All Star Batman #1: If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I'm not a fan of Scott Snyder's Bruce Wayne. I love his Dick Grayson. But, his Bruce Wayne is not someone I recognize. He's an arrogant yet incompetent sociopath. He seems to be motivated more by defeating his foes than by saving innocent civilians. But, I'm glad to say Snyder seems to be taking a different tack here. This Bruce seems to have learned a lesson or two. (Given his failures over the last few months, it's about time.)
The premise of this series is Bruce is taking Harvey Dent to a "house" to cure him of his Two-Face persona. Harvey goes willingly, but Two-Face puts up a fight. Here, Snyder alludes to an information network Dent had as a District Attorney that allowed Two-Face to defeat his foes in the underworld. This network is at the center of the carrot/stick approach Two-Face takes here in motivating people to help him. First, he pledges to release all the secrets he knows if Batman isn't stopped. Snyder makes it clear how good Harvey's network is when a scared Alfred takes down the Batplane. But, Two-Face goes on step further: he offers the fortunes of the wealthiest mobsters in Gotham to anyone who stops Batman. Even the denizens of a truck stop -- near where the Batplane crashes -- are motivated to take down the Bat for the money.
It's here where Snyder shows the sort of genius we saw in the "Black Mirror" in "Detective Comics." Although we still don't know anything about this "house" or how it can cure Harvey after all these years, Snyder sets up a "Cannonball Run" that makes sense in the context of the characters. It's clear why it's going to be a challenge for Bruce to cross the finish line. Moreover, we're treated to a back-up story of Bruce starting Duke's training. If the primary story shows Bruce as caring more about saving Harvey than he does about defeating Two-Face, this story shows him having learned a lesson. He's going to put Duke through the Cursed Wheel, a condensed composite of all the lessons Bruce learned in his adolescent travels. But, he realizes Duke isn't a Robin: the need to dominate him like he did the other Robins is absent. We also get a hint that a villain not named Jason has gone through the Wheel. This story doesn't obviously connect to the main story right now, but it's clear it will, so I'm intrigued to see where we're going with it. Overall, it's a solid start that gives me hope I'm going to like where we're going.
Detective Comics #938: This issue is solid, though I had to read it twice to follow all the twists and turns. Tynion starts the issue by showing us the Colonel's motivation to join the Colony, pledging to a young Kate at her mother's gravesite that he'll do everything he can to ensure no other family has to endure what they have. (He's actually already agreed to join the Colony when this conversation happens.) Frankly, it's a pretty solid motivation. In the present, a now-freed Bruce sends Tim to hack into the Colony's servers to get more information about the Gothamites the Colony is targeting. In so doing, Tim encounters Ulysses, hopefully kindling a new arch-nemesis for him. He also realizes the military has no idea how far beyond its remit the Colony has gone. Once Tim has the information they need, the team flees. Realizing the military will shut down the Colony once Bruce shares with them what it's done, Ulysses convinces the Colonel to unleash drones he built (against the Colonel's orders) on the intended targets. The problem is they're not 100 percent sure of the intel that they have; as such, the Colonel is authorizing the murder of innocent civilians. It's...dark. One question going forward is how right Bruce is in his insistence the League of Shadows is really a myth. After all, Tynion worked with Snyder during the era, where this level of confidence from Bruce usually meant that he was wrong, like how he was sure that the Court of Owls didn't exist or the Joker didn't enter the Batcave. Will it be more of the same here? If it's not, then you have to wonder why the Colony still believes the League to exist, given the time and resources they've had to get to the truth.
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