Batman: The Adventures Continue Season Two #2 - DC Comics

BATMAN: THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE SEASON TWO No. 2, September 2021

For those aficionados familiar with Mayor Hamilton Hill from the “Batman: The Animated Series” during the early Nineties, Alan Burnett and Paul Dini’s collaborative storyline for “Court Fight” probably left something of a sour taste in the month. For whilst there is some comfort to be taken from their twenty-page plot showing that the Gotham City’s gray-haired politician didn’t actually die following an assassination attempt during this title’s previous instalment, it instead disconcertingly depicts the former lawyer as the despicable leader of the metropolis’ “sinister Court of Owls”.

Such a shift in this character’s predominantly lawful personality really jars with the sensibilities, considering that the public official has previously been depicted overseeing many city improvement projects, like the creation of Stonegate Penitentiary and the municipal’s public transport system. Sure, the elected leader could be somewhat supercilious and headstrong when dealing with Commissioner Jim Gordon, especially where “the [early] activities of Batman” were concerned. But the man always seemed have the people’s safety at the centre of his decision-making, and even boasted that no city was “more free of crime” than Gotham under his tenure as its mayor.

In Issue Two of “Batman: The Adventures Continue Season Two” however, such a respectable authority figure is shown to be nothing more than another in a long line of power-mad dictators, who apparently changes his entire lifetime’s ethos following a chance glimpse at an old journal he “stumbled upon” during one of Vernon Vreeland’s “idiotic parties”. So sudden a ‘moment of clarity’ debatably makes little logical sense considering the fundamentally legitimate Hill previously seen on the small screen, and certainly doesn’t seem convincing when a rejuvenated Hamilton then threatens to murder his son in cold blood if he doesn’t help fund the rebuilding of the ancient criminal organisation.

Fortunately, what this twenty-page periodical’s plot possibly lacks in credibility it arguably makes up for with its inclusion of Boston Brand’s supernatural alter-ego, Deadman. The deceased acrobat provides this comic with both some tongue-in-cheek silliness, as he momentarily possesses Alfred the Butler, as well as some all-too deadly seriousness, when it becomes apparent the supposedly immortal ghost can actually be harmed by the lethal touch of the nefarious Talons; “I feel like I’m burning up! Can’t… Get Out… I’m dissipating! How much deader can a dead man get?”

The regular cover of "BATMAN: THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE SEASON TWO" #2 by Kris Anka