Art By: Brian Buccellato, Francis Manapul
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 6, 2014
The Moral Of The Story Is Don't Go To Gotham
Last issue of Detective Comics we saw the Kings of The Sun kill The Squid, mostly by accident I would think, but they also kidnapped The Squid's brother Johnny. It seems like the Kings of The Sun's leader, Holter is the father that Annie never knew and now he wants his daughter to kill Johnny for murdering her mother. Got this so far? So Batman follows his leads to the abandoned Kane Power Plant and it looks like Bullock had the same idea, which I can only assume makes both of them pissed off because they start punching each other about the face. At the end of the issue we saw that pink glowing fella walking about and while I thought we just saw his glow off in the distance, it turns out he's caused an explosion down by the waterfront. Hopefully our hero and Bullock can put a hold on the face punching long enough to figure out what the hell is going on. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our story begins with Annie Aguila shooting and killing Johnny for murdering her mother. So I guess there's no redemption for this once drug addict that lost her boyfriend and mother and who went from doing drugs again to becoming a murderer herself. That's some dark and miserable shit right there.
Elsewhere it seems that the glowing fella has caused a lot of damage down by the water front and the area seems to be underwater and a bit radioactive. Glowing fellas are the worst. Bullock and Batman go their separate ways to go after the glowing fella. Batman heads back to the Batcave to get a special radiation suit and Bullock goes to get backup.
In the hot zone The Kings of The Sun show up first to get the glowing fella back and I guess we're led to believe that this guy is Dante who we thought we saw die in last week's prequel story in Detective Comics Annual #3, even though he's never addressed by name here. Or it's some random guy that doesn't really make sense to the overall story. I don't know, but I'm going with the Dante connection. It seems that The Kings of The Sun spent a lot of money keeping him alive and hooked up to machines so that they could siphon the energy out of him to make more Icarus. So the glowing fella I'm going to start calling Dante now, seems to be about to go all explosive on The Kings of The Sun for doing this to him, but before he can Batman swoops down and punches Dante in the face and the fight with the Kings of The Sun begins.
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| FACE PUNCH!!! |
Batman takes down the bikers and confronts Holter who apparently put Johnny up to murdering Elena and we find out it was completely personal because she took his child away from him. Which I can kind of understand, but then to get your daughter to kill the man that you got to kill her mother is just fucking out there. Dante somehow flies away and the fight is finished when somehow The Squid's squid winds up underneath of Holter and Batman and it pulls Holter down into the water. Batman tries to save the lowlife, but gets knocked out by a stray tentacle.
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| LOUSY GOTHAM SQUIDS, ALWAYS MAKING LIFE HARD FOR THE WORKING MAN |
It's a good thing that Bullock finally arrives and actually dives into the flooded street to save Batman's life. Well I can't say that it was a completely selfless act because once they're back on the surface Bullock handcuffs Batman and plans on turning him in for a promotion. But Bullock made the one mistake you never make with Batman, he turned his head and when he looked back our hero was gone. He just Batman-ed the hell out of you Bullock.
In the end all the badguys are dead and Bruce Wayne goes to talk to Annie Aguila who tells him that's he's toxic and if it wasn't for him getting into business with her mother, she'd still be alive. Annie Aguila simply gets on her motorcycle and rides out of Gotham never to look back again. Not even a shred of redemption here at all. Goddamn is that disappointing. To give us a little foreshadowing Bullock is searching for a missing crate of Icarus and when he moves some rubble we see a anarchy symbol spray painted on the wall, so I guess we know what we're dealing with next. So that's it for this Icarus story. What began as a really interesting detective story eventually wound down to ridiculous explanations, unanswered questions and bleak miserable conclusions.
Bits and Pieces:
While we started this story with great detective elements driving the issues, it seems that all the evidence throughout didn't mean anything and we're given a completely contrived conclusion that conveniently places characters and squids where they're most useful and just leaves you wanting something more..
4/10
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