Batman #50
Writer: Scott Snyder
Artists: Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, and FCO with Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn
Cover Artist: Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, and FCO
Publisher: DC
The Batman has returned. The real one, not that old guy in the robot suit. After a brief mental vacation, Bruce Wayne has returned to take up the Cowl, faster and stronger than ever before. This issue was absolutely terrific. It was the perfect balance between amazing action, touching character driven moments, and the culmination of months of story telling. The key to this entire arc, and the reason this finale works so beautifully, is that while Gordon hasn’t been a horrible Batman, he just hasn’t been perfect, and it’s beginning to seem like maybe that was the point. Maybe readers were meant to suffer through a B-List Batman in order to truly appreciate the real Batman. Which isn’t to say that Gordon failed as Batman, quite the opposite really. In fact, in this issue he plays an integral role in taking down Bloom without losing the entire state to that psychopath. However, also in this issue, Scott Snyder illustrates what makes Bruce’s Batman so strikingly different than Gordon’s: when Bruce returns, the people of Gotham take notice and almost immediately regain the courage to stand strong on their own without the use of Bloom’s seeds. And at the end of the day, Greg Capullo draws one badass Batman when it’s Bruce under the cowl. 5/5
Batman and Robin Eternal #25
Writers: James Tynion IV, Scott Snyder, and Steve Orlando
Artists: Javier Pina, Goran Sudžuka, and Chris Sotomayor
Cover Artists: Alvaro Martinez and Raul Fernandez
Publisher: DC
Whoever decided to bring in Midnighter and Cullen Row into this series at this final stage made a wonderful decision. With the two of them being the least emotionally invested in taking down Mother, though Cullen is worried about his sister, it allows them bring a dose of humor and lightheartedness to an otherwise sullen group of heroes. Speaking of the other heroes, Grayson’s team manages to deliver a crucial blow to Mother by neutralizing her army of assassins as well as scaring the sanity back into her army of children. All that’s left now is for Harper to save Cassandra and for Grayson to stop Mother for good. This series started out strong, but somewhere towards the middle, began to struggle. There just wasn’t enough meat to the story to justify the length of the series. However, with the series ending, these last couple of issues has done a nice job of tightening up the story and wrapping things up. 4/5
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Arnab Pradhan
arnab@comicattack.net
