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| BATMAN No. 32, August 2014 |
Described by its American author as an issue which “sets up
the final confrontation between Batman and the Riddler”, this penultimate instalment of the year-long “Zero Year”
story-arc makes little logical sense and actually manages to undermine the lucidity
of the crossover event’s preceding narrative. For having spent the past few
editions desperately trying to determine the secret hideout of Gotham City’s
deadly dictator Edward Nygma, “The World’s Greatest Detective” discovers all Jim Gordon and Lucius Fox's secretive efforts have been for naught and
that his far brainer opponent has consistently been outthinking him. Indeed by
the end of “Ark”, when several military jet-planes intent on levelling the
metropolis are just forty minutes away, it becomes evident that the young vigilante
has no other choice but to accept he has once again “failed against the Riddler” and
hastily speculate upon his adversary’s location; “One guess. We have time for
one guess.”
To make matters worse, Scott Snyder even scripts a
distinctly disagreeable soliloquy for the Dark Knight which effectively has Bruce Wayne accepting that he won’t ever beat the Riddler and despondently deciding that his alter-ego isn’t actually about “winning. But failing…” Little wonder the New Yorker
laughingly calls this “the craziest Batman story I think I’ll ever write.”
Equally as perplexing though is the revelation that “the
Riddler’s big game” entails the super-villain delivering a “rip code” which
will “signal the jets at Fort Robbins to scramble” and “strike” out at Gotham
City. These air-to-land missiles will then detonate a number of explosives
positioned underground throughout the municipal and “sink the whole city.” Such
a convoluted plan genuinely makes little sense, as it would surely be
infinitely easier for Nygma to simply trigger his numerous bombs remotely? Why does he need to go to the truly extraordinary lengths of isolating the conurbation’s inhabitants for months on end with a fleet of toxic
air balloons, and then trick the authorities into ‘setting off’ his
explosives via “an airstrike?”
Appearing perhaps just as confused by the contrived plot as doubtless
many of this comic’s 130,077 readers were, is penciller Greg Capullo, with the
Schenectady-born artist’s illustrations for this book being competent, yet also disconcertingly ‘cutesy’ at the same time. Certainly the figure of Edward Nygma seems to especially suffer with an adolescent youthful look that greatly belies the criminal’s true
age. Whilst the former “X-Force” sketcher’s design for the Riddler’s automaton
guards appears to have been heavily borrowed from film director Jonathan Mostow’s
vision of Skylab's automatons…
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| The "Bombshell" variant cover art of "BATMAN" No. 32 |
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