Review: Batman #43
I'm a 35 year old Canadian living in Ontario. I read comics, I love to draw and I collect comic art. I also teach karate, play hockey, and am a dad to 3 girls! My comic book passion lies with Batman and his pals with Nightwing taking a very close #2 favourite position. I began collecting comic art in 2013 and I have several commissions done by Ken Lashley and an amazing Francis Manapul Batman. As well I have sold a few of my own creations!
I've been waiting as patiently as possible for the last month to go by so that I could get my hands on the next installment of Batman. It's been an agonizingly long month since Jim Gordon introduced himself to Bruce Wayne at a Rec Center in the bad part of Gotham. Did Gordon know that Bruce was the Batman? How has Bruce been so oblivious to all of the things going on around him? I have been waiting this whole month to get answers.
The first thing we see in issue #43 is a cover image of a lanky guy with a flower on his face. Who is this guy? Well, it turns out he is Mr. Bloom, and he has been the one distributing seeds throughout Gotham that are giving specific powers to specific people. But, we'll get to that.
The book opens, and we discover that Jim knows for sure that Bruce Wayne used to be Batman. He's asking him specifically for help with the case and even gives him one of the seeds that has been rendered unusable. Bruce isn't taking the bait, but at this point we are not really sure why. We then find that the whole interaction is being watched by two characters we are very familiar with: Alfred Pennyworth and Clark Kent. It is at this point that Alfred takes Clark back to the Batcave and reveals to him a couple of absolutely earth shattering bits of information. I really don't want to spoil this for you guys, so let's just say we get a very logical and definite reasoning behind the revival of Bruce and, one can assume, the Joker as well. On top of that, we get a glimpse into the mind of a man who is planning to wage war on crime lifetimes after he has died. If you can put the pieces together, you might just imagine how Bruce Wayne will return as Batman within the next bunch of issues.
Toward the end of the book, we get some more information as to how the seeds work and just how ruthless Mr. Bloom actually is, though we are left hanging a bit as to where that part of the plot is going. We also have Jim Gordon wanting to work as Batman without the powers to know what he's doing. This is a bit tricky since his corporate masters can monitor the big mech suit easily and the smaller Bat suit if he uses any of the tech on it. It's during this outing that Jim gets himself in a very tight spot, and we are left wondering how he is going to get out of that as well!
If you have been following along with the complete run that Snyder and Capullo have put together, you should know that this is building toward something amazing. A few months ago I tried to reassure some of the readers that these two men are people to trust with a Batman story, and it's turning out that I was right. As a stand alone issue this book doesn't really work, since you are getting threads of stories picking up midway, but as part of the arc, it's great.
Do yourself a favor and find back issues of at least 41 & 42 (if not the entire Endgame story) before diving into issue #43, but however you do it, buy this book! 10/10
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Chris Barnes is a Contributor to ComiConverse. Follow him on Twitter: @Chrispy47