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| BATMAN No. 14, January 2013 |
For “DC Comics” best-selling comic of November 2012 the plot
pacing to Issue Fourteen of “Batman” is arguably a little underwhelming and
laborious as Scott Snyder attempts to re-enact the Dark Knight’s earliest clashes
with the Clown Prince of Crime in a disappointingly dialogue-heavy yarn
interspersed with the occasional inauspiciously drawn single-page splash. Certainly
it is hard to fathom out how the book sold a staggering 159,729 copies during a
month when fierce publishing rival “Marvel Worldwide” dominated the sales
figures with a plethora of ‘fresh’ titles such as Brian Michael Bendis’ “All
New X-Men”.
Admittedly the twenty-two page long “Funny Bones” starts well
enough, depicting a somewhat battered and burnt Batman barely breaking out of a giant vat of
sulphuric acid. But disconcertingly that is all the excitement with which is to
be found within the narrative, as the American author then ponderously dwells
upon the Joker's abduction of Alfred Pennyworth and a failed attempt to
murder Commissioner Gordon by thinning his blood with “a derivative of
Heparin.”
The heavy involvement of Dick Grayson doesn’t help matters either. Snyder appears determined to merely use the ‘heir to the Mantle of the Bat’ as some sort of petulant
emotional foil for the Dark Knight, rather than show Nightwing as the
Caped Crusader’s former heroic partner. As a result their bickering over just whom Alfred
means the most to is ridiculously childish and really slows the comic’s sluggish sedentary storyline down even further.
The biggest disappointment however has
to be the seven-page confrontation between Batman and the Joker on top of the
Gotham City reservoir. The former “Swamp Thing” writer has spent some considerable
time trying to build up the reader's desire for this meeting, having had the super-villain
kill numerous police officers, kidnap and torture Bruce Wayne’s
elderly butler and try to kill one of the Dark Knight’s best friends… not to
mention the cowled crimefighter himself. Yet all Snyder has the duo do when they finally
come face to face is discuss their former struggles back when they “were full
of vim and vigour”. This is especially true for the homicidal psychopath, who
can’t seem to stop talking because he believes he knows the secret identifies
of all the Bat-allies.
True at one point, upon realising that his arch nemesis
has drowned “the young and uppity” from a nearby condo, the Caped Crusader
loses his temper and rushes the green-haired fiend. But he is immediately ensnared
by a number of wire-trailing joker teeth and swiftly brought to his knees, so
as to allow the ever-grinning maniac to continue ‘rabbiting on’ for a further
few pages.
Regrettably the probable highlight of this “Death Of The Family”
instalment is the six-page black humoured anecdote “Men Of Worship”, which is
somehow shore-horned into the back of the comic book. Written by Snyder and
regular collaborator James Tynion IV, and competently if not gruesomely
illustrated by Mark “Jock” Simpson, this ‘short’ tells the tale of the Joker blackmailing
the Penguin into helping him throw “a special little get-together”.
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| The variant cover art of "BATMAN" No. 14 by Trevor McCarthy |
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