Batman Eternal #34 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, for this series, this issue is pretty solid.  We've got some good and bads, but they more or less balance out each other.

Let's take the bads first.  Hush goes for the end game here, tripping a sensor in the cache located under the Martha Wayne Foundation Hospital to bring Batman to him.  The problem is that this moment falls flat.  After so many issues building to it, Snyder and Tynion never really tell us why Hush goes for the kill at this moment.  Given the damage that he's done to the Wayne name, it seems odd that he wouldn't decide to keep detonating more caches, to score the maximum amount of damage possible.  Moreover, Higgins doesn't really do much with the fight itself.  It sounds like the same old fight that these two characters have always had, with Tommy crowing that he's better than Bruce and that Bruce is still crying about his parents and Bruce proving that he's more than Tommy thinks that he is.  It's pretty dull, to be honest.

Moreover, we learn that the federal government has taken over Wayne Enterprises.  That doesn't make a lick of sense.  I could see DHS or the FBI demanding everything Wayne Enterprises knows about the caches and putting investigators into the parts of the company dealing with the caches.  But, it's hard to believe that the federal government could ever get the power to take over one of the largest multinational corporations in the world.  Did they pay shareholders for their shares?  It just feels like a cheap stunt to underline the fact that Bruce lost the company while he's busy protecting the city.

But, the good news is that we have good news.  The revelation that Hush was invited to partake in the destruction of Gotham City just like Carmine Falcone was expected, but still welcome when it comes.  (I'm not sure why Hush would be holding the invitation in his pocket, but I'm willing to overlook that part.)  Hush has never seemed like the type of villain that could pull off the conspiracy that we've seen building in the background so far.  He has neither the personality to inspire followers nor the resources to instill fear in them.  Though it's (again) unclear why Hush would prematurely try to take down Batman, this revelation raises the possibility that he was told to do so, abiding by a schedule that only the mastermind knows.  One question related to his fall is what impact it will have on his use of the GCPD to undermine Gotham's security from the inside.  Will Bard start working with the mysterious mastermind?

We have 18 issues left in this series.  So far, we've essentially had two main segments:  Falcone's fostering of a gang war and Hush's assault on Gotham City.  If Snyder and Tynion follow a three-act approach, it implies that we'll have a third actor come into focus in the next few issues that may, or may not, be the mastermind.  We also have a number of fires still burning, like the nano-virus that, given the lack of attention paid to it so far, has presumably killed all the children in the Narrows.  But, Snyder and Tynion have, admittedly, resolved a number of other sub-plots, such as the super-natural activity under Arkham Asylum and the mystery of Commissioner's Gordon's actions in the subway station.

I guess we'll see where we go from here.

*** (three of five stars)