After a brief diversion last month focusing on Batman's investigation to exonerate Jim Gordon, the story now returns to the larger plot concerning Riddler's attempts to buy Wayne Enterprises along with the political unrest facing Gotham. Heading into the issue, there are a lot of seemingly disconnected threads that need to be tied together. Bruce has a new long lost brother, Riddler owns a megacorporation that is taking over Gotham, Commander Star is acting as some mysterious new hero while working with both the Mayor and possibly the Court of Owls, and all of this is happening while protests fill the streets. You'd think it would be too much to handle with only two issues left. However, what if I told you it was all connected via a single, very annoying cause?
With Gordon's innocence affirmed by the discovery of mind control technology in his glasses, Batman rushes off to confront the Riddler. As for Gordon himself, he still needs to find Koyuki and inform her of the good news. This goes poorly, as she's understandably upset he seems so happy despite the fact that her husband is still dead. This whole conversation touches on a very salient point about how secondary characters, especially women like Koyuki, are not often treated with the agency and importance they deserve. Unfortunately, this point is undercut by the fact that she wasn't treated much better by this story. It's tough to chastise Gordon for not centering her emotions when the comic never cared to either.
Back at Riddler's tower, Batman opts for a direct assault so as to play along with Nygma's games and prevent him from hurting anyone. It's a fairly standard conceit for why he engages with the riddles at all as opposed to just confronting the Riddler unceremoniously, and it still mostly works here. Though, there are only a few word play riddles before jumping into a brawl with generic henchmen that sadly cut the fun mind games short. Tony S. Daniel does a fine enough job during these action sequences to keep them interesting to look at, but there is little that stands out as unique or eye-catching. It certainly makes for a far less interesting confrontation to just have Batman beating up nameless thugs than the puzzle gauntlet a Riddler tower could be, but I suppose that the story needed to hurry things along to get to the big twist (SPOILERS from here on out).
That twist being that Riddler's rise to power, the new mayor, the political unrest, and even the Court of Owls' involvement have all been a conspiracy orchestrated by the Russian government. This floored me when I read it. The story had been walking a fine line trying to focus on social commentary as one of its primary conflicts, but to simply answer those questions with "yeah everything was just the Russians the whole time" borders on insulting. It robs all the other plot elements of anything interesting they might have had to say. Who cares that the Court of Owls are a part of this if they're just Russian pawns? You could replace them with just about anyone. In fact, this makes them come across as a significantly less interesting group if they can be used like that.
It's a tricky game to try and inject current, real world conflict into a comic. I don't mean in the sense of current political issues; comics have been doing that from the beginning. Rather, I'm referring to taking specific people and events and incorporating them into a story. More often than not it just comes off as taking pot shots at a country you don't like without meaningfully adding to the comic. Jim Starlin was particularly guilty of that in the 80s, including infamously making Joker team up with Ayatollah Khomeini and even become the Iranian ambassador during Batman: Death in the Family.
It's perhaps appropriate, then, that Commander Star is revealed to be one of Starlin's creations, KGBeast. Instead of doing something interesting with questions of state-sponsored vigilantism or the role of government in projecting an image of authority that might have been hinted at early on, it's just Russians. They want nukes, so they create chaos to get them. It's a political thriller concept that was already a bit of cliché back in the 80s when Starlin created the character.
This sort of narrative also simplifies important political issues to the point of meaninglessness. The story's handling of social unrest before now was shaky at best and oftentimes incoherent, but it at least gestured towards the very real trend of authoritarian bigotry using a façade of populism to gain power. To simply say it was all because of the Russians pulling the strings is incurious and represents the worst of political analysis that looks to an external other to blame for deeply rooted social issues.
I know I've compared this run to Ram V's Detective Comics before, but their thematic parallels continue to be shockingly similar and I promise this will (probably) be the last time. In the final act of V's run, he also made it a major point to examine how inequality and bigotry feed off one another. However, while that also technically had a conspiratorial group pulling all the strings, they served as an abstracted representation of the ways power is able to maintain itself as legitimate using fear. It's the same techniques that demagogues have used for centuries, and holds true as an evergreen commentary on society. Here, you don't have to think about any of that. It's the bad guys over there causing all the problems over here.
Recommended If
- You like conspiracies where one group is behind everything
- Political commentary should be blunt and simple
- You've been a fan of this run's final story so far
Overall
Batman #156 squanders what narrative potential it had by placing everything behind a contrived and unsatisfying mastermind. Previously interesting aspects such as the murder mystery and the involvement of the Court of Owls are rendered irrelevant while the comic opts for a simplistic explanation in hurried anticipation of the story's conclusion.
Score: 3/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
