The Punchline
The end draws nigh. It’s about thirty minutes until midnight at which point I am hoping Comixology will add Batman and allow me to do an early review. (it didn’t, so I went to bed an did the review this morning) Early reports from advanced and pirated copies say that we should expect good things from Batman #17, but I aim to give you my best objective opinion hype free. Still, it is hard not to feel some amount of apprehension and excitement as the minutes count down. This has only been a five month event, but the sheer amount of tie ins that have permeated the Batman universe and the weighty name given the arc makes it nearly impossible to shake the feeling that this is a monumental comic. Will someone die? (I doubt it) Does Joker know? (I’m not sure) How will this event kill the Family? (No idea. It might not) We are about to find out. Does Snyder and Joker’s final punch line pay off in big laugh, or does it receive only groans and crickets?
In this issue, Joker throws a family dinner for Batman where he must decide who lives and who dies.
Let’s Just Get This Out of the Way
I figure some of you are eager to know the big revelations of the story, so this section is going to be all Spoilers. If you want to be surprised, then skip this section and start with the next.
(Spoiler) Does anybody die? No. Does Joker know the identities of the Bat Clan? Almost certainly not. He knows the location of the cave, but he does not want to know who Batman or the family truly is. Does anybody lose their face? No….except for Joker when he falls off the waterfall. Does the Bat Family die in some form? I do not think they die, but they are definitely wounded psychologically, and it seems they will need to evaluate themselves as individuals before they are able to come back together as a family.
Well, That Was Awesome
I’ve had mixed feelings on this whole run. The art has been amazing, the dialogue is nearly flawless, many of the set piece battles were inspired, and the tension has been handled very well. On the flip side, Joker is capable of doing way too much damage even ignoring all the cross over events where he is able to be everywhere at once. Saying that Joker can single handedly take out a dozen or so armed, alert police officers or that he can kill off an entire apartment complex without alerting the authorities is really stupid, and similarly, Bats was a bit overpowered in the last issue taking on seventy plus Arkham inmates at once and performing several other ridiculous feats in the last issue alone.
Reservations for the arc still being fully intact, this was absolutely a superb issue, and I cannot think of a single way I could have asked for it to be any better.
We start off with Joker moving the conversation forward. Everybody seemed to originally appreciate the approach Joker took to menacing Bats in the opening couple of issues of Death of the Family. Batman was king, Joker was the Court Jester, and the Family were the petty spawn that drew attention and power from the king and thereby weakened him. However, readers became quite tired of hearing the same basic claims repeated constantly in every arc. It’s a good concept, but repeated six times over, it becomes trite.
However, Joker has some new things to say in regards to his relationship with Bats this issue. Joker explores the reason he allowed his face to be removed. Joker’s basic argument is that if you take off Joker’s face or you take of Batman’s face, it does not matter because they are still the same person underneath, monsters. However, the rest of the Bat Clan is nothing more than pretenders and imitators. Remove their faces, and there is nothing left.
Joker also takes on Batman’s reluctance to kill him head on which is something I did not see coming. I suppose I should have since it would make sense that Joker would interpret Bruce’s reluctance to kill as as a sign of Bruce’s love for him, but still, it surprised me by popping up as one of the obvious underlying themes of the story which had never been explicitly stated or explored. Joker gives his interpretation of Batman’s no kill policy, and then later, Bruce sets him straight, yet you can’t help but wonder if there might be something to Joker’s perspective of the situation which is that Bats will not kill him because he loves him more than he loves protecting people, and at the very crucial moment when Batman has his final confrontation with Joker, you can’t help but catch some romantic undertones to the interaction. Batman holds Joker by the arm, draws him close their mouths nearly meeting, and whispers secrets into his ear.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not from the Morrison school of thought that says, “Gayness is built into Batman,” but there is definitely an emotional and psychological intimacy between Batman and Joker, and it was clear Snyder was playing with that in this scene.
Keeping Us on Our Toes
Snyder did a good job of keeping us guessing. Though I never bought in to the idea that Alfred was going to die even after seeing the preview for this issue that obviously implied it, I did fall for the idea that Joker had cut the Family’s faces off. I was thinking about the commentary article I wrote the other day about how it was possible to restore faces, but at the same time, I thought it would be really awkward to have every member of the Bat Family wearing bandages over their faces for the next several months and being unable to emote for awhile. Thankfully, this turned out to be a red herring. However, there were several things about this scene which raised questions for me.
For one thing, where did these faces come from? Are they some sort of synthetic face? For that matter, where did the masks on the faces come from since the Family was all shown to have their masks after the bandages came off? Also, how do the faces manage to have jaw lines without heads? I know, I’m overthinking it, but I can’t help but wonder if some family in Gotham is without faces tonight. Perhaps the family seen in issue #15 received a visit from a clown?
(Spoiler) Also, I’m wondering if there was some plans for Jason to lose his face. This, as you probably know, has been rumored to be coming due to the future RHATO issue showing Jason faceless. This was another area in which Snyder fooled me because if you look at the Bat Clan after Bruce leaves, everybody lost their bandages quickly except for Jason. We never saw Jason with an intact face until his last panel of the story. This makes me wonder if somebody was flirting with the idea of removing Red Hood’s face and it was decided at the last moment to leave him intact. There was recently a change in writers on RHATO from Lobdell to Tynion IV, so perhaps the two had different future visions for the series? There was also the tease in Teen Titans #16 where Joker is seen doing something with Jason’s mask which was never continued in this issue, so I feel like there was either something planned here which was scrapped or there is another shoe to drop on the Jason front.
The Heart of the Family
For a story which could fairly be accused of being torture porn in large sections, this issue actually left off with some pretty tender and touching moments, and these are some of my favorite things from the entire arc.
(Spoiler) It was very gratifying to see Batman trust the family to take care of their own problems. Bruce saying that his children make him stronger is one of the moments that makes you want to stand up and cheer. Similarly, seeing the Family in the grips of Joker gas was a terrifying moment, and part of me was thinking, “No, save them!” and I suppose some criticism could be made of the idea that the Family is able to overcome the effects of Joker toxin while most others die, but you can reasonably make the case that the Family has probably been exposed to it previously, developed some immunity, and been trained in techniques to control involuntary responses, so for the comic book realm, I think this is a fair scenario.
(Spoiler) In the same vein of tender moments, the scene between Bruce and Alfred was great with Bruce confessing his feelings to his father figure while taking on the role of servant and caretaker for the poor beleaguered butler. Seeing Bruce tease Alfred while playing off the Year One concept of a summoning bell was…just plain cute.
(Spoiler) Finally, we see Batman realizing the need for having a family meeting, but the family being unwilling to meet. This shows some development on both ends, and I thought it was a rather poetic moment. It’s very relatable because we have all probably been on both ends of that situation. We’ve all been the person who wants to connect with loved ones during a hard time, and we’ve all been the ones to keep our distance because we need time to ourselves. Seeing the family deal with their emotions in their own private ways was powerful as was the phone call between Dick and Bruce. Though it makes no sense with Dick no longer being Bruce’s ward, its nice that Snyder was willing to give that little nod to Dick being the closest child to Batman, the only one who is able to reach out and truly connect to him.
Bat Droppings
I’m going to throw out a few more random thoughts on things.
1. Capullo and the rest of the art team continue to do a great job.
2. Snyder has done an amazing job coming up with a great first page for every issue.
3. I like that the two-headed lion’s cub was brought back for this issue. It served as nice bookends for the story.
4. The dinner table death trap was clever and simple as was Bruce’s escape.
5. It would benefit the story if there were some explanation to the effects of Joker toxin since its effects seem to range widely. I guess you can say that comes down to Joker’s particular cocktail, but that’s a bit of a cop out.
6. One of the best things about this story is that Batman kept his integrity throughout. It would have been easy to shake things up by making him compromise, but he stands by his principles.
7. It was nice to see a hug between Bruce and Damian. They so rarely act like father and son.
8. Joker pulls out a few classic gags at the end of the issue which were nice to see.
9. (Spoiler) I liked that Joker’s little book of secrets appeared to have nothing in it, but isn’t there supposed to be a Joker book of secrets in one of the Morrison stories? If anybody recalls, please drop me a line and refresh my memory.
10. (Spoiler) Batman reveals how he knew Joker did not know his identity, but he claims that he could have never explained that to the family. Uh, yeah you could Bruce. You could have told them that exact story.
11. The ending was pretty cool with the “Ha” though I do wonder if there was any significance to the fly. I assume it is just a lingering reminder of Joker’s influence.
12. In some of the variant covers, Bruce looks cross eyed. That’s really lame.
13. The last two pages do something called “Channel 52” where DC promotes its current issues as a newscast. I’m not delighted about this taking two pages away from the story I bought, but I did think this was a very cute way to get people interested in other stories. “Well personally, I’m team Wonder Woman.” Awesome.
Conclusion 10/10
I really cannot find much of anything negative to say about this issue. It was great. You should definitely pick it up.