Batman: Europa

Batman is finally taking that long awaited European vacation and he has brought a friend.  So fun.

"Batman Europa" has been a long gestating project.  By some accounts this project has been in the works for the past ten or eleven years. Fingers have been pointed at the artist Jim Lee but sometimes a talent such as his is hard to corral given the high demand for his work.

So how does it look after such a long wait?  Let's take a look.


The End?

Our story begins with a struggle between the oldest of foes, Batman and his arch nemesis, the Joker.  The reader may think they are locked in mortal combat but as the story plays out, we may actually learn this is but a prequel to the end.  And despite their grievous wounds they are actually trying to help each other out.


A Killer Beginning

Writers Casali and Azzarello have a few flips and twists in store for us not the least of which is the cold opening we were treated to.  The actual beginning is a bit of a flashback where the Dark Knight finds himself locked in a struggle with Killer Croc and the scales of this conflict aren't in Batman's usual favor.

 

Croc isn't necessarily a pushover, but Batman is having a harder time than usual subduing the toothy one.  This is what provides him with his first clue that something isn't right.

Alfred has called Batman back to the Batcave and to his astonishment the Batcomputer has been infected with a virus.  Simultaneously, Alfred deduces the virus on the computer mirrors the ailment that has afflicted Batman and the infection is likely fatal to both.

Casali and Azzarello do a narrative quick step here.  While seeming like a bit of a cheat to hurry the story along it also serves to highlight Lee's artwork and get us to those flips and twists I spoke of earlier.

With Batman under the weather, Alfred's intuition provides a break for the Dark Knight and his inference into the humor involved sets Batman across the globe.  (If you've read the comic not only does Alfred provide much needed detective skills but his reward is to prep the Batwing.  Anything else you need Batman?  Dinner perhaps?)


On To Berlin!

Thanks to the Batcomputer and the ever resourceful Alfred, the virus is traced back to Berlin.  Batman is forced to do some leg work on his own (Yes, that was a mild dig at Batman's over-reliance on Alfred.)

I shouldn't be so tough on Batman here.  This is one of the 'flips" I was referring to earlier.  Casali and Azzarello have Batman at about 75 per cent and it is refreshing to see Alfred provide the much needed brain work and help point Batman in the right direction.  

Alfred isn't a superhero, he's just invaluable.


Enter The Clown Prince

 
Easy on your manservant Caped Crusader, he's gotten you this far.

Batman enters a local night club trailing a lowlife hood.  What he finds is the not so funny aftermath to the Joker's handiwork.
  

We get a brief history lesson on the "duality" of Berlin, how two cities, Collon and Berlin, were forced together into an unlikely alliance that morphed into something no one could predict. 

This serves as a narrative precursor into one of the major twists to the Europa story line but it doesn't exactly explain how Batman ultimately finds out where the Joker is.

Maybe I should ask Alfred. 

No worries, Batman finds the Joker and makes a grand entrance in his own particular idiom.

Batman and the Joker do their usual pas-de-duex.  Trading jibes, trading bullets and trading punches.

Actually, the punches are a little one sided with the Joker taking the recieiving end of many knuckle sandwiches which leads us to this little reveal.

Yes, the Joker has the virus too.

You may not be surprised to learn there is a woman involved.  What is surprising is the Joker got to her first.  (Another flip.)  After getting someone to spill his guts (literally) the Joker got him to spill the beans.  The young and lovely Nina came into a lot of money but when you stand up against Batman and the Joker you'd better come up with the truth.

She confesses she know where the trail leads next and it is Prague. 

Thus gives us our biggest twist of them all.

 

Batman and the Joker working together.


Conclusion

Overall I found the first installment of Europa to be an uneven but intriguing effort.  Having two of comic books most ardent antagonists teaming up isn't the most original idea but placing them out of their regular milieu and having the clock tick down on them is compelling.  

The way the narrative skipped ahead was a bit jarring at times but it can be forgiven given the captivating nature of the artwork by Jim Lee and his team.

I really liked the "Cyber-green" palette Lee and his colorist Alex Sinclair employed.  It made many of the panels a bit antiseptic and digitally cold.  It was also was evocative of the Joker and his hair.  Not to mention the reptilian menace of Killer Croc.

 

I always loved how Jim Lee has drawn Batman.  Here we get a unique look at Batman springing into action.  Arms crossed over the chest instead of the usual spread wing look.

    
Lee and Sinclair employ a watercolor and pastel aesthetic to some of the panels also.  Seen above is a good example.  The eye tends to linger on the panels adding depth to an otherwise thin story line.

Perspective is always appreciated.  Here we have the Bat perched high atop the "Siegessaeule" statue that dominates the Berlin skyline.  (At least we think it is the Siegessaeule.  Some of the details are off, but where else could he be?  Tip of the cowl to uber friend Eileen for her help.)


Part one of four "Berlin" get three out of five "Batwings" as a rating.  On to Prague and perhaps more depth and no doubt some great art.

 

(Another tip of the Cowl to artist "Jerhler" over at Deviantart for the Batwings.  Here's the link.  )

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Batman #44 and #45

I'm doing a little double duty with this review.  Since I am late with Batman #44, I thought I might throw in a review of Batman #45 while I am at it.

Batman #44

I do my best to avoid reviews of comics that I am also reviewing lest they prejudice my own opinions.  That being said, sometimes it hard to avoid the digital leviathan that is the internet.

I had read that issue #44 of Batman was a rewind of sorts that take a break from the lost Bruce Wayne and Mr. Bloom story line.

That's fine, I'm sure Snyder and DC want to prolong this particular script as Wayne adopts his new life outside the cowl and pursue the fate of Gotham as the Gordon Batman struggles to keep the city in one piece.

In doing so we make a brief return to the Bruce Wayne Batman as he gets embroiled in street level crime that leads him down a darker and larger path.

A good portion of the story involve the fate of one Peter Duggio.

Duggio is just a kid trying to make it right on the streets of Gotham that even that city has forgotten.  That, my friends, is as about as low as even Gotham can go.

 
The internet was quick to point out the topical nature of a portion of this story and how it deals with "Black Lives Matter."  Indeed, kudos should go out to Scott Snyder for including something so relevant that it sadly appears on almost a daily basis.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where violence is the first option  and the police feel so besieged that they reflexively turn to the gun.  It is left to the bereaved, media and the courts to sort things out.

Frankly, it is a sad epidemic mess.

Where Snyder goes wrong is his introduction of Mr. Bloom into the story.

 As Snyder would have it, Bloom already exists in the Batman universe.  He is not the Joker reincarnated (as I had predicted) but someone trying to make a name for himself as a low life peddler  of some bizarre addictive chemical concoction.

This isn't strictly a ret-con but more a reverse introduction of a character that has always been in the Batman universe.  It's just that we the readers never knew of him.

Sorry, but I find this annoying.  I'd prefer Batman's world be expanded as we grow to know him and as time progresses.  Not as part of a rewind.  It just seems less inventive to me to insert parts to a mythology that we are already steeped in just to find out we don't know as much as we thought.

Our story takes a freakish turn when the afflicted Peter, in his zeal to escape the mean streets of Gotham, grows Bat-wings (ironic symbolism?) and finds himself nearly vaulted outside the city limits.

I thought it ludicrous.

Yes, I get it.  He wanted to fly and he nearly made out of the hell that Gotham was to him.

But Bat-wings?  That's a bit too on the nose.

Surely Snyder is showing us the new menace that is Mr. Bloom's concoction but the "re-invention timeline" and the wings threw me for a loop.

In the end Batman learned a hard lesson.  He used this experience to connect with the forgotten youth of Gotham and it drew a through line between what happened here and the amnesiac Bruce Wayne working at the home for disadvantageous youth we saw in Batman #43.  And, yes, that through line connect it all to Mr. Bloom.

But, really, bat-wings?


Batman #45

As we continue our journey into the rediscovery of Batman I get the impression Scott Snyder wants us to see Batman as something elemental, something born of youth.  

Of course, the foundation of what was to become Batman started with Bruce Wayne as a youth and the murder of his parents.  But I think Snyder wants to change the perspective on this old tale and see Batman through a new lens.

Bruce Wayne is an adult now with his slate wiped clean.  Yet he is constantly surrounded by youth and one could say he has a naivete unfettered by his tragic past.  

It's as if Snyder wants to see what Batman would be like without his youth yet have the mantle of Batman forced upon him.

That should be interesting.

Our story returns to the present with the Jim Gordon Batman battling for his life.  He is nearly consumed by flames and the message seems to be Batman is, or can be, forged by the elemental nature of fire or at least the flames of combat.

While Gordon is adept at getting himself in and out of trouble it is the remotely controlled empty suit that comes to his rescue.  Here Snyder may be saying the new Batman may be as much suit as the man inside it.  (See my examination of the mind of Batman and his costume at the link.)

Gordon narrowly escapes death with the help of Daryl and our tale reverts back to Bruce Wayne.

Has Batman become a dinosaur?    A thing of the distant past?  Extinct?  The amnesiac Bruce Wayne ponders the past he knows little of.   Again, Snyder positions Wayne as someone looking at himself from the outside instead of within.

He knows nothing of Batman but he is aware of attack on Gotham by the Joker and the detritus left behind.  Wayne looks upon the artifacts as curiosities and is at first dismissive of them.

What were once trophies are now some much garbage.  Relics of a bygone era with little meaning aside from their obvious extinct nature.

However, the reach of evil is never too far away in Gotham.  

As Wayne ponders the meaning of his existence his stand-in, Jim Gordon, is getting a rude lesson into the elemental nature of what it is to be Batman.

Quite literally.

The movers and shakers pf Gotham know their city is in constant danger but sadly can't see the forest for the trees.

In their quest to find the ultimate protector for Gotham they've broken down what it is to be Batman to the minutest detail. 

They are so convinced of their findings they can't see that Batman is much greater than the some of his parts even at the atomic level they have distilled him down to.

As a counterpoint, Wayne believes Gotham can be saved by serving its youth.

He's taken the remnants of the battlefield and turned them into object of amusement.  Why dwell on the past and be consumed by it when you can transform it into something much more benign and less threatening?

Because, as I said, evil is never that far away in Gotham.

As Gotham congratulates itself in it's reinvention of Batman, Mr. Bloom makes his grand and murderous entry.

Gotham is fortunate Gordon has a much better understanding of what it is to be Batman than the arrogant city he serves.

Batman is not just an empty suit.  Nor is he something that can be reinvented by by people on the outside trying to look in.  

Snyder's lens wants to discover Batman in a new way.  There is something elemental about Batman.  But it is organic, something found within, not recreated from without.  

Wayne will have to discover what it is to be Batman again and he'll have to do it without the benefit of his youth.  Instead, he'll have to see it through the eyes of the children he's surrounded himself with.  Snyder's exploration into what it is to be Batman is an interesting tact.  


Batman #46 should be very compelling indeed.

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The New, New Batmen!

(Spoiler alert for the new Batman identities)

There is always a new Batman isn't there?  Pictured above is the new Jim Gordon Batman from

Batman #42.  He's the one in the blue armor.

The other "Bat-being" is a street crud manifestation created to combat Gordon by a thug called Gee Gee Heung.  I loved the frame so much I had to include it in this post.

So, you heard that right, Jim Gordon is the new Batman while the old Batman is purportedly dead.

Of course Batman isn't really dead.  As Bruce Wayne, he is volunteering at a center for disadvantaged youth.   And he really doesn't want to be bothered anymore.

(There's a great preview of Batman #43 over at io9 if you want to see how very reluctant Wayne is.)

As for the Gordon Batman, he a sanctioned vigilante working with the Gotham City police force.  Pity that could have never happened with the old Batman.  Too rough for their tastes?  Gordon has trimmed the trademark mustache and cropped the hair to look more battle ready.  He does a team working with him consisting of Alfred the butler's long lost daughter, Julia, and tech guy named Daryl.  The team is pretty new and the are still working out the kinks.

I'll guess we'll have to see how long it will be before the Bruce Wayne Batman will be back.  No doubt it will take some great misfortune to force him back into the cape and cowl.

Our second Batman is Dick Grayson only he is not of this world.

We all know Dick Grayson as the original Robin.  I've always loved the iterations of the Grayson Batman.  He's abley filled the cape and cowl and bemused his allies with a sense of humor the Wayne Batman never had.

This Grayson is the Earth 2 Dick Grayson.  He was married to Barbara Gordon who tragically died when Earth 2 was attacked by Apokolips.  They did have a son however, John.

Grayson was severely injured during the Convergence story line losing the use of his legs.  A being named Telos restored the use of Grayson's legs by covering them with a metallic like film.

Now Grayson patrols the streets of New Gotham City on the newly restored Earth 2.

The costume isn't bad but it isn't as threatening as the Thomas Wayne Batman that preceded Grayson.

Now this guy was a tough SOB.  Sadly he died foiling the Earth 2 Joker's master plan.  I suppose Grayson wanted to look a little less evil than his predecessor.

I saved the best Batman for last.

What, you haven't heard Batman is a God now?

Or should we say "Bat-God."

This is the Justice League of America version of Batman.  He's still the Bruce Wayne Batman.  Apparently the "Darkseid War" story line for the JLA book is happening just outside the narrative that is going on in the Batman issue I started this review with.

That's the comics for you.

Batman made the mistake of touching the chair of Metron (an other worldly being that drifts between New Genesis and Apokolips observing the Universe.)  Now he sits astride the chair in command of great power and knowledge.

What does one do with great knowledge?

Learn the Joker's real name.

I don't know what I am looking forward to in the next edition of JLA, Batman as a God or finding out who the Joker really is!

Batman has gone through a lot of changes through the ages.  He's taken on many roles and many identities.  If there is one constant to the Dark Knight he can never be said to be boring.

Bat -God!

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