Midnight Duel
Credits: Chuck Dixon (writer), Graham Nolan (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), John Costanza (letterer), Adrienne Roy (colorist)
Summary:
Gunhawk holds a hospital hostage, demanding his girlfriend Bunny be
treated for her gunshot wound. He responds violently to any efforts by
the police to intervene, leading Batman to directly confront him. After
an intense firefight, Batman tackles Gunhawk down a staircase and
knocks him unconscious.
Irrelevant
Continuity: The new weapon created at the end of Shadow of the Bat #28
was apparently a shuriken shooter that works like a machine gun; or
perhaps the new creation was intended to be the flamethrower Batman
debuts this issue.
Gimmicks: An foil-embossed cover of the issue was also shipped.
Review:
Inserting the resolution to the Abattoir arc in-between the two
chapters of this story does it no favors, although Dixon tries his best
to make it work. My favorite example is a nurse asking Gunhawk why he’s
waited two days to take Bunny to the hospital. “We were kind of on the
run, y’know?” Meanwhile, the death of Abattoir has apparently freed
Jean-Paul from whatever inhibitions he previously held, as his narration
now seems even more Punisher-esque. Once again, the shift towards
standard vigilante and away from crazed loon brainwashed by an ancient
religious order makes Jean-Paul a more tolerable protagonist. While
Gunhawk remains a one-note villain, Dixon is able to get some material
out of the obsession with weaponry he shares with Jean-Paul, and the
scenes focusing on how the police deal with a hostage situation at a
hospital are pretty interesting. This is also one of Nolan’s strongest
issues, as he excels at drawing relentless action scenes and the
somewhat plausible, but still comic booky, weapons used during the
fight. I’m still not convinced this arc needed to be reprinted at the
expense of more “significant” issues, but it’s entertaining on a very
basic level.
Holy cow, that cover... yeesh.
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