escaped animals from a private zoo, to contend with first. But the fancy folks who were trapped at a birthday party have turned to cannibalism. They ran out of food on day 2 of being trapped, killed the birthday boy on day 7, and this is day 14. While it's a well-used dramatic conceit, cannibalism like this is hugely unlikely. Members of the Donner party were eating their rug before they turned to people. For the crash in the Andes, you had nearly 30 people make it a week with what they found on a small plane: "They found eight chocolate bars, three small jars of jam, a tin of mussels, a tin of almonds, a few dates, some candy, dried plums, and several bottles of wine. They rationed the meager supply of food but it lasted only a week." Then they ate cotton stuffing from the seats and the leather on their belts. These folks in Gotham actively killing people after 5 days is an indictment of their humanity. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Robin 54: this one was tougher to read because I'm less familiar with the characters. Because Spoiler is on the cover and I've read some wikipedia articles in the past, I knew that was Stephanie. I have no idea who Ariana is or why Robin was looking for her. I wasn't even sure they were in Gotham given the relative lack of damage there. Robin is driving around in a fancy car and whatnot. Plot-wise, it's mostly Robin getting Spoiler's costume back from her house, which involves getting it away from her dad who broke out of Blackgate. Along the way he also gets his dad's money back from a scammer who is claiming to do earthquake damage repair. After the Shadow of the Bat issue, this one was pretty light. | ||
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| Batman 556: and now Robin's back with Batman at the Batcave instead of running around looking for his girlfriend. Comics are always fast and loose with who's doing what where at what time, but come on. This is a crossover! This is a pretty low-key issue. Batman rescues/returns to jail some goons who broke into a bank after the earthquake and then got stuck there, and rescues an old guy who wouldn't leave his apartment even though it was collapsing. Most of the issue is about a focus on the future. Batman is somewhat trying to convince Tim to stop being Robin and live a normal life. It was odd for him to say that *now* he realizes that death could come at any time given that he's already lost at least his parents and Jason Todd. The issue ends with him walking around with (I assume?) girlfriend du jour Vesper and talking about the city recovering. The hope and optimism is nice, but still a little odd after Shadow. |
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| Nightwing 20 begins with Nightwing’s reunion with Barbara Gordon at the GCPD where they are also met by Robin. Apparently this is Tim Drake’s first time meeting Oracle in person. They all realize no one has made contact with Batman since the earthquake hit. Elsewhere, the police and fire dept are evacuating people from a toppled skyscraper that has fallen over and threatens to collapse entirely. At the scene Gordon meets a Detective Hawke who he doesn’t recognize but the detective informs him they’ve met several times but he normally works the night shift and Gordon probably doesn’t recognize him during the day  While Dick and Tim work their way towards the Wayne Mansion, a news reporter finds someone has stashed a cideo tape in her news van. Tim and Dick arrive at the mansion while “Detective Hawke” pulls the last survivor from the building before it collapses and the reporter finds Commissioner Gordon with the cassette. Dick prepares to descend into the gaping hole of the mansion/cave while Tim breaks off to check on his father. The house is wrecked but he is otherwise unhurt and the two have a happy reunion. Dick descends into the cave and is overwhelmed by the destruction. He’s soon found by Alfred and Harold who are escaping the wreckage with a small bulldozer. It’s apparently been several days since the initial earthquake at rhis point. We cut back to the video that Quake Master recorded in a previous issue, which Gordon and the rest of the police on the scene are watching. As Gordon begins asking for ideas he realizes Detective Hawke has disappeared. He exclaims that he usually works the night shift and has probably gone to punch in. I like how the ongoing even has progressed from the initial quake to ongoing rescue operations. The story takes brief moments for characters to reflect on the evolving situation around them preventing the whole thing from feeling mechanical. I REALLY hope Quake Master’s claim of causing the earthquake is just some opportunism and not actually what happened. I kind of feel that making the earthquake a kind of super villain attack kind of takes away from the inevitability and powerlessness of the whole situation. It’d no longer be the might of mother nature that everyone is powerless against and instead it was a matter of not finding this one guy and stopping him in time. That said, the fact that Batman had no hint of something like that going down and that fact that Quake Master said he did it through “technology yet unknown to you” does make it seem like it is a bluff. Also, we’re now a few days after the quake and I’m a bit surprised we weren’t given a peek at Arkham during the quake. Not that I haven’t enjoyed the human level disaster-movie feel of the story thus far, it is a super hero comic and I do wonder what’s going on with the super villains this whole time |
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| Batman 554 mostly deals with Batman trying to track down QuakeMaster. He begins by trying to track down Jolene, the seismologist from earlier in the story. He gets to her apartment only to find that she has been abducted but wonders if maybe it was a scene staged to hide that Jolene may be Quakemaster herself. This part feels like they’re padding the issue a little, since we’re shown Jolene in Quakemaster’s custody almost immediately and disproving Quakemaster is Jolene only amounts to a short detour to Wayne Tower and a look at Jolene’s file. Tim and Dick, reunited with Alfred, briefly discuss the future of Bruce Wayne’s secret identity in light of the incredible destruction at the manor laying bare the Batcave beneath it. Dick and Tim figure the charade is over but Alfred points to Harold who seems to be at work on some way to repair the cave/mansion without revealing the other. The police decide to pay Quakemaster’s ransom and Batman uses the money drop to pounce on the hired goons sent to retrieve it. They’ve never seen Quakemaster’s face but the fact that he knew where they lived, even in the wreckage of the ciry tell Batman that Quakemaster must be someone that knows them. Batman hands the thugs over to Bullock for interrogation and tells him to check their criminal associates. Back at the Cave we are denied a significant reunion between Batman, Robin, and Nightwing. Batman just kind of gets to work reviewing the ransom video again. He deduces from the technobabble in the video that Quakemaster doesn’t actually know what he’a talking about and has been fed talking points from someone who does that reveal him as a phony. |
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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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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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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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