Batman: Last Knight on Earth #2: This issue is difficult to follow as it requires a pretty deep knowledge of DC characters to understand even a small portion of the Easter eggs that Snyder leaves scattered around the devastated United States. On the plus side, you only need to recognize a few of those Easter eggs to understand how bad the situation is. For example, the Flashes are trapped in some sort of Speed Force storm that ravages the country, the "Atlantean incident" has boiled the seas, the jars containing planets like Kandor are shattered across the plains, and extraterrestrial warships from the "space cavalry" lay rotting in the fields: it's technicolor horrors everywhere you look.
Observing this devastation as they glide across the broken heartland, Bruce and the Joker then come upon Fort Waller. This sequence is extremely heavy on Easter eggs, and I had to do a lot of internet research to understand even some of what happened. As far as I can tell, it was where Earth's good people had their last stand. Earth's most brilliant scientists gathered there to create a new generation of heroes to fight against Luthor and his army. Firestorm was its guardian, and the Green and the Red "blessed it with their avatars," meaning, I think, Swamp Man and Animal Man. Instead, it all collapsed into everyone fighting over the last dregs of power. Again, I'm not sure that I'm connecting the dots correctly, but I'm guessing that Firestorm exploded (or something) and irradiated the area. Legions of mutated Animal Men attack the remaining humans guarding the outpost while an enormous and mindless Swamp Thing wanders the area. It's very grim, and Snyder successfully uses it as a metaphor for the pointlessness of any war, let alone this one.
Bruce and the Joker move onto the Plains of Solitude in their search for Clark, but they instead find Luthor living on the Kent farm surrounded by Superman clones. He's trying to find a way to alter the space-time continuum in the exact way necessary to bring baby Superman's spaceship to Earth again. Bruce is unimpressed, and he instead wants to know what Luthor did to create this situation. Here, we learn the truth, and it's a doozy.
Luthor and Starro (seriously? Starro?) placed emotionally responsive sunstones in the minds of every person on Earth. Luthor then challenged Superman to a debate. If Superman convinced people to embrace good, Luthor would die, via kryptonite shards buried underneath the Earth that the sunstones would activate. If Luthor convinced people to embrace evil, Superman would die in the same way. Superman's speech was so good, Luthor expected that he'd win. He didn't. Essentially, Superman lost a superpowered debate. I have to say that I liked it better when it was just Luthor making an appeal to everyone's basest instincts and they followed his lead, to a disastrous result. In the current era, we'd all believe that. You didn't need emotionally responsive sunstones or hidden kryptonite shards. Our current view of humanity is dim enough.
At this point, Bane and Scarecrow arrive, somehow having tracked Bruce to the farm. I initially thought that Scarecrow used his drugs to turn the Supermen on their side, but upon re-reading this issue yet again I think that it may actually be Omega's Anti-Life Equation that does the job. Diana arrives just in time to save Bruce and the Joker, as Luthor sacrifices himself to buy them time to escape. Diana takes them to the Spectre's enormous cloak, which serves as a portal to Hades. As they travel down the River Styx, Bruce is overcome with doubt about everything. He wonders if the people left on the surface view it as a sort of Eden, exactly because it's so twisted. (It's now clear that Diana meant it literally when she said the people that she and the New Amazons are protecting in the Earth's core are the ones who chose good.) Diana is unable to provide much comfort, though notes that she's there because he's the one that opened the Justice League's door (i.e., he has inspired some hope in her). They arrive in Gotham where Omega has subjected everyone to his vision. They miraculously find Dick Grayson, injecting a little more hope into this enterprise.
All that said, I'm not sure where we go from here. I feel like it would all feel more believable if the story's foundation wasn't built on, let's repeat one more time, emotionally responsive sunstones. We could be watching a hopeless Bruce desperately cling to his ideals in the face of a lot of evidence encouraging him not to do so. But, Snyder distracts us with unnecessary flourishes that detract from the emotions we could be feeling. I'm hoping focusing on Gotham grounds us in a way only Gotham can.
Batman: Last Knight on Earth #3: For all the spectacular world-building that Snyder and Capullo did in the first issue of this series, it ends with a whimper.
Snyder reveals that the original Bruce Wayne is Omega, though he never explains how exactly he is. Old Bruce tells New Bruce that he "got back on his feet" without magic or pits, "just a vision." That said, he describes the rioters at the Hall of Justice cutting off pieces of him and setting him on fire; he had no tongue and no teeth by the end. Snyder never fills in this blank. How did no one realize he survived? How did he get back his tongue and his teeth without magic or pits? How is he not burned more than he is? Snyder also doesn't explain how Tim somehow didn't fall under the sway of the original Omega Signal, allowing him to build the suit that he used to free Dick and the rest of the Owls. (It was only on my second reading that I realized they somehow retrofitted Tim's suit for the Joker; you have to realize that Barbara unveiled said suit when she was showing Bruce Tim's body.) We also don't learn how New Bruce manages to escape the "throne" where Old Bruce is holding him with simply a penny; we just know that he does. In other words, loose ends, we have them.
The only real resolution we get is the Joker telling New Bruce that he was responsible for leading Old Batman to believe that Joe Chill killed his parents because a drunken Thomas Wayne accidentally killed his son in surgery. The Joker did it because he wanted to break Batman exactly because he saw what Luthor was planning and knew a too trusting Batman would open the door. He jokes that he didn't know if Alfred staked his head on the pike for being too cruel or not cruel enough. Sure, OK.
I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy the zaniness of this series. But, it had too many "Starro helped me implant emotionally responsive sunstones into everyone's minds" moments for me to consider it the classic that Snyder clearly wants it to be. The story was supposed to be a reborn Bruce trying to find a way to bring hope to this world without relying on Clark like he always did. He himself has to be that beacon of hope. Instead, we got...Starro.
Showing posts with label Batman: Last Knight on Earth (2019). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Batman: Last Knight on Earth (2019). Show all posts
Friday, April 17, 2020
Monday, March 30, 2020
Batman: Last Knight on Earth #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)
Scott Snyder has always been a genius at starting an epic story, and this issue is no different. I'm hard pressed to think of a story that covers so much ground and functions on so many levels after just one (admittedly mega-sized) issue. Let's break it down, shall we?
This issue consists of three separate stories.
In the opening sequence, Batman is intrigued when he realizes that someone has been drawing five-foot lines in chalk around Gotham for a little over a year. But, he's disturbed when he realizes through satellite imagery that they form an outline of Batman, with his heart located right where his parents died in Crime Alley. When he visits the scene, he finds a dead ten- or eleven-year-old boy posed like a prop on his knees under an umbrella. As he investigates, Bruce is surprised when a mechanism on the boy's arm activates and fires a revolver at him.
We then move into the second story. Bruce awakens in Arkham Asylum with someone who looks a lot like the Joker claiming that he's his psychiatrist. Dr. Redmund Hudd. (Heh. I only noticed the name in the second reading, I'm embarrassed to admit.) Bruce has been in a delusional state since he (allegedly) murdered his parents, but a new drug that Wayne Enterprises developed has brought him back to reality. ("Heliox" is the new dionesium.) Alfred arrives to explain that Batman existed only in Bruce's deluded head. In an interview room, he explains that Batman's rogues gallery is comprised of members of Arkham's staff and Bruce's skills come from his various therapies. For example, he learned Mandarin at the library under the watchful eye of Thomas Elliott (get it?) and martial arts for Dr. Algol (GET IT?)
Snyder is possibly at his best here, as he makes you believe this story is the subject of the mini-series. We're going to watch Bruce try to prove that Batman was real, like a reverse St. Elsewhere. Alfred eventually shows Bruce that his "Batsuit" is just a shock-therapy cowl attached to a straight jacket. Alfred reaches out his hand, begging Bruce to come home. Bruce takes Alfred's hand and his eyes widen noticeably. He takes the suit and bolts, making his way through Arkham's orderlies and guards as they try to restrain him. On the roof, he demands to know why Alfred lied to him, and Alfred relents. He tells him the truth.
However, Snyder doesn't rush his story. Our only hint about the status quo is that Alfred tells Bruce that nothing exists outside the hospital. Bruce realizes that such destructions means that he failed. He asks Alfred to tell him what happened, but Alfred again beseeches him to just accept that he's Bruce Wayne now. Bruce taps Alfred's face, and Alfred's digital mask fades, revealing a much older self. We learn that, when Bruce took Alfred's hand in the interview room, he felt his pulse and realized that Alfred was older than he was acknowledging. Alfred says that he hadn't yet perfect the device to correct that, because Bruce woke up two years early. He explains Toyman constructed the fake Gotham, with Alfred acting all the parts, his masterpiece. When Bruce asks why Alfred's old and Bruce isn't, Alfred tells him that he won't like the answer. He asks for one last hug from his boy before he tells him the truth, because he knows that Bruce will leave after that. This part wasn't particularly emotional for me in the moment, but reading it a second time -- knowing that Alfred isn't lying about the devastation outside "Arkham" -- it's devastating. After all, Alfred is right -- Bruce leaves after he tells him the truth (off-panel, keeping us guessing). Alfred gets his last hug, and it seems pretty clear that Alfred is going to commit suicide once Bruce leaves, his last grasp at some happiness denied him.
(The only part here that I didn't get was Alfred mentioned an "infection from a bat bite" when he describes the events that led Bruce to becoming Batman, like Joe Chill murdering his parents. What? Is Snyder implying Bruce has Spider-Man-like powers?)
The next moment is the series' iconic moment, with Batman (in the cobbled-together Arkham suit) emerging from the sand into a desert and discovering Joker's head in the lantern. Snyder's Joker is hilarious, and I hope that we see more of him for the rest of the series. (I loved when he pretended not to know that he didn't have a body. Ha!) Batman takes the Joker with him to Coast City, where he confronts a series of Green Lantern-created babies running wild. Apparently Braniac leached Mogo, and Green Lantern rings rained from the sky for anyone to grab. This entire sequence is kind of ridiculous, but it's fun due to the Joker constantly asking what he's missing after Bruce tucked him under his arm to flee the babies. ("Do I hear babies? I love babies!") Bruce is saved when someone emerges from a mid-air door and grabs him. I don't recognize her, but she's with Poison Ivy on patrol in an invisible tank. We first learn of Omega here when the woman tells Bruce that he (Omega) has scouts -- like Bane and Scarecrow -- all over the place. They take Bruce to Gemworld, and it's here where the truth emerges.
Diana is our narrator as we learn about the present. As they walk through Gemworld, she tells Bruce about the status quo: Earth's population has been reduced to the 100,000 or so people living below ground. Before Bruce gets any ideas, Diana tells him that virtually no one is alive on the surface and the people who are alive up there wouldn't follow him. She and the refugees are only safe in Gemworld because it refracts everything, even space-time, so Omega can't detect them.
Snyder and Capullo do a great job making this next sequence chilling. As they arrive at the ruined remains of the Hall of Justice, Diana tells Bruce that it all started with a speech that Lex delivered in which he lamented that everything was falling apart: the Earth is heating, the resources are gone, and the powerful are tightening their grasp. According to Lex, the "powerful" want us all to play nicely so we "win" at the end. Lex decried "goodness" as the oldest lie: be good and stay in the garden rather than eat the apple and learn the truth. Lex encouraged everyone to eat all the apples at once. All Hell then broke loose.
Slowly but surely, everyday people begin to pick off the heroes and the scales start to tip. Bruce encourages the Justice League to throw open the doors to the Halls of Justice, hoping that empowering the people will quell their outrage. Instead, the crowd kills him immediately. (Diana refers to Batman in the third-, not second-, person here, so we know that this Bruce isn't the ur-Bruce, explaining why he's so young.) Luthor thinks that he's won, but, unfortunately for him, they turn on him and the villains, too. (I'm not really sure what Lex thought would happen, since he was one of those elites with a vested interest in everyone playing nicely.) But, it went from bad to worse when someone named Omega rises. He has the Anti-Life Equation, and, even after the remaining heroes and villains band together, he destroys them and takes over the East Coast. Diana then explains to Bruce that this already terrible situation is getting worse, as we learn that Omega has found a way to amplify the Anti-Life Equation where it'll reach even into Gemworld.
Appalled, Bruce encourages Diana to work with him to stop Omega. We learn that he exists because Alfred convinced Diana to bring the machine that Bruce created to replicate himself to the desert. Bruce sees this act as a sign that she has hope, but she tells him that it was a mercy to an old man. Bruce encourages her to fight, and Diana is harsh: she tells him that he died before the fighting even began. It's here where you realize that she's been fighting this fight for twenty-something years: Bruce's optimism has to be grating for her. After all, she reveals that Omega is rumored to be one of Bruce's former disciples. Jason? Tim? Damian? All seem like potential candidates. Bruce asks about Clark, and Diana dismisses rumors that he's alive and sulking in the "Fields of Solitude." Diana saw him fall and, besides, she's scoured the Plains. (If she looked even after seeing Clark fall, maybe Bruce isn't wrong that she has some hope?)
It all leads to the revelation that Diana is leading the remaining population into the Underworld to escape Omega's Anti-Life Equation. (One of the most poignant moments is when she meekly tells him that Hades has promised her to give her a realm with some light.) Bruce is apalled and adamant they do something to save the world. The second moment of this issue (beyond Lex's speech) that rings particularly true to me is here, when Diana tells Bruce that the world up there doesn't want saving and maybe never did. She encourages Bruce to come with them, to help protect the 100,000 good people who need heroes; he could be a new Batman for a new age.
Capullo's Bruce has always been the handsomest, and it's always fun to see that. But, this handsomeness is...weaponized, for lack of a better term, in the next scene. A bruised and battered boy approaches Bruce, who looks like an idealized 1940s college football player with a golden heart that shines through his baby-blue eyes. If our America has a hero, it is someone who looks like Bruce, not Batman. The boy asks Batman if he can see in the dark because he's a bat. Bruce tells him bats navigate by echoes, and the boy informs Bruce that he's not supposed to make echoes down in Gemworld because they bother people. Bruce laughs, and they make one together. It's Bruce as a symbol of hope, but Snyder makes it such a feeble light in such an overwhelming darkness that you understand Diana and her desperate plight all the more. The next morning, she's not surprised when he's gone. I found myself hoping that Bruce is right and that she'd allow herself a shred of hope.
In other words, this issue is a tour de force of world-building. Snyder builds one entirely compelling world -- the Arkham Asylum reality -- only to reveal that it's a front, hiding an entirely different one. But, Snyder is often very good at this sort of thing. It's sticking the landing that I often find is difficult for him, and I find myself hoping against hope that he manages it here, after such an amazing first issue.
This issue consists of three separate stories.
In the opening sequence, Batman is intrigued when he realizes that someone has been drawing five-foot lines in chalk around Gotham for a little over a year. But, he's disturbed when he realizes through satellite imagery that they form an outline of Batman, with his heart located right where his parents died in Crime Alley. When he visits the scene, he finds a dead ten- or eleven-year-old boy posed like a prop on his knees under an umbrella. As he investigates, Bruce is surprised when a mechanism on the boy's arm activates and fires a revolver at him.
We then move into the second story. Bruce awakens in Arkham Asylum with someone who looks a lot like the Joker claiming that he's his psychiatrist. Dr. Redmund Hudd. (Heh. I only noticed the name in the second reading, I'm embarrassed to admit.) Bruce has been in a delusional state since he (allegedly) murdered his parents, but a new drug that Wayne Enterprises developed has brought him back to reality. ("Heliox" is the new dionesium.) Alfred arrives to explain that Batman existed only in Bruce's deluded head. In an interview room, he explains that Batman's rogues gallery is comprised of members of Arkham's staff and Bruce's skills come from his various therapies. For example, he learned Mandarin at the library under the watchful eye of Thomas Elliott (get it?) and martial arts for Dr. Algol (GET IT?)
Snyder is possibly at his best here, as he makes you believe this story is the subject of the mini-series. We're going to watch Bruce try to prove that Batman was real, like a reverse St. Elsewhere. Alfred eventually shows Bruce that his "Batsuit" is just a shock-therapy cowl attached to a straight jacket. Alfred reaches out his hand, begging Bruce to come home. Bruce takes Alfred's hand and his eyes widen noticeably. He takes the suit and bolts, making his way through Arkham's orderlies and guards as they try to restrain him. On the roof, he demands to know why Alfred lied to him, and Alfred relents. He tells him the truth.
However, Snyder doesn't rush his story. Our only hint about the status quo is that Alfred tells Bruce that nothing exists outside the hospital. Bruce realizes that such destructions means that he failed. He asks Alfred to tell him what happened, but Alfred again beseeches him to just accept that he's Bruce Wayne now. Bruce taps Alfred's face, and Alfred's digital mask fades, revealing a much older self. We learn that, when Bruce took Alfred's hand in the interview room, he felt his pulse and realized that Alfred was older than he was acknowledging. Alfred says that he hadn't yet perfect the device to correct that, because Bruce woke up two years early. He explains Toyman constructed the fake Gotham, with Alfred acting all the parts, his masterpiece. When Bruce asks why Alfred's old and Bruce isn't, Alfred tells him that he won't like the answer. He asks for one last hug from his boy before he tells him the truth, because he knows that Bruce will leave after that. This part wasn't particularly emotional for me in the moment, but reading it a second time -- knowing that Alfred isn't lying about the devastation outside "Arkham" -- it's devastating. After all, Alfred is right -- Bruce leaves after he tells him the truth (off-panel, keeping us guessing). Alfred gets his last hug, and it seems pretty clear that Alfred is going to commit suicide once Bruce leaves, his last grasp at some happiness denied him.
(The only part here that I didn't get was Alfred mentioned an "infection from a bat bite" when he describes the events that led Bruce to becoming Batman, like Joe Chill murdering his parents. What? Is Snyder implying Bruce has Spider-Man-like powers?)
The next moment is the series' iconic moment, with Batman (in the cobbled-together Arkham suit) emerging from the sand into a desert and discovering Joker's head in the lantern. Snyder's Joker is hilarious, and I hope that we see more of him for the rest of the series. (I loved when he pretended not to know that he didn't have a body. Ha!) Batman takes the Joker with him to Coast City, where he confronts a series of Green Lantern-created babies running wild. Apparently Braniac leached Mogo, and Green Lantern rings rained from the sky for anyone to grab. This entire sequence is kind of ridiculous, but it's fun due to the Joker constantly asking what he's missing after Bruce tucked him under his arm to flee the babies. ("Do I hear babies? I love babies!") Bruce is saved when someone emerges from a mid-air door and grabs him. I don't recognize her, but she's with Poison Ivy on patrol in an invisible tank. We first learn of Omega here when the woman tells Bruce that he (Omega) has scouts -- like Bane and Scarecrow -- all over the place. They take Bruce to Gemworld, and it's here where the truth emerges.
Diana is our narrator as we learn about the present. As they walk through Gemworld, she tells Bruce about the status quo: Earth's population has been reduced to the 100,000 or so people living below ground. Before Bruce gets any ideas, Diana tells him that virtually no one is alive on the surface and the people who are alive up there wouldn't follow him. She and the refugees are only safe in Gemworld because it refracts everything, even space-time, so Omega can't detect them.
Snyder and Capullo do a great job making this next sequence chilling. As they arrive at the ruined remains of the Hall of Justice, Diana tells Bruce that it all started with a speech that Lex delivered in which he lamented that everything was falling apart: the Earth is heating, the resources are gone, and the powerful are tightening their grasp. According to Lex, the "powerful" want us all to play nicely so we "win" at the end. Lex decried "goodness" as the oldest lie: be good and stay in the garden rather than eat the apple and learn the truth. Lex encouraged everyone to eat all the apples at once. All Hell then broke loose.
Slowly but surely, everyday people begin to pick off the heroes and the scales start to tip. Bruce encourages the Justice League to throw open the doors to the Halls of Justice, hoping that empowering the people will quell their outrage. Instead, the crowd kills him immediately. (Diana refers to Batman in the third-, not second-, person here, so we know that this Bruce isn't the ur-Bruce, explaining why he's so young.) Luthor thinks that he's won, but, unfortunately for him, they turn on him and the villains, too. (I'm not really sure what Lex thought would happen, since he was one of those elites with a vested interest in everyone playing nicely.) But, it went from bad to worse when someone named Omega rises. He has the Anti-Life Equation, and, even after the remaining heroes and villains band together, he destroys them and takes over the East Coast. Diana then explains to Bruce that this already terrible situation is getting worse, as we learn that Omega has found a way to amplify the Anti-Life Equation where it'll reach even into Gemworld.
Appalled, Bruce encourages Diana to work with him to stop Omega. We learn that he exists because Alfred convinced Diana to bring the machine that Bruce created to replicate himself to the desert. Bruce sees this act as a sign that she has hope, but she tells him that it was a mercy to an old man. Bruce encourages her to fight, and Diana is harsh: she tells him that he died before the fighting even began. It's here where you realize that she's been fighting this fight for twenty-something years: Bruce's optimism has to be grating for her. After all, she reveals that Omega is rumored to be one of Bruce's former disciples. Jason? Tim? Damian? All seem like potential candidates. Bruce asks about Clark, and Diana dismisses rumors that he's alive and sulking in the "Fields of Solitude." Diana saw him fall and, besides, she's scoured the Plains. (If she looked even after seeing Clark fall, maybe Bruce isn't wrong that she has some hope?)
It all leads to the revelation that Diana is leading the remaining population into the Underworld to escape Omega's Anti-Life Equation. (One of the most poignant moments is when she meekly tells him that Hades has promised her to give her a realm with some light.) Bruce is apalled and adamant they do something to save the world. The second moment of this issue (beyond Lex's speech) that rings particularly true to me is here, when Diana tells Bruce that the world up there doesn't want saving and maybe never did. She encourages Bruce to come with them, to help protect the 100,000 good people who need heroes; he could be a new Batman for a new age.
Capullo's Bruce has always been the handsomest, and it's always fun to see that. But, this handsomeness is...weaponized, for lack of a better term, in the next scene. A bruised and battered boy approaches Bruce, who looks like an idealized 1940s college football player with a golden heart that shines through his baby-blue eyes. If our America has a hero, it is someone who looks like Bruce, not Batman. The boy asks Batman if he can see in the dark because he's a bat. Bruce tells him bats navigate by echoes, and the boy informs Bruce that he's not supposed to make echoes down in Gemworld because they bother people. Bruce laughs, and they make one together. It's Bruce as a symbol of hope, but Snyder makes it such a feeble light in such an overwhelming darkness that you understand Diana and her desperate plight all the more. The next morning, she's not surprised when he's gone. I found myself hoping that Bruce is right and that she'd allow herself a shred of hope.
In other words, this issue is a tour de force of world-building. Snyder builds one entirely compelling world -- the Arkham Asylum reality -- only to reveal that it's a front, hiding an entirely different one. But, Snyder is often very good at this sort of thing. It's sticking the landing that I often find is difficult for him, and I find myself hoping against hope that he manages it here, after such an amazing first issue.
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