Rather than show a few scans and say what was good or bad about the book, I'm going to recount all of the good fight scenes because honestly, these three books are nothing BUT big running fight scenes and there's not much plot to discuss.
FIGHT ONE: Deadman VS. Etrigan/Jason Blood
WINNER: Deadman, who is actually able to possess Etrigan long enough to make him an effective fighting-force against the Black Lanterns in Gotham.
FIGHT TWO: Batman, Red Robin and Deadman Vs. A Whole Lot of Black Lanterns, including The Zombie Flying Graysons and Tim Drake's Zombie Parents.
WINNER: TKO to The Batman Family, who freeze themselves alive with a stolen Mr. Freeze gun in order to slow their vitals to the point of the death, causing the Black Lanterns to disperse.
The best of the three tie-in mini-series so far. Small surprise since it is the only one written by one of the main Green Lantern authors. Tomasi sneaked a few references to his Nightwing run into this book and it is all the richer for it. Definitely worth reading.
This issue was my favorite Non-Lantern tie-in. Getting to watch Tim try to convince himself he could save his dad was heartbreaking in the best way. Took the taste of Batman #691 out of my mouth.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention Dick's confronting Zombie Boss Zucco.
ReplyDeleteOh, man, I'd nearly forgotten. And I love how much Deadman got to play along with everyone. It was so good.
ReplyDeleteI was a little thrown by Alfred helping Jim get settled in the bunker. Looked like Jim was under his own power, and it seems a major slip for Alfred not to stay tucked away or throw on a costume or something. Or does Jim know the whole shebang now and just plays dumb? I know there was a scene where Bruce unmasked, but Jim had turned away.
Well, I haven't read any Batman books regularly since the days of Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, so I can't say for sure.
ReplyDeleteI do remember Deadman refering to Babs as "your old girlfriend" while Jim was present, which I thought was a bit of a gaffe but definitely something Deadman would slip up by accident since Boston does know everyone's secrets and has kind of a big mouth.
The way I figure it is this: Jim definitely knows about Babs being Oracle, according to Birds of Prey. He had already figured out her being Batgirl but he never told her that he knew until fairly recently. Given that Jim was canny enough to figure out his own daughter's secret identity, I imagine he could easily puzzle out Batman and Nightwing and Robin if given a good reason.
The main reason he doesn't is that what he doesn't know can't be used against the local vigilantees. I think Jim keeps himself willfully ignorant since there are any number of chemical geniuses and telepaths in Gotham who COULD get the information out of him one way or the other. There's also the consideration of how he can honestly say he doesn't know who Batman and his associates are if pressed on the issue by anti-vigilantee politicans and lawyers.
Make sense?
Perfect. Matches my own theory pretty well, actually. I do love that Jim most certainly knows-but-doesn't-know. It's such a great piece of the character to play with.
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