Wait, I’m still reading this?
Don’t know how it got into my pull pile this week, but Batman Confidential once again slipped into my weekly bag of goodness, which means I buy it, I read it. And in many cases, I review it on this site. The most recent arc in Batman Confidential features The Joker causing all sorts of hijinks and giving no end of trouble to the police and to the Batman. In this concluding chapter, we not only find out how Batman keeps the Joker at bay, but also the point of this Confidential arc.
What do you do when the Joker convinces your wife to kill herself? You go nuts and try to exact revenge on the Clown Prince of Crime. This means shooting Jim Gordon (not fatally of course), abducting two civilians and using their car to crash into the very van that is carrying the man that murdered your wife. And if Batman shows up, drop a building on his head and try to hang him.
Of course everyone knows you can’t drop a building on Batman and expect him to die. And the Joker isn’t going to let some Joe Schmo off his greatest adversary. This last issue really sets up the relationship between the hero and nemesis, and I like how Kreisberg sets up Joker’s logic chain in which he must save the Dark Knight if he wants someone to play with in the future.
The whole point of the Batman Confidential series is to establish one of the key elements of the Batman mythos and give it a believable history for readers of this generation. The Joker has had his backstory established in a previous arc, so this story line isn’t about him and his insane ways. Instead, it is about dealing with this new brand of criminal, and deciding what to do with them.
Enter Arkham Asylum. Yes, all the build up has lead readers to the re-establishment of the the psychiatric facility to treat the criminally insane. The journey getting to this point ended up being a tad too drawn out for my liking, and could have been wrapped up an issue or two ago. That being said, there is an interesting conversation Bruce has with Alfred about his mission – it isn’t to correct the criminal, but simply to make the police’s job easier by dropping them off at the doorstep. From there it is up to the city to deal with the problem. If the city decides to lock them away, only to escape again later, that’s up to them to make those mistakes.
As my previous reviews have noted, this is not my most favorite story. However, this final issue has a lot of the BANG! POW! that brings action to this otherwise psychological tale, that really isn’t a thriller as much as it is an exercise in trying to retcon the history of Batman and Gotham City. The result is an issue that is full of ‘meh’, earning Batman Confidential #25 2.5 out of 5 Stars.
103/103
1 Comment
Yeah, but it’s still Batman, just not at his finest.