Batman under writer Chip Zdarsky has a weird rhythm. Chip starts a storyline from a street level perspective. Like his first arc, the Penguin is dying and decides to use his death to frame Batman for his murder. The absence of Penguin from his perch in the Gotham underworld would cause enough chaos; add in the false accusation that Batman killed him makes things messier.
Seeing how that played out made for an interesting premise but that's not the direction Zdarsky went in.
The story line becomes a big knock down drag out conflict with a virtually unbeatable android called Failsafe who can take out the Justice League who was created by Bruce Wayne to take him out if he went rogue. "Batman murders Penguin" qualifies, Failsafe activates and won't stop until Batman is taken out.
The next storyline needs a sci-fi element to start it (Bruce Wayne winds up on alternate Earth) but the premise is down to Earth: what if Bruce wound up in a Gotham City even worse than the one he came from? Cut off from his wealth, his tools and his associates, can Bruce become Batman once more to save an even more desperate Gotham City?
But the Joker of this world is aware of the multi-verse and knows this Bruce Wayne is from another Earth and the whole saga ends with Batman jumping from Earth to Earth to Earth... well, you get the deal.
The latest story from Chip Zdarsky (with Catwoman writer Trini Howard) begins with an intriguing street level premise. What if Catwoman could save Gotham not by stopping crime but rearranging how crime is committed? She buys off all the henchmen which leaves the likes of Two-Face and Scarecrow with no hired muscle to pull of big city threatening schemes. She sets rules for this army she assembled: no violence, no killing and they rob only targets she has approved, the super rich who live in their ivory penthouse towers.
Gotham City experiences a major downturn in crime. Violent crime is way down, the murder rate has dropped and none of the big bads have tried to pull shit.
There is still crime but it's high level. Break ins to steal jewels and stuff.
The Bat Family is on the fence about this. Catwoman and her crew are still committing crimes. But her criminal operation is actually reducing crime in Gotham.
Jason Todd, the Red Hood (and formerly the 2nd Robin), is less ambivalent about the enterprise and throws in with Catwoman. Although he's cynical as hell about how long this can be sustained.
Batman does not see this as a conundrum. Crime is crime is crime! Catwoman and her crew are criminals and must be stopped.
Batman's attitude is not helped by the sheer physical and mental trauma he has experienced fighting Failsafe and his exploits across the multi-verse. And all this has left him susceptible to his emergency back up personality Zur-En-Arrh.
How fucked up is Batman? He kidnaps Jason Todd and subjects him to toxins and brain washing to make him to scared to fight. If that seems like Bats has gone, well, batty, you would be right.
The war on the street between Batman and Catwoman gets upended with Vandal Savage shows up, out bids Catwoman for her henchman army and engages in a plot that will draw down a meteor from outer space that will demolish Gotham City all so Vandal Savage can reinvigorate his faltering immortality.
Jason Todd saves the day when he shakes off his brainwashed induced phobias and flies a Bat-plane into the meteor to deflect it from Gotham. Presumably this kills Jason Todd.
Well, he's been dead before.
This third storyline that began as a rather provocative street level Batman adventure to spin out into something that seems better suited to Justice League.
Still compromised by Zur-En-Arrh, Batman draws from this experience the lesson that he needs less family and separates himself from his extended Bat-family.
Which is absolutely NOT what Bruce Wayne needs right now.
We knew Catwoman's grand scheme was doomed to failure, that the big bads would not let her utopia stand. The plan crumbles as soon as Vandal Savage shows up, just as Jason Todd predicted.
Still, the premise had promise and it would've been interesting to see it play out to a more complex and nuanced denouement that being done in by the machinations of an immortal super villain and a big rock from outer space.
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