Mortal Remains
Credits:
Doug Moench (writer), Mike Manley (penciler), Joseph Rubenstein
(inker), Ken Bruzenak (letterer), Adrienne Roy (colorist)
Summary:
Batman races to a warehouse owned by the Etchison family, while Robin
uses the Batcave computer to research Abattoir’s most likely hideout.
Robin arrives just in time to see Batman chasing the Abattoir into a
foundry near the warehouse. Inside the foundry, Batman leaves Abattoir
dangling above a vat of liquid metal. Batman has a vision of his father
and St. Dumas arguing over Abattoir’s life. Paralyzed by indecision,
he doesn’t move as Abattoir falls to his death. Robin watches below.
Later, Graham Etchison is killed by Abattoir’s torture device, while
Batman weeps in the Batcave.
Review:
Batman’s inner monologue assures on the first page that “Gunhawk can
wait.” This week, he’s back to chasing the Abattoir. Reading all of
these issues in a row, it’s hard not to laugh at Batman’s sporadic
interest in the Abattoir case. Of course, he’s only veering back and
forth because one of the titles isn’t participating at all in the story,
while the other is only doing so halfheartedly, but it’s still a clumsy
transition. I don’t understand why this arc couldn’t have been
contained to Batman while the other books pursued other stories, unless
DC simply felt that tighter continuity between the titles would help to
sell the overall event. (And judging by the finished product, the
continuity is far from “tight.”)
Moench
opens the issue with yet another reminder that Jean-Paul is not
qualified to be Batman, as he nearly runs over a prostitute while en
route to the Abattoir’s hideout. And, just a few pages later, Robin
helpfully points out that Jean-Paul either doesn’t know or care that
he’s leading more people into the Abattoir’s path by chasing him into
the foundry. But I guess the final nail in Jean-Paul’s career as Batman
comes when he allows Abattoir to die during one of his schizophrenic
freak outs. When Robin finally rats Jean-Paul out, this is the offense
that turns Bruce Wayne against him. Perhaps this story has meandered so
long in order to reach this point in this specific month, allowing
Abattoir’s death to be fresh on the readers’ minds as Bruce Wayne
returns in this month’s Robin.
As
the breaking point in Jean-Paul’s career as Batman, it’s pretty weak.
We already know Jean-Paul is seeing visions, and we already know he’s
cavalier towards human life, so this doesn’t seem like much of an
escalation. If anyone had to die due to Jean-Paul’s incompetence, thank
God it was the Abattoir! And it’s not as if Jean-Paul even decided to
go Charles Bronson on the twisted serial killer; the guy died merely
because Jean-Paul was having a psychotic episode, not out of willful
malice. I think Jean-Paul’s worse crime is not investigating the
warehouse and finding Graham Etchison -- the person he’s been allegedly
trying to rescue for the past three months. And even if Jean-Paul’s too
out of it to search the place, why didn’t Robin? It seems to me that
he has more to answer for than Jean-Paul in this case.
No comments:
Post a Comment