Batman Eternal 10: Budget crimefighting, 21st century style!

[espanolbot]

The issue begins with a flashback to five years previously, with Selina showing up at Carmine Falcone's apartment the night he lost the city to the Penguin. After beating up all of his guards, she slashes him across the face "to give him something to remember him by", and walks out the door with a valuable cat statue while gloating about what a loser he'd become...

...Which Carmine seems to have not forgotten, having captured Catwoman a couple of issues ago, and not is determined to have petty revenge on him for brusing his ego half a decade prior. He tells the restrained Selina that her disfiguring him actually taught him a valuable lesson, that she's really just a symptom of a problem the city has. The problem being that unless the city has a protector, then it becomes overrun by freaks like her. Yes, the man who ran Gotham through such indiscriminate violence that the Penguin of all people thought he went too far, considers himself to be the true protector of Gotham City.

Selina naturally considers this entire attitude to be insane, and rightly tells him soon, only for Carmine to smack her in the face, and start yelling that it's time for someone to start putting the bats, cats and other animals back in their cages... at which point Professor Pyg shows up with his new animal-based henchmen to exact his revenge on Falcone. Oops.

Over at Wayne Manor, new addition to the Bat Family Julia Pennyworth (yeah, turns out that she's the preboot character they were bringing back in the Hong Kong arc... yay) is being tended to following the injuries she suffered at the hands of Shen Fang last issue. She apparently has some issues with her father...



Huh, you'd think that Bruce would have more of a reaction to an unrepentant murderer just letting himself into his house whenever he wanted, but from what I've read Jason's many murders apparently isn't considered to be a big deal since the reboot. Evidently all the hostility and disappointment for a Robin that uses/used lethal methods was absorbed by Damian, even though he was attempting to change in order to make Bruce accept him, while Jason has made no such changes while still retaining his daddy issues...

ANYWAY, it seems that Pyg has taken Catwoman and Falcone hostage (yeah, a traditional criminal running afoul of the costumed supervillain crowd due to underestimating them? Should really have borrowed notes from the Black Hand there Carmine), with the press and the police helplessly watching.

Vikki Vale meets Lt. Bard outside the building, and still seems annoyed that Bard didn't just answer her questions without any prompting. It seems that although they know that Pyg has a female hostage, the police are under orders not to just rush in in case she gets hurt... when in actuality, it's Forbes not wanting to provoke Pyg into doing "things" to Falcone in revenge for his betrayal.

Elsewhere, Stephanie has started her career in superheroism after it became apparent that her mum and dad are actively trying to kill her.



Aww, poor Steph! Y'know if Babs was still a librarian this would be a prime opportunity for the two to meet and joing forces... Wait, does Barbara Gordon even have a job in the New 52?

Back with Falcone, Pyg has him strapped to a table and is about to perform amateur surgery on him in revenge for the gangster blowing up his labs. He also is about to sew a dozen cat heads onto Selina when Batman shows up to save the day (yay). Batman unties Selina, who then procedes to start beating up the restrained Carmine, but Bruce points out that since the GCPD are poised to burst into the building they really have to go NOW.

This turns out to be a good idea, as Forbes has heard that Batman is in the building and orders Lt. Bard to storm the building with every avaliable officer he has. Which Bard does... after deliberately waiting for enough time as he figures it'd take Batman to escape. Carmine icily tells the cops that they just missed Batman, but seems oddly resistant to saying that Catwoman was the hostage, saying that the woman hostage the cops saw was just a "petty thief".

A safe distance way, Bruce asks Selina if she's okay, which she admits is the case and then drops some plotbombs on him. It seemed that if anything Bruce has actually been overestimating Falcone all this time, in that although there is some elaborate conspiracy at work here, it isn't one by Carmine's design. She confirms what was implied last week, that some third party invited the Roman back to Gotham from Hong Kong, meaning that he's just a cog in someone else's machine. Batman is kind of disturbed at the idea of a hitherto unseen villain pulling not just his strings but also those of Falcone and his men (this is the same dude that Cluemaster is working for apparently FYI), which isn't helped by the fact that said person might even be watching them have this conversation...

- Overview: Good issue over all, I liked the artwork (sorry to say I'm not a huge March fan) and how the plot appeared to be moving forward in a meaningful way. I'm a bit confused as to how Pyg's new henchmen worked (apparently he just stitched animal heads onto some hired goons or something), but the idea of him being able to effortlessly breeze through Falcone's guards was kind of funny.

I am curious as to a number of things, such as who the main Big Bad is, what exactly is the trouble between Julia and Alfred, and the progression of Stephanie's online wikileaks approach to battling her dad to her going full Spoiler.

Which, judging from the solicits, might be happening in September.

Comments

[dcbanacek]

Spoiler alert. :)

[shadowpsykie]

hehe

[tugrul]

Haha. ^_^ I think CBR used "September's Spoiler-filled "Batman Eternal" Solicits". So funny!

[thatnickguy]

Never gets old. :)
(No seriously, it never does.)

[shadowpsykie]

i think in New 52 Jason was less "murdery" than before. Even in his comic he rarely uses lethal force anymore. in the words of Dobby he only: Maims or seriously injures.

honestly though, in my opinion Jason has changed a lot. and it wasn't for Bruce that he changed, it was for himself. He got tired of holding on to all that rage.


honestly i prefer it that way. I undertood his rage. But not when they made him a whole sale murderer. Honestly never had a problem with heroes killing whe they need to. but not as the go to.

never really liked the majority of the way they depicted Jason pre52.

also YAA-Awwwwe stephanie! bby! *HUGS, leaves behind harry potter*

[darkknightjrk]

The last time he actually pulled the trigger to kill someone was Suzie Zu in RH&TO, around #8-10, and I think she still came back.

[janegray]

I really love Jason as a anti-hero who normally doesn't muder, but will do it if he has to. It's a good middle ground. Normally heroes are either "no kill for any reason, ever, no matter what, if you kill somebody in self-defence you are just as bad as the Joker!" or "ARE YOU LITTERING??? *bullet to the face*"

[shadowpsykie]

Well. Litter IS a major problem :D

[tugrul]

Poor Stephanie. :( Look where she sleeps.

I slept on a wooden floor for 2 weeks till I could afford a sleeping bag, but I had space to move and it hurt my joints and muscles. That was tough. She's sleeping in that small space where she can't even move. I can't imagine people being she'd be able to function well the next day.

[shadowpsykie]

i agree. though she is smart and resourceful :D

[tugrul]

She is! If the creative team wanted me to care for the character, they played it well. Well played, Snyder.

[joetuss]

I don't. She always came off like a gender swapped version of Tim, and tbh I never really cared for him either but at least he serves a purpose in the Bat family which is more than I can say for Steph. (sigh)...I miss Cass... :(

[mrstatham]

I don't think you've read enough with the character at all, in that case.

[joetuss]

Maybe you're right, but from what I know of her she's not very appealing

[espanolbot]

Eh, different strokes. To be honest I wasn't a huge fan of her either, and only started to like her more around the time she became Robin (I know, great timing, right?). Oddly, around the time I started liking her was the time that I started disliking Tim, and only recently started liking him again as a character.

As I've always liked Cass though, and she was the character that got be reading DC stuff properly.

[burkeonthesly]

Heh. Cluemaster gets no respect. Everyone keeps calling him his name, and he has to correct them. It's a small running gag, but I like that.

Not in love with the art, though. That is not a good look for Bruce Wayne.

[silverzeo]

With Steph sleeping in the Libary, it makes think Tara Strong would be a great voice actor for her (guess why, and NOT because any female character would be great with Tara Strong).

ANd also

"none of those names was 'Stephine Brown'" Shouldn't it be "were" as he was referring to the names in pular, or is was correct cause he referred to his daughter's name? You think being an English Major, I would know the difference, like how a lot DOESN'T have "a" attached to it to make alot...

[burkeonthesly]

Oh, my seventh grade English teacher had some long routines about her disdain for "a lot." The "alot" truncation, and the way it's such a vague, say-nothing phrase. She told us any paper with "alot" in it was an automatic F (on that draft), and you wouldn't believe how many of my classmates used it anyway.

[silverzeo]

So does it make like "d'oh" in a way?

[skemono]

I'm pretty sure it's "was" because it refers to "none", which is singular.

[junipepper]

The antecedent is "none" ("of those names" is a prepositional phrase, so it's not the subject of the sentence). None is singular so "was" is correct, although it's quite common in the US at least, to use the plural verb anyway. OTOH, is Arthur Brown someone whose grammar is supposed to be perfect? I'm not too concerned with how he conjugates, frankly. Now, if it were Alfred I might worry.

:-)

[espanolbot]

[silverzeo]

Getting close....

[espanolbot]

Ah, hopefully Steph's new home doesn't meet the end of Twilight Sparkle's.

[shadowpsykie]

wait, what?

[espanolbot]

Bad guy blew it up (permanently, Twilight had to move house) at the end of the last season.

[shadowpsykie]

O_O I am WAAAAY behind. season two is the last season i saw.

[shadowpsykie]

I too am an English major and I SUCK, harder than a Sailor on shore leave, at grammar

[silverzeo]

Which is why we try our best at double or even triple checks....

[shadowpsykie]

seriously. and having your friends go over it.

you know what, our need for validation might be due in part to feeling we have missed something in the editing process.... "are you sure it's okay?" "does it make sense?" "can you feel his thighs pressing around your..." ermmm.. yeah...

:D

[big_daddy_d]

Wow. Her new spoiler costume looks awesome!

[lieut_kettch]

Oooh yeah. Steph looks ready to kick ass. And I love the little touches that recall her Batgirl costume from a universe ago.

[zapbiffpow]

Wow, so Steph has a penchant for finding spacious vents? That's kinda awesome: unintentional referential foreshadowing. She's practically on the road to Batdom at this point.