In which Batman finally acts like Batman.
Full disclosure: I haven’t been nearly as enamored of Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls storyline as most of the rest of the world has. I love Snyder as a writer, and his craft has been rock-solid throughout, but up till now, I haven’t felt that Batman reacted to most situations in the way that he should.
Every once in a while, a writer decides to do a Batman story where the villain is smarter than Batman – these very seldom work, because the very nature of Batman’s character is that he’s the smartest guy in the room. He may not be the strongest or the most skilled (although he is very strong, and very skilled), but he is always smarter than the other guy, and that is how he wins. Its the central appeal of the character, and when you have a villain come along that outsmarts the Dark Knight at every turn, it undermines that appeal, and makes the character a lot less entertaining to read. There are definitely some (many, in this case) that would argue how such a situation humanizes the character in a manner not often accomplished, but the character shouldn’t be humanized, because the day Batman is just a man is the day he has failed. Its the fundamental character difference between him and Superman – one is a symbol that only wants to be a man, and the other is a man who only wants to be a symbol.
All that being said, though, we finally have here a Batman who’s starting to take control of his situation, although admittedly, its only after a major blunder that the Batman I know never should have made. There have been several instances like this throughout the run thus far – situations where Batman – the world’s greatest detective, the smartest guy in the room, the Sherlock Holmes of the 20th (and now 21st) century – doesn’t anticipate an extremely obvious move by the stories antagonist, and that’s really just lazy writing on Snyder’s part. I understand the appeal of wanting to have the Talons overtake Wayne Manor, but we need a reason beyond “Batman was really tired, and didn’t think they’d look for him in his house, even though its been established that they know who he is.”
I’m looking forward to the future of this book – Capullo is an excellent choice for Batman, and has turned out uniformly great work thus far, and Snyder is one of comics’ great modern writers – he just needs to stop trying to reinvent the established Gotham mythology, and work on telling a solid Batman story for the New 52.
As published on examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/dc-comics-in-dallas/michael-seigler
