Batman Legends of the Dark Knight #122, and Shadow of the Bat #90

[ozaline]

During No Man's Land Batman notices that the neon lights are still on in Chinatown, and attracting people to their sex trade even with the rest of Gotham bereft of power. He finds Lynx the only surviving member of the Ghost Dragons gang wiped out by a coalition of gangs and shows her the reason why...













Eventually she picks the wrong man's pocket which leads to her current circumstances.















Lynx insists that they go back for the Girl but Batman tells her that's not feasible and so she gives him instructions to take her to her doctor.






When they return they find Jade Faced Wu dead, pushed from the building, and signs that the slaves revolted. They also see some of those slaves acting as pallbearers for a tiny casket.

Lynx is told that Mei was inspired by her, and instituted the revolt pushing Wu out the window, but that she was killed. Before she died she asked her Grandpa if she was as brave as the one-eyed warrior, but didn't get to hear his reply that Mei was without equal.



Larry Hama often says that when he explains why he doesn't call himself an artist.

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

I'd like to like this more, but it's hard to get past the way it's written in service to the speeches. Batman dithers and watches an old man horrifically beaten below him, ostensibly because "there's too many of them and we need a plan," but he never actually makes one. This is really so Lynx can tell us her entire life story when all Batman needed out of her is "Yes, I'll help you."

Then at the end, Batman gives her his "A hero is" speech, which seems to be advising her on how to behave, but immediately undercuts it by saying, "Well, history decides who the real heroes are." If you don't know who the heroes are then why the heck did you just give us six balloons about what makes one?

[ozaline]

The "hero is an appellation," thing is something that Larry seems to fervently believe, he also often says that "artist," is an appellation too. I don't think he's trying to tell her not to do good, just that hero is something to aspire to, and it's up for others to judge if you hit the mark or not.

As for Lynx's backstory and Batman's need to plan... well they get ambushed; yes in the space of the story it serves the purpose you said, but Batman would have made a plan had they not been caught off guard.

And at the risk of sounding fangirlish... I don't think Hama ever writes "in service to the speeches," he famously says you should be able to understand a comic without reading a single word in it, and get most of what's going on, and always approaches everything from the images first. You could understand everything that happened in Lynx's backstory if there was not a word of narration... Obviously he still speechifies from time to time, but I personally like them, and think the rest of the book is a solid adventure.