Batman #29 - A Review

After my review of Batman #28, Scott Snyder sent me a private message on Twitter.  He thanked me for the kind review and also addressed my complaint that the Batman: Zero Year storyline had been subverted for a month to give us a preview of Batman: Eternal. This after months of relatively slow build-up and a lot of telling us how dangerous The Riddler was without really showing us much of anything.

The action picks up in 29.  Promise. :)

The action picks up, he says.  Boy, is that an understatement!


Batman #29 is pretty much all action and those who were annoyed by the slow boil of previous issues will be gratified to see that the wait was worth it.  Yet there is much more to this issue than base thrills - though the scenes with Batman piloting his new Bat Blimp toward The Riddler's airborne base in the middle of a thunderstorm are thrilling.  There's also a number of nods - in both the text and the art - to the rich legacy of Batman.  Some - like the existence of the Gotham City Police Blimps - are subtle and unlikely to draw much comment.  Others, like one of Capullo and Miki's splash pages - are blatant in their homage.


I don't want to spoil any more of this issue than that but I will say it was gratifying to see Scott Snyder do something with this story I don't think has been done with Batman in a long time.  This is a must-read comic for all fans of the genre and the character.  It is also surprisingly accessible to new readers, given how much material was required to build up to this point.