Review: BATMAN #27

BATMAN #27
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, and FCO Plascencia
Published by DC Comics
Release Date: January 22, 2014

Batman_Vol_2-27_Cover-1This issue gave me a lot to think about. I’ve been thinking about Batman at least once a day since I was, oh, seven or eight. You’d think the well would run dry. Scott Snyder proves that notion foolish with an issue that, for my money, gives us the moment Bruce Wayne really decided who Batman was. Throw in some of the most stunning visuals to grace a superhero comic in the last thirty years, and you have a singular piece of Bat-history.

If you are piecing together The Riddler’s plan, good for you, because I’m not. I need to reread the entire story so far in one sitting to put together those pieces. That plot advances some more this issue, but the meat and bones of the story comes from the deep dive into Batman’s relationship with Jim Gordon (featuring a very bloody and illuminating anecdote from Jim’s past as a beat cop) and into Bruce Wayne’s relationship with his butler, the most important man in the history of DC Comics, Alfred Pennyworth. The stuff with Gordon is great, and the cliffhanger is wonderful, but the exchange between Alfred and Bruce in the cave is the heart and soul of what is probably the most important and misunderstood facet about Batman.

There are lots of books and articles and video games and popular film franchises about the pathology of Batman arguing that Bruce Wayne is, in essence, a crazy person. He’s often portrayed as a singularly dark, obsessively depressed inner monologue with legs who punches first and broods later (often at length). Yes, Batman is a grim guy. But the thing that gets Batman out of bed night after night in the first place is saving people.

Batman doesn’t go out to brood. He goes out to keep the horrible thing that happened to him from happening to anybody else. That’s always been his motivation: make Gotham safer for the people who live there.

The Batman Snyder has shown us so far has had all the hallmarks and none of the maturity of the Batman we know. He’s an adrenaline junkie who thinks a few years learning from the Ten-Eyed Men and a ton of upgrades in his ride is enough to make him Gotham’s savior. He’s arrogant, which Batman generally is, but he hasn’t earned that arrogance with many years of constantly being right all the time.

Up until this issue, Bruce has only been dressing up as Batman. In a beautiful and heart-wrenching monologue that most certainly did NOT make me cry into my Batman snuggie, Alfred Pennyworth calls Bruce on his bullshit.

Alfred’s conversation with Batman is massively critical to the Bat mythos as a whole and for the current iteration of the DC Universe. Alfred is the ultimate voice of reason, unquestionably loyal and beyond reproach in his motivations. Alfred is the reason Batman is able to be Batman. And, in this issue, Scott Snyder has given us Alfred to thank for a Batman with a soul. Alfred presents Bruce with two options: remain angry and driven by the past, which he cannot change, and drive himself crazy; or use justice from the dark to push the demons into the light. Big red S’s don’t have a monopoly on hope, according to Alfred. In the stories, Knights live longer than Monsters.

Alfred has always been around to remind Batman of that, and is most frequently the person who pulls Bruce back from the edge whenever things get really bad. Alfred is the first member of what becomes the Bat-Family. Alfred Pennyworth is the most important person in the DC Universe.

In the interest of actually making this a proper review, let’s talk about Greg Capullo. Capullo is freaking Da Vinci come again; instead of drawing weird parachutes and smiling ladies he’s drawing a guy in a cape outrunning cops and being shot at.  Some gorgeous classic Batman iconography in this issue, along with pulse pounding action and the emotional moments I rambled on about above: it’s the Capullo hat trick. He’s good at everything, from brutality to sincerity. There’s only so many different ways to say awesome. If you look them up in your thesaurus, all of them have Capullo’s picture next to them. Standing ovation as well to colorist FCO Plascencia, who made the entire thing reminiscent of the original version of The Killing Joke, the one with the crazy LSD colors. So many of these scenes could be done in boring varieties of grey, brown and dark blue; yet we get beautiful greens, yellows and oranges as we walk through a subterranean crypt. Who says Batman can’t be colorful?

This story will read as well in trade as it does in single issue, but single issue has the advantage of highlighting the character moments at which both Snyder and Capullo excel. Those moments are making the entire Zero Year arc stand out as a story that respects the Man as much as the Bat. I’m the High Priestess of the Church of Pennyworth, thank you for listening.

The Verdict: 10/10

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