After two and a half years, Chip Zdarsky's run on Batman comes to a close. Over the course of his roughly thirty issues, Zdarsky developed a clear thematic focus of using Batman's past as a way of examining his psyche. While certainly not the first writer to make Batman's origins central to the story he wanted to tell, he was also not afraid to inject new twists and revisions to that past in order to tell the story he wanted. (In fact he started that trend back while writing Batman: The Knight, coincidentally the first comic I reviewed for this site.) This, I think, is where the problems begin.
I've been reading comics for too long to automatically get upset when character histories are updated or retconned. It's going to happen eventually, and oftentimes they can introduce new or interesting changes. The important thing is that they stay true to the core of the character. The central conflict of this run, however, hinged on Batman's decision to create an invincible robot version of himself that gets activated with a poorly defined criteria and given vaguely authoritarian directives afterwards. It makes creating conflict easy, but requires that a series of bafflingly poor decisions be made going back to his earliest days. In order to justify a thesis of critiquing Batman's means of fighting crime, the story resorts to inventing the worst possible decisions that retroactively shaped his career.
This finale doubles down on the idea, though with a bittersweet tone of always trying "to be good men". In a vacuum, this is something that could work. No one's infallible, even Batman, and reconciling with one's mistakes is a never-ending part of being human. However, the message falls completely flat because, as presented, it rests on the decisions made earlier in the run that always felt out of character. Whether it's Batman building Failsafe or Gordon admitting he was ready to murder the mayor. Jason's death is brought up as well as the evergreen example of Batman's greatest failure, but it's extremely presumptive to put these new story beats among it.
Worse even, in some ways the run suggests that it has "fixed" what was wrong with Batman before. A good example is when Bruce's maybe-half-brother (remember that plotline? It never went anywhere so it's ok if you forgot.) says that he never wanted to be like Bruce because of how Bruce just wastes his money. Notably, he comments how only recently has Bruce started "doing more", referencing the new status quo that includes him revitalizing old neighborhoods of Gotham.
There's a lot to be said on this, but you can't use "started giving to charity" as a character growth moment for Bruce Wayne. The fact that he already does that all the time comes up constantly. If you want to have characters criticize him for being wealthy while others suffer that's fine, it can be an issue worth examining, but making him "realize" he needs to use his money to help people is a misrepresentation of who he has always been.
Speaking of sociopolitical commentary, this last arc really dove in head first. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of incredible comics have a lot to say about our society. The trick is having something meaningful to say and weaving those ideas into a story. That doesn't happen here. It was revealed last issue that the entire plot was a scheme by the Russians to get nuclear codes and, according to Batman, start World War III. Why would they want to do this? How does that make sense? We're never told and I don't think it matters.
It would be one thing if the Russians were just a generic Cold War-esque stand-in for "bad guys who want to destroy the world with nukes", although that would still raise a lot of questions. Instead, they're being used as a means to make a political statement. Throughout the arc, Gotham has been plagued by protests turning into riots. The ideology of these protests is pretty incoherent, but generally speaking they seem to mimic MAGA talking points about immigrants and the poor, but with extra focus on going after "socialist executives" so as to put Wayne Enterprises in their crosshairs.
This all turns out to be part of the Russians' plan. In addition to trying to get nukes, they also send KGBeast disguised as a new hero to whip the public into a right wing populist frenzy. Something that you might notice about this plan is that it doesn't make any sense. With his dying breath, Leonid tells Batman that all of this was to create propaganda that makes America look bad. It's not actually connected to the nuclear codes plot at all, nor does it explain how KGBeast was able to do that. None of this comes together in a satisfying way.
What has to be commented upon is the way this all connects to real world political tensions with Russia. "Russians want to use nukes to take over the world" is a narrative going back about 70 years now, but "they use disinformation to create social unrest" has become something of a hot button issue over the past decade, and that's clearly what is being referenced here. The problem is that the story doesn't put in any of the legwork to fully represent the issues being discussed, and as such creates a superficial approximation that misses the point.
KGBeast's speech alludes to the aesthetics of right wing populism, but never gets to the driving force behind it or any meaningful critique. That's why the threat never feels justified or explained. People follow him for no reason, and then stop once he's beaten up. It posits a form of politics where all social unrest is driven by outside agitators. It's a comforting idea to be sure, but one that is both politically incurious and narratively uninteresting. When hostile actors like Russia stoke the flames of unrest, they're not creating it from nothing. Those embers of hatred and fear have been around since the beginning.
To place the blame fully on the shoulders of the Russian bad guys makes them easy to beat in a fist fight, but fails to grapple with the actual social issues it wants to be about. At best it makes the topical aspects of the comic ring hollow, and at worst it actively downplays the real problems it uses as a prop. When the rioters simply go home after seeing Batman beat up their leader, it doesn't treat people like real human beings driven by ideologies or beliefs. They're just mindless pawns who will follow whatever they're told regardless of their own desires. Take out the main bad guy and the problem is solved.
The story even flirts with the idea of institutional power and the ways it can be harmful, but in the end turns around and blames it on one bad apple before anything controversial might be said. When Commissioner Savage orders the police to go after the protestors, they all collectively defy his order and go help protect the citizenry instead. There is no rot within the system, and nothing to interrogate here. There's just one bad man who is corrupting the otherwise famously gallant Gotham City Police.
If nothing important the comic has to say works out, what of the action? Maybe some excitement can distract from an incoherent political message. It's fine, but not enough to elevate the rest of the story. The opening set piece where Batman boards a plan mid-air and fights off the goons before they can take him down is fun at first, but runs into problems pretty quickly. In order to explain how he handles being shot at point blank, he quickly deflects the bullets with his gauntlets, conveniently killing the shooter without Batman technically breaking his rule. This feels outside the realm of what Batman should be capable of, and I think Wonder Woman should consider legal action.
The big scene that follows where Batman must land the plane in the streets of Gotham with no controls ironically takes a lot of the tension away, despite its bombast. It happens too cleanly and without incident, giving a sense of cartoon logic to the whole situation. The plane even lands mere feet away from KGBeast so that Batman can leap out and immediately start fighting him. It's hard not to compare this sequence to the opening issue of Tom King's Batman run, where a similar situation was framed with the gravity and drama of something that might actually kill him.
What could hypothetically help the effectiveness of the moment to moment story would be the art. Jorge Jiménez and Tony S. Daniel alternate back and forth between pages, and while both are still overall talented artists who have earned their spots as some of DC's premier talent, neither is delivering their best work. The characters are often quickly drawn or have not-quite-right faces. Aside from a small handful of big panels, much of the world feels empty with little visually interesting going on. It gets the job done, but not up to the level that has been shown in the past. Colorist Tomeu Morey pulls a lot of weight to keep it all feeling cinematic.
Recommended If
- You've been a big fan of all of Chip Zdarsky's run up until now
- You haven't been a fan of Chip Zdarsky's run and want to see it end
- Russians really get on your nerves and you want to see Batman beat them up.
Overall
For all its faults, Zdarsky's run did have a largely planned out story with narratives that took the ideas set up in the very beginning through to the very end. However, that story ended with Batman #149. This final, bonus arc keeps the dubious understanding of its central characters but replaces the concluded Failsafe/Joker plotlines with an incoherent political message that fails to say anything meaningful.
Score: 2/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
