So this week I was given an interesting assignment. Al(Our own, Red Lanyard) and another friend of mine, Harry, were asking about what was going on in the Batman Comics these days and I’m not entirely sure if they wanted Batman or Detective Comics but I’m gonna give them Batman because we’re coming up on a momentous occasion for the Dark Knight in the main Batman comic and unfortunately I haven’t been able to catch up on Detective but I’d be happy to do that at a later date.
This article will contain spoilers for Tom King’s run on Batman from #1-#24. I will be going over the stories and giving short summaries of them, for a few, I won’t be able to do them proper Justice but if you like the sound of them then you should go out to your local store and pick up some of these great books! Tom King is the man!
Tom King was given the unenviable task of following Scott Snyder’s groundbreaking run on Batman and I personally think he was the best person for the job and I’m happy to go over why that is.
At first I was concerned that King was just doing old stories whenever the solicits said something to the effect of “Is Batman the hero that Gotham needs?” but then I read it and realized that King was able to take a classical premise and definitely make it his own. His first 20 issues focus predominantly on the Batman Vs. Bane storyline and they do so in a brilliant way. Batman is made out to be the ultimate strategist in these issues and runs his operation like a military man. It’s honestly a perfect way to do his first year. The Basic Premise is that Bruce discovers two new Meta-Humans that are siblings named Gotham and Gotham Girl.(A bit on the nose, but I always felt like this was intentional) These two were given powers by Hugo Strange and effectively, they’re dying. Their Powers are literally killing them and while Gotham Girl understands this, her brother goes power mad and ends up killing himself in the process. This makes Gotham Girl kinda go off the deep end, she keeps trying to save the city and help people but it’s still slowly killing her. Bruce tries to help her but he realizes that he won’t be able to in the same way that Psycho Pirate could.(Psycho Pirate is a man who controls your every emotion so he’s pretty powerful.) He finds out that Psycho Pirate is being held by Bane on Santa Prisca and builds the weirdest Suicide Squad in history The Ventriloquist, Punch and Jewlee, Bronze Tiger and Catwoman. Once Again, Batman proves that he is a military genius because it works and they get Psycho Pirate out after Catwoman breaks Bane back. I won’t spoil the rest of his plan because it’s definitely worth tracking down and reading for yourself. They save Gotham Girl but now Bane wants revenge and that leads him to coming to Gotham and attacking members of the Bat-Family. Batman and him go toe to toe in one of the more brutal fights I’ve ever seen in Comics which lead to this moment which I just love :
Yeah. Fantastic Line but it’s second to the line where Bane is taunting him and telling him that the only reason Batman wanted to save Gotham Girl was because he felt guilty over inspiring them to heroics. Batman keeps telling him that’s not it. Bruce keeps hallucinating his mother during the fight and it’s at the end of the issue that we find out Bruce’s actual response to the question of why he goes out as Batman : “The girl needed help. So I helped her. That’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been.” I love this line and I love that it’s the perfect explanation of who Batman is as a character. Absolutely brilliant. Great finale to Tom King’s first big storyline.
Next up, we have “The Button” which seems like the stupidest name for a comic ever until you realize what button they’re referring to.
Yup, that button.(Side Note, doesn’t it look like someone invited them to a Watchmen themed party and served Cookies that Bruce and Barry are just highly suspect about? Let that stew for a bit before moving on and you’ll never see that cover the same way.) Anyway, if you didn’t know, The Watchmen characters have invaded the DC Universe and this was first realized whenever Bruce finds the Comedian’s pin in a wall in the Bat-cave. Together, Bruce and Barry try to discover the secrets behind the button but not before Reverse Flash comes out of nowhere, beats the crap out of Batman and then just takes it. He runs off into an alternate dimension and then returns looking like Gus at the end of Season 4 of Breaking Bad(If you didn’t already know about this spoiler then it’s your own fault.) and says that he saw god. Most of us fans take this as he saw Dr. Pretentious…whoops, I mean Dr. Manhattan and Manhattan just fried half of him for being impure or something weird like that. I don’t know, I don’t really like Watchmen and this was the first comic where I felt like the writers didn’t know what they were doing. It was a crossover with The Flash which was and(As of this writing) still is being written by Joshua Williamson who has done some fantastic things with this book but on this one it just seemed pretty sloppy until Bruce and Barry decide to chase whatever killed Reverse Flash through dimensions. This leads them to the Flashpoint world where Thomas Wayne is basically the only Major hero left alive.(If you haven’t read Flashpoint/The Early books of The New 52 then this is about to get confusing but I can do another article later.) He talks about how he had hoped that after Barry fixed the world and created The New 52 that he would simply cease to exist and therefore gain peace but he doesn’t. He has to stay there and keep fighting until Bruce and Barry show up right as the world is actually ending. There’s a lot of really heartfelt moments between the three men and Thomas begs Bruce to stop being Batman before the pair return home. The duo are flying through the Speed Force when they see Reverse Flash before he was killed and they try to save him but he runs past them and then we watch him get attacked and sent back to the beginning of the story. Then they get back to The Batcave and see Jay Garrick show up but Barry can’t save him because Barry isn’t his lightning rod…which is fine but we haven’t seen Jay since. It’s like they forgot about him. The Button ends with Bruce looking up, seeing the signal and questioning if he should go out there. Which, to me, negates everything about The quote about saving people but that’s just me. Plus, we know he’s not done but still, what was the point of this story?
Tom King then decides to have 2 quick single issue stories that work really well for the series because you basically get two really personal stories for Bruce. One where he discusses morality and soul with Swamp Thing and then the one where he proposes to Selina. This is where King shines for me, when he’s able to push everything else away and really focus on what works for the character.
Anyway, we finally move on to the season finale for Tom King’s first year. The issue is a great end-cap to everything tha has come before because it’s Bruce and Gotham Girl discussing what it mean to be happy and have a purpose to fulfill. Bruce sets up Gotham Girl with a teacher so that she can learn how to be a hero without using her powers. At the end of the issue, Bruce ultimately decides that he’s going to propose to Selina Kyle. There’s been a side story of Bruce and Selina all throughout King’s run including the fantastic 2-parter : “Rooftops” which is where Selina explains how she let herself be framed for Murder so that someone else could go free. That will come into play in the next article which will be out tomorrow!
Thanks for reading! Let me know if there’s anything else you wanna read about!
