Review: Batman #10
Tom King likes his Batman vulnerable. That is the biggest takeaway I have noticed so far from this series, and I love it. From the first issue where he is trying to stop a plane that is going to crash into Gotham City and face his own demise, to realizing that having other heroes like Gotham and Gotham Girl around to help isn’t such a bad idea. Even the lengths of physical pain he is willing to endure to save someone show that the caped crusader is the true definition of a hero. Batman has no super power. His super power is his heart. Sure the dark knight may act cold at times, but his purpose now as an older and wiser hero is to keep not only the citizens of his city safe but the members of the bat family as well. That family now includes Gotham Girl.
Bruce has always wanted to make things right. That is part of the brilliance of his character. His whole reasoning behind being a hero in the first place is to not only avenge his parent’s death, but to make them proud of him. His honor and pride are his greatest strengths and simultaneously his greatest weaknesses. Is Batman trying to help Gotham Girl for her, or because he has to make things right? It’s something I’ve always loved about the character, because as much as he has it together, he is also somewhat of a mess. Tom King gets that, and shows it in this issue.
In Batman #10 we return to Santa Prisca prison, the birthplace of Bane. It was fun seeing the Batplane in a dogfight with Bane’s soldiers, and then having him take on the army in hand to hand combat once he was shot down. Once he was finally beaten to the point of crawling, Batman enters the prison to be greeted by the man who broke the bat, Bane. We don’t get the venom induced version who broke Batman’s back in Knightfall many years ago, but we do still get a very menacing version who pulls no punches.
There is a very cool storytelling technique used throughout the book where we are reading narration in what appears to be passages from a letter. I won’t spoil anything, but by the end it made me smile when I realized what was going on. It was clever, and I enjoyed being surprised by the end of the book. I cannot wait to see where “I Am Suicide” goes and why Batman picked the members he did for his team. We know he does everything for a reason, and seems one step ahead of his enemy most of the time. So it is interesting that we get an issue where he goes in fists swinging first. Batman is up to something here, and I cannot wait to see what it is.
Mikel Janin does a great job on art, and he covers a lot of distance. Whether it’s the Batplane in a dogfight ripping over the water and through the clouds, or the inside of the prison where Bane dwells in the shadows. The art is fantastic. June Chung on colors does a nice job of switching between the dull shades of the prison and the bright scenes outside.
There are some things that happen in this book, especially one, where I had to question the logic. That isn’t a bad thing because it happened in a comic book. A Batman comic book to be exact, where I find the book to be at its best when it is just a little over the top in its action and violence, and this issue certainly exceeds at both. Once I read Vision, I knew that Tom King had earned the right to make me be patient and wait to see where a story goes. I trust him on this book, and I am just along for the ride.
Story: Tom King Art: Mikel Janin Color: June Chung
Story: 9 Art: 9 Overall: 9 Recommendation: Buy
DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Caitlin visits her mother to help her understand her growing meta-human powers; Barry tries to convince Julian to let him help investigate a new meta-human that is attacking Central City.
It’s back to the 1960s as Batman and Robin spring into action when Gotham City is threatened by a quartet of Batman’s most fiendish foes – Penguin, The Joker, Riddler and Catwoman. The four Super-Villains have combined their wicked talents to hatch a plot so nefarious that the Dynamic Duo will need to go to outer space (and back) to foil their arch enemies and restore order in Gotham City. It’s a truly fantastic adventure that will pit good against evil, good against good, evil against evil … and feature two words that exponentially raise the stakes for both sides: Replicator Ray. Holy Multiplication Tables!
While investigating the murder of an unregistered alien, Kara and Alex find an alien fight club run by Roulette; Hank tries to get to know M’Gann better; Supergirl begins to train Mon-El.
And that’s a lot of the episode’s focus, about the “Survivors” of various planets and species on Earth trying to make a life. It’s about the aliens that are here attempting to go forward, but being treated as less.
I think there’s also a case to be made that the concept of “survivor,” otherness, and trying to find your own also applies to Alex who clearly is crushing on Maggie. I’m cheering for these two to get together.
Guilty and self-destructive, Lucifer clashes with Chloe during an investigation, leading her to team up with Dan instead. Meanwhile, Amenadiel bonds with Charlotte, and Maze takes Trixie trick-or-treating.
After coming in contact with a substance by the hand of Mad Hatter, Jim Gordon gets led on a psychedelic trip and must confront his past, present and future. Meanwhile, Penguin struggles with Nygma’s new relationship.
Take a look at the cover to this comic; it’s an image that seems to indicate pretty clearly which candidate Valiant would like to see in the Oval Office next year. While it’s not unheard of for comic book characters to openly follow a specific political ideology, I’m reasonably sure that a publisher hasn’t featured a political figure on the cover before an election.
Based on the main cover (to the right), you’d think that the main raw of the comic would be the Faith In Politics, and that’s certainly going to grab the most attention, but it’s actually Dark Star that’s the lead title here, and the first part in the new story arc – so let’s talk about that first, shall we?
Faith In Politics, the reason for the big Election Special header across the front is. To acknowledge the elephant in the corner, yes it is a pro-Clinton story, and depending on your political ideology, that may be an issue for you, but it doesn’t bother me at all. What does bother me is how the story starts strongly before losing steam significantly, and it’s almost entirely because of the dialogue on the final page or so – not the narration boxes (which actually seem very apolitical) and are simply encouraging readers to go vote on November 8th. The encouragement to vote is a good thing, but it’s marred a little by the dialogue that would feel at home in a cheesy movie as Louise Simonson doesn’t quite deliver the quality of dialogue that we’ve seen previously in the series, but Pere Perez delivers a visual treat.