…A Fight For Love And Glory: Batman #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s Wednesday, and once again, the local bar is closed for reasons that border on the frivolous: there are very few hookers in this town to start with, and she might have stabbed herself seven times in the men’s crapper, and either way: I never saw her before. So I might as well take the opportunity to lie low and do another short comic review.

If you’re Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, the problem with producing one of the more triumphant single comic book issues in recent memory – particularly when that triumph is based on what amounts to an engaging storytelling gimmick you can only use once that wraps a story that’s been told a million times: Batman gets driven nuts – is that you need to come out with another issue just four short weeks later. Well, it’s four weeks later, and Batman #6 is merely pretty damn good. It misses the level of great by hitting a story beat we’ve seen before, but it’s still very, very decent.

That familiar story beat is the beat that occurs in every Batshit Batman story: the Batman Gets His Shit Together At The Last Second, Kicks Ass And Escapes To Whimper For A While story beat. Which is a shocking thing to see, provided it’s 1988 and you’re reading Jim Starlin’s and Bernie Wrightson’s The Cult for the first time. And I imagine it’s shocking for new comics readers checking out this issue, but some of us saw it coming a month ago… but what makes it work even though it’s not the newest story in the world is the execution.

And in re-reading this issue, my favorable impression of that execution comes from two pages of a battle between Batman and The Talon across the miniature cityscape of Gotham that Snyder established in the last issue. It amounts to two titans of Gotham – Batman and the agent of the Court of Owls – writ large and kicking taint above what looks like the Gotham skyline. As a visual, it’s stunning, and it works. Sure, it’s not as stunning as the scene in The Cult where Batman finally gets his shit together, but I am old and jaded and involuntarily sober.

Greg Capullo’s art remains solid, and I’m I think I’m most surprised that, despite his obvious McFarlane / Miller influences, he gives good hallucination. Considering Batman’s almost broken state, Capullo makes a point of showing Batman, even in his ascendency as he starts to get his shit back together, as imaginging things. Capullo draws Batman seeing himself as almost lycanthropic – a living bat – and then ratchets back toward realism as Batman cements himself back into reality. It’s also a nice choice that as that happens, Capullo generally draws Batman from the side where his mask isn’t damaged, as it was in issue 5 to show his crazy eye, so Batman looks like Batman instead of a gibbering spastic wearing a Batman mask. I find myself more and more impressed with Capullo’s art as this arc continues, and considering I keep comparing it in my head to Bernie Wrightson in The Cult, that’s saying quite a lot.

Make no mistake: this is not all that original a story. It hits every beat that similar stories have hit, and it’s pretty obvious that the next issue will give us Batman cowering in the Batcave, trying to get his mojo back. And Snyder ratchets up the tension by simplisticly implying that if X is bad, then Log(x) will be wretched. But it is a well executed old story. I compare it to The Cult, and the comparison is deserved, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Sure, you never forget your first time, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only time you get to get off. Check it out.