Finally, it ends having convinced me anthologies are less of a place to show new and innovative stories and instead a place where half-baked ideas and filler issues tend to reign far more. With that damning indictment, let’s get into the last issue of The Brave and the Bold.

The Price

Ty Templeton, best known for his long run on the comic book continuation of the beloved Batman animated series of the 90s, brings us a tale of Zatanna and Bat-Mite. When she was young, Zatanna did a magical oopsie, which Bat-Mite saved her from. Due to her understanding of how magic works, she considers Bat-Mite’s antics her responsibility. This gives us quite a few delightful sequences of Zatanna and Bat-Mite one-upping each other in the background of different Batman action moments. I love the passage of time depicted by the different outfits Zee has worn over the years. 

Of course, once Bat-Mite realizes what’s going on, he goes and explains to Zatanna that this wasn’t her cross to bear… by going back to the time when she was a toddler. I loved this little tale of two characters who rarely interact, getting a nice little story for themselves.

Why didn’t we get more of these while the series was ongoing?

Score: 9/10

Man’s Underworld, Part 2

What happened here? Part 1 of this story relied so heavily on previously established continuity to give us an interesting, if not particularly novel, plot. And now, in the 2nd half, we get this new backstory between Plas and Roulette, as well as the fact that Plastic Man is apparently entirely an act by Eel O’Brian that exists to keep his criminal half hidden. Now, someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but this shouldn’t be news to Diana at all. In fact, she found out who Eel was in one of his best stories in the pages of JLA (it’s Divided We Fall for those interested).

The complete 180 baffles me and is a reminder that it isn’t really that hard to adhere to continuity, and not doing so is often a choice.

Score: 5/10

Keep It Down

We get a story focused on the villain Onomatopoeia as we see a glimpse into the twisted mind and motivations of the villain, who loves to do his own sound effects. It's a decent look at an often underutilized villain (though personally, I prefer underutilization to overexposure). In this story, after doing his usual shtick of killing a non-powered superhero, Onomatopoeia thinks he’s being followed by a hero undercover as a maintenance man. 

I do think the ending is a bit confusing as I’m not exactly sure what happened and what I’m supposed to think about another maintenance man showing up at the end. Also, the fact that Onomatopoeia’s habit of making sound effects while talking is apparently psychological may contrast with his actions in Widening Gyre where he talked normally as Baphomet. This is probably a story that could have used a second part to elaborate on these things, but alas.

Score: 7/10

Hive Mind, Part 2

So it turns out the Red wanted to give Maxine a crash course on how the Animal Kingdom works and decided to give her a bunch of nightmares. It does take a rather somber tone, and the comic has a good message — helped immensely by the beautiful and occasionally trippy visuals — but it does seem odd that Maxine wasn’t unaware of these aspects of nature considering her history (another recommendation Jeff Lemire’s New52 Animal Man run).

Score: 6/10

The Tattoo

Cover artist for the entire series Simone Di Meo gives us the final story in this entire anthology, which is about Bruce having nightmares about getting tattoos all over his body. It is actually decently unsettling as Bruce keeps finding newer tattoos all over his body, but the explanation just falls flat, as it appears to be that Bruce has trauma. It's not a novel idea, but one that could be fleshed out a bit. Except, it is very clear, Di Meo just couldn’t think of a good enough way to do that and just has Alfred (who is here because why not) tell Bruce that they will work things through together. At least, I appreciate that Di Meo got the chance to say goodbye in his own way to a series he had been working on for so long. 

Score: 5/10

Recommended If

• You’re a fan of Ty Templeton’s work
• You’ve been collecting this series
• I dunno, maybe you have a little extra cash to splurge for the holidays

Overall

The Brave and the Bold ends on a decent, if flat, final issue. The opening story with Zatanna and Bat-Mite was genuinely fun and creative and what I would like to see more of in anthologies like this. However, I’m not too sad to see this series go and hopefully, we get something different later down the line.

Score: 6/10

Disclaimer: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of review.