Wild Knights, Wild City
Credits: Alan Grant (writer), Bret Blevins (penciler & inker), Todd Klein (letterer), Adrienne Roy (colorist)
Summary:
Catwoman is injured while leaping off Selkirk’s helicopter. Batman
jumps off to save her, while the helicopter crashes into the top of a
bridge. Jean-Paul confronts Batman once again, but accidentally sets
himself on fire when his flame weapon touches leaking helicopter fuel.
After he falls into the river, Robin and Nightwing unsuccessfully
search for him. Batman and Catwoman rescue Selkirk and his men. To
spite Catwoman, Selkirk throws the neural enabler into the river.
Later, Batman hacks his way into the Batmobile, unaware that Jean-Paul
booby-trapped it. Jean-Paul reemerges, boasting that now there is only
one Batman.
Irrelevant Continuity: Gordon is in his office when he’s informed of the fire and explosions at Selkirk’s penthouse. This contradicts Batman #510, which had Gordon getting berated by Mayor Krol when the news comes in.
“Huh?” Moment:
The blue portions of Jean-Paul’s armor turn red after he’s set on
fire. It remains that color until the end of the storyline.
Review:
More of the same, only more time is killed by giving Batman a fake
death scene. The next chapter plays the concept straight during the
opening pages, even though I doubt anyone fell for the bait. (The
solicitations for the finale in Legends of the Dark Knight
#63 had been out for months at this point, so everyone knew that Bruce and Azrael
were having their big fight at the end of this month.) Looking back,
I’m kind of surprised DC didn’t go for a serious attempt at killing off
Bruce at some point in this event. After building up the drama of Bruce
picking the wrong replacement, what happens if Bruce dies before he can
rectify his mistake? I could see the creators getting a few months of
material out of the concept. (Perhaps the “Death of Superman” event
automatically ruled out any attempt to seriously sell Bruce’s death,
though.) Regardless, we’re marking more time with repetitive action
scenes and a cliffhanger that fools no one. I understand that Alan
Grant was bored out of his mind having to work on this material, but I
wish he could’ve found some way to break up the monotony.
No comments:
Post a Comment