Batman #149 wraps up just about every plot thread introduced over the course of Zdarsky's run so far. In fact, in many ways it feels like the end of a run. There's a sense of closure and looking towards the future with a brand new status quo that you often get from creators as they finish out their time on a title. Now just to be clear, Zdarsky is still scheduled to write the Absolute Power tie-ins after this, and we have no information beyond that. Until more is revealed about the future of Batman (probably at SDCC next month), this issue tries to close the book on the past 25 issues. Spoilers from here on out.
The biggest elephant in the room is what to do with the tiny clone of Bruce that the last issue left running around. Do you turn him into one of the many reoccurring rogues locked up in Arkham? Join up with Bruce-Prime as yet another Robin? Kill him off? Turns out we're going with door number 3, but with a bit of dramatic flair. Whatever cloning technology Zur used to rapidly age clone-Bruce up to adolescence doesn't have an off-switch, and now he's rapidly nearing his death bed. Each scene shows him older than the last as Bruce-Prime tries to find a way to save him.
In a vacuum it works quite well as a tragedy. The scenes which depict clone-Bruce coming to terms with his impending doom are emotional, and make you feel for his plight as someone who never got to fully experience life. They lack Jorge Jiménez's dramatic atmosphere with Michele Bandini and Steve Lieber's more colorful and workmanlike style, but they still usually hit when they need to. Expand on the concept a bit and it could be its own short story.
Where it struggles is in tying it back to the larger story and characters. Up until now, clone-Bruce has had nothing meaningful to do or any relevance to the story. He showed up for a cliffhanger reveal, fought Damian for a bit, and now we're here. The story just drops an entirely new character on the reader and says "he's dying, isn't that sad?" There's nothing there to get invested in, and attempts to tie it back to Bruce-Prime's inability to relinquish control fall flat. What drama there is to be gained from this subplot often rely on odd characterization, like Bruce's apparent inexperience with having doubts, or Damian's dismissal of someone raised in a cloning vat that only exists for a very obvious retort about his own upbringing.
If there's one lasting effect clone-Bruce has, it's his decision to give Bruce-Prime his hand to replace the one he lost. It's so convenient that I almost want to speculate it's his primary reason for existing. That means that Bruce's robot hand (which I constantly forget exists) is finally gone. The lack of fanfare, consequences, or meaning to his having his hand replaced makes me question why it even happened in the first place. The protagonist getting their hand chopped off has often been used as a way to signal the permanent impact of a story, but here it has the opposite effect. He lost his hand, nothing changed, and then he got it back.
The robot hand isn't the only long-running plot thread that this issue brings to a close. Bruce's financial troubles going back to the events of Joker War are gone as well. It turns out that Zur had hidden about 3 billion dollars in off-shore accounts that Bruce now has access to. Once again, the ease at which this is resolved makes the whole exercise feel pointless. "Oh, it turns out I had some extra cash squirreled away under my mattress" is both anticlimactic and arbitrary. The attempts at a status quo where Bruce isn't rich always had plenty of problems. Even of the titles that bothered to acknowledge the change, they never seemed to engage with it in any meaningful way. Nothing really changed. So now just like the metal hand, it becomes yet another mistake that gets swept under the rug.
With the past behind him, what of the future? Well Savage still owns Wayne Manor in addition to acting as Police Commissioner (for however long that lasts), so Bruce uses his newly regained wealth to buy a rundown mansion he turns into "Pennyworth Manor". His plan is to revitalize it along with the surrounding rundown areas, which seems to be the cause du jour along with Dick's efforts in Blüdhaven over in Nightwing. We'll see if this new direction for Bruce ends up more noticeable than the last time he moved.
The bigger change is that Bruce invites most of the bat family to live there with him. This seems odd, though I understand why a writer would find it appealing. It essentially gives Batman his own X-Mansion where he can easily access any of the other members whenever the story calls for it. It also gives you an opportunity for more group scenes of everyone talking together outside of big team-up events.
What makes it odd is that about half of the people Bruce invites to live with him are already full grown adults with their own places. The issue is somewhat sidestepped when he tells Dick that this would be his "Gotham home", but it still doesn't feel quite right. My mom keeps a guest room open for when we come from out of town to visit, but were I to say I lived there, it would certainly feel like a step backwards. X-Men justified their set-up by saying that the senior members returned as teachers to the younger ones, but nothing like that exists here.
Recommended If
- You want to see how all the storylines of Zdarsky's run wrap up
- Status quo changes are interesting
- You're curious as to where the series might go from here
Overall
In what feels like an epilogue to Zdarsky's entire run so far, status quos are reverted and toys are put back in their boxes. Unfortunately, it's all done so haphazardly that it feels like an anticlimax. As everything is wrapped up, it's easy to ask yourself "what was the point of all this" and not come up with a satisfying answer. Hopefully whatever the future of Batman has in store will be more meaningful.
Score: 4/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
