Art By: Patrick Gleason
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: November 19, 2014
Attracting The Attention of A God
Last month in Batman and Robin we saw that Red Robin, Red Hood and Batgirl had a change of heart and decided to go after Bruce on his journey though Apokolips. Only problem is that Gotham still needed a protector and Batman only had one Mother Box to boom tube him in. So after making sure that Batwing and Bat Woman were up to the task of protecting our favorite awful city, the Bat Family moved onto stage 2 of their plan and completely betrayed and screwed over Cyborg. After a clever ruse to get Vic Stone to the Batcave, the gang used one of Batman's Justice League fail safes to knock out Cyborg and used his personal Mother Box to open a boom tube to backup Batman and get Damian's body home. Only problem......... Well kind of problem, I see it as a happy accident, Cyborg came to and followed the trio to Apokolips........... and so did Titus. We left that issue with Batman kicking Apokoliptian ass and taking Apokoliptian names and our backup team facing down hungry Apokoliptians, who'd like nothing more than to make our heroes their meal. Let's check out what this issue has in store for us and see if bat has been taken off the menu. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our story begins with a lot of fighting, shooting, dog abuse and eventually running. Like I said above, our Bat Family and Cyborg boom tubed into a precarious situation when the people of Apokolips are deciding on which family member to eat and when out of nowhere a bunch of lean strangers show up.......... Yeah, it's not a difficult choice to make at that point. But don't worry our heroes get away with only minimal psychological scars and go to make their way towards Batman. Now I know that the Caped Crusader has a substantial lead on these heroes and he could be in a million different places, so how are they ever going to find him? Oh....... That's right all they have to do is follow the explosions.
When we left Batman last issue he was beating the holy hell out of Glorious Godfrey and witnessing the power of the Chaos Cannon as Kalibak blew up a nearby moon. So now that Godrey has had the proper motivation, he tells Batman that Damian's body and a few other choice objects besides the Chaos Shard are fueling the Chaos Cannon and before Batman can continue the beating for him turning his son into a gun, we find out that the Cannon uses the life force of what it's shooting and filters it back, so target go dead and Apokolips gets life. As we found out last issue a healthy Apokolips is a heathy Darkseid............. who we also saw in a sort of coma since his last battle with the Justice League about six years ago. So it's back to the beating and then Batman flies off to meet this mysterious Kalibak (Mysterious in the fact that Batman's never heard of him before) and to, for some reason take on Darkseid. Only problem is that a Apokoliptian bacteria has been detected by the Hell Bat Suit and it's forcing the suit to burn up Bruce's metabolism faster, thus shutting off a lot of the suit's stealthier features. Bruce doesn't want to hear anymore about how fast his life is burning out, so he shuts off the warning system and goes on to battle the Apokoliptian forces that have been dispatched due to his lack of stealth.
In the end Batman causes a giant ruckus destroying the opposing forces, which leads our backup team to his location and once they are face to face........... Bruce is pretty cool with them being there. It was a giant shock to me that he didn't blow the hell up at them, but I guess he's getting mellower in his old age.......... with the exception to all the ass kicking and the team work there way up to Kalibak and the Chaos Cannon. Batman takes out Kalibak quicker than I thought he would and Cyborg attempts to shut down the cannon. Our issue closes though with Cyborg being electrocuted and Batman standing in the shadow of Darkseid, who I guess has finally decided to get off his ass.
That's it for this issue of Batman and Robin and while I enjoyed it, I don't think it was the home run that last month brought to us. Some of the panels were hard to make out and thus destroying any chance of me understanding what Batman was doing and while I love action scenes, that's all this issue really gave us. So we have a bunch of little fights leading up to what appears to be one big fight next issue. I don't know I just didn't feel the same blown away feeling that I've felt leading up to this. The highlight of the issue for me was when Batman was taking on all the Apokoliptian forces and as he was becoming overwhelmed in his rage he envisioned Ra's Al Ghul, The Heretic and Talia Al Ghul, until finally his family showed up putting the Robin insignia right in his face to show him what he was there for. I know it's a lot to ask especially for a suicide run into Apokolips, but this issue really would of benefited if it had more scenes like that. Come back next month as we tackle Batman up against the resurfaced Darkseid and see if we can get our little pumpkin headed boy home. See you then.
Bits and Pieces:
Batman and Robin remains one of my most anticipated titles to pick up each month, but it seems that somewhere this issue fell a little short of the epic we were previously getting. It's one fight scene after another and besides for one scene where the Bat Family got back together again......... Well there wasn't much to this. Unlike the last couple of issues, I felt myself being confused by some of the panels here and it really just feels like a filler issue to get us to next month's big fight. I still enjoyed the issue enough, but it's not really what I was hoping for.
6.8/10
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