DC, $5.95
Short Review: What the hell?
Me am confused. I assumed that anything put out under the DC label, particularly anything with batman on the cover, was DC continuity as long as it didn't have an elseworlds sign on the front. And while it's true that there's nothing here that explicitly contradicts the existing mythos, it contains an awful lot of change to be in such a non-advertised story. Bruce Wayne's mother was a crimefighter with a secret identity. She was killed not in a random mugging, but as a contract killing, to stop her investigations into child abuse rings. It is, you see, Andrew Vachss's thesis that all disturbance can be drawn back directly to childhood trauma. This thesis, you might remember, proved so cliche as to almost ruin Batman:Cry in the Night a few years ago, but that was another country. In this 48 page first half, we get the moralisms rammed down our throat about half way through, in a conversation between Batman and a child welfare officer/heroine which makes infomercials look subtle. There are a few good ideas in the story, as you might expect from the man who wrote Cross, but the atmosphere and unsubtle preaching (I think we all knew going into the book that child abuse is uncategorically bad) make it near-unreadable. And $5.95? Woof!
Andrew These reviews are copyright the authors