Batman #24 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Greg Capullo (pencils), Danny Miki (inks), FCO Plascencia (colors) and Nick Napolitano (letters)

Back-up by: Snyder & James Tynion (writers), Rafael Albuquerque (art), Dave McCaig (colors) and Taylor Esposito (letters)

The Story: Batman finally hatches his plan to take down the Red Hood.

Review (with SPOILERS): Boom!  Batman is really back!

I’ve had difficulties enjoying the first several issues of Zero Year (beginning with issue #21 in June).  It was the first Bat-related story from Scott Snyder that I haven’t LOVED (since he started working on Detective Comics  in the Old 52).  It was weird and shocking for me NOT to think the Snyder/Capullo Batman was among the Top 10 comics in current publication.  I just didn’t enjoy revisiting Batman’s origin for a whole pile of reasons that you can find in those older reviews.  Mostly it was because the origin conflicted with my preferred Old 52 origins and the fact that Bruce Wayne stories are usually less interesting than Batman stories.  Has there ever been a comic called Bruce Wayne: The Death of the Parents #1?  No… Well, there’s probably a reason for that.  Bruce is less than Batman.

This issue does a couple of really snappy things that recover the magic that Snyder, Capullo, et al were delivering pre-Zero Year.

• Clever use of Villains’ Month #1: Snyder managed to break his bigger Zero Year story nicely before the Villains’ Month break.  It’s been ~6 weeks since Batman #23 came out and that hiatus allowed the close of Act I of Zero Year to really sink in.  It actually felt like Bruce Wayne had been dead and gone for awhile.  A big part of this issue was the emergence of this mysterious vigilante in Gotham who scares all the criminals.  I think if this issue comes out in mid-September (i.e. keeping to the 4-week release schedule), it would be too soon and wouldn’t feel quite as fresh.  This issue needed some distance from issue #23 for us to feel like Bruce is gone, Red Hood is running amok and now this new Batman is on the scene.  This is one of those cases where I feel sorry for people who will read this comic in collected edition because serialization has some magic qualities that you can’t recapture later.  Time matters and the creative team has used that time masterfully.  I’m just going to go out on a limb and bet that not everyone ongoing interrupted by Villains’ Month was so slick and thoughtful.
• Clever use of Villains’ Month #2: I read those Batman #23.X stories and except for the Riddler story, they were really mediocre.  Even the Riddler story was kinda extraneous.  They’re the kind of comics that I try not to read anymore.  One of the hardest things about reviewing Scott Snyder books regularly is that they are unrelentingly good.  I’ve reviewed almost every Bat-story he’s ever written and every issue of American Vampire and a lot of his other works over the last few years.  The guy just doesn’t chuck out crummy issues and from a reviewing standpoint, you adjust your expectations to assume that it is “average” for Snyder to be incredible.  It isn’t just a case where it’s hard to come up with new vocabulary for “another great issue”…..it’s a case where you can become numb to the excellence in front of you.  So, Villains’ Month shoveled out some standard cafeteria food and suddenly I really enjoy my Grade A steak again.  Sometimes you have to recalibrate the equipment or you take things for granted!
• It’s Batman!: This issue is about Batman.  Most of the Bruce Wayne navel-gazing stuff is gone.  Some people like that stuff….I don’t.  This issue is all Batman as he takes down the bad guys.  In fact, the only place where the issue hiccups is when Bruce Wayne starts to talk about the spirit of Gotham.  I’m still not enjoying the Bruce Wayne focus, but that part is pretty brief.

There are so many cool things that happen in this issue.  I loved how the battle with Red Hood happened at the old Ace Chemical plant and how it ended with Red Hood #1 falling into a vat of chemicals.  So, he’s the Joker…..right?  Or maybe he isn’t?  Maybe that wasn’t really Red Hood #1?  I love the delightful vagueness!  My message to Snyder is that you have it perfectly balanced right THERE.  Nobody breathe, nobody move, tip-toe away from the scene….  If you touch it again, you better be careful because it could make a real mess.  That isn’t to say that Joker can’t show up in 5 issues and make some oblique reference to falling into a chemical bath, but I hope the explicit events are never revealed.

I also loved how a younger, politically unpopular Jim Gordon got tossed into the mess.  It’s a great scene where the Commissioner sends in Gordon because he obviously thinks Gordon is an annoying pain in the ass that he deserves such crappy details.  A lot of the magic of Batman over the years has been the partnership between Gordon and Batman, so you can’t really have a story about the birth of Batman without also showing the beginnings of that relationship.  Nice that Gordon did try to arrest Batman at one point, but quickly shifted to ignoring him when there were bigger fish to fry……he knows that Batman isn’t the real threat.

Lastly, I loved the back-up (which is really more of a continuation).  Throughout Zero Year, the snippets of Riddler working for Wayne Industries haven’t really fit with the bigger story.  Now it all makes sense.  Seeing him black-out the whole city brings us closer to seeing more of that Road Warrior Batman from issue #21.  Remember that?  Batman… sleeves ripped off his uniform, riding a Bat-dirt bike with a crossbow on his back?  That vision of Road Warrior Batman was so cool.  It reminded me of those DC stories where someone peers into the multiverse and sees all the different versions of Batman and (as a reader) you think, “Gosh….I’d like to read some stories about THAT guy.”  Well….maybe we’re closer to making that happen.

The art is just off the chain (again).  I always say nice things about Greg Capullo and Danny Miki.  They’re HOT again.  So many great visuals, cool page constructions, nifty panel layouts and….my goodness do the fight scenes look GREAT.  Capullo is really the best in the business as drawing a fight scene.  His Batman actually looks like a big-ass, powerful man putting a beating on smaller, weaker men.  Some of it is down to how well Capullo captures dynamic bodies in motion, but some is also due to details in the drawing…..like Batman’s full-lugged combat boots.  These aren’t those shapeless booties that superheroes usually wear…..no sir…..they look like something he had Alfred buy at an Army/Navy Store.  And he is kicking people in the face with them.  Ouch!  Love how Danny Miki is able to ink this stuff without ruining it.  But, Capullo also manages to do these exquisite landscapes….like the outside of the ACE Chemical plant of an overhead view of Gotham that actually looks like Gotham.  Lots of artists butcher these scenes…..where there are mismatches between the altitude of the observer and the angles of the ground below; our eyes just KNOW when it is wrong, but we can also recognize when it is “right”.  As for the colors, I just discovered a supercool trick for us iPad readers: hit that button that switches to thumbnails of all the pages and check out the color palate of the entire comic.  Man….all kinds of bright pinks and blues in some parts of the comics, darks in the cave sequences.  FCO is a really gifted colorist.  I can see why Capullo likes to work with him.

The back-up art is great too.  Honestly, I have a hard time being objective about it because I see 11 pages of Batman from Albuquerque and wish I had 11 pages of American Vampire.  But, when he is done with AV, he could totally be the “main Batman artist”.  If Capullo is still cranking out Batman, it even might be enough to get me to buy a second Bat-title.  Albuquerque is darker and moodier than Capullo/Miki.  They’re really not congruous art styles at all, and if Albuquerque were a weaker artist, that mismatch would sink the back-up.  But he’s strong enough that he just powers through.  I love how much character his people have.  They just look like people who might be a little dirty….since they are in a cave.

Conclusion: A STRONG return to top-of-the-stack status for Batman.  Do more of THIS.

Grade: A

-Dean Stell