Batman: Failsafe

Back in the 1950's, it was not unusual to see Batman fighting aliens and super powered threats. No dark and gritty battles with psychopathic murder clowns for this Caped Crusader. 

Well, that was a different time and today we take Batman seriously as a dark avenger of the night who spent most of a recent issue of Batman...

Falling 240,000 miles through space plummeting towards the Earth...

....and survives.

What the....?

So here's the deal.  Batman's battle with his android opposite number Failsafe took them both to the moon where after a knock down drag out fight in the Justice League's moon based Watchtower, leaves Batman falling 240,000 miles above the Earth. 

OK, we get it! Batman's a bad ass who can do anything 

But falling to Earth from space, surviving the intense cold of space, the airless vacuum, the bone shattering g-forces, the blazing heat of re-entry...

...to end up standing outside Superman's Fortress of Solitude?

Damn! 

To be fair, writer Chip Zdarsky does plot out a very specific sequence of events for Batman to pull off this insane and virtually impossible escape.  It's not simple, there's a lot of luck involved and Batman may be a bad ass but don't ask him to pull off that trick twice.  

Zdarsky does make effective use of a connected DC Universe such as the use of Aquaman and the Atlanteans who help Batman heal from injuries he sustained in his first go 'round with Failsafe.  

But this storyline leans hard into the trope that Batman can do anything including building an android (1) who is smarter than Batman (2) and can fight off Superman and the rest of the Justice League (3).   

So Joe Chill killed off the parents of a future robotics expert? 

Plus all the other shit Batman is an expert in?   

If you're wondering why Batman built Failsafe, he was designed for the express purpose of defeating Batman in case he turned to the evulz.   

Batman being accused of murdering the Penguin (he didn't) was enough to activate Failsafe and send him after our Caped Crusader.   

I don't mind that Batman is good a lot of things. He doesn't need to be good at ALL things.  

There's also a part of the storyline where Failsafe takes over Gotham City as part of a protocol to flush Batman out of hiding. 

Oh no! Some weird psycho threat has taken over Gotham? It must be Wednesday. 

Over the last 5 years, Tom King, James Tynion, Joshua Williamson and now Chip Zdarsky has written storylines with Gotham being overrun and conquered by malevolent forces.  It's a plot point that really needs to be given a rest. 

That being said, what can't be denied is that Chip Zdarsky has crafted one extremely wild ride that has pushed Batman to almost absurd limits.  

The back ups by Zdarsky add a lot of depth to the proceedings such as Catwoman's investigation into Penguin's sketchy shit and the secret origin of the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh (Batman's back up personality when his brain gets fried). 

Yep, the Failsafe arc may have been too too but no one can deny Chip Zdarsky didn't swing for the fences with his opening storyline.  

And it was great to have Jorge Jiminez back on the Bat-art once more.