Convergence: Batman: Shadow of The Bat #2 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Larry Hama
Art By: Rick Leonardi, Dan Green, Elmer Santos
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 13, 2015

Under Siege 3: Wetworks

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

The last installment to this Convergence tie-in was one of the strangest that I read because it really had nothing to do with life under the dome, with the exception that Tobias Whale wanted to steal food trucks to earn dome dough and Bruce Wayne and Jean Paul Valley separately infiltrated his group as a way to take the gangster down........ and ended up just getting people killed because for some reason in a world under a dome, they needed things like "evidence" and "due process" instead of just taking the baddie down and saving some lives.  So yeah, it was pretty odd and it wasn't until all the way at the end that we saw the Wetworks team watching Batman and Azrael do their thing that we got any idea that there would be any Convergence style fighting going on.  I personally don't know shit about the Wetworks team, so hopefully this issue brings me up to speed before the battle commences.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Well, I get no explanation on who the Wetworks team are because we jump into this issue as Batman and Azrael presumably have been teleported to San Diego to fight......... even though the Wetworks team was in Metropolis last issue and it looks like the fight has been going on for awhile since one of the Wetworks team comments about how Azrael already took a couple of them out.  What we get from here on out is the Wetworks team chasing Batman and Azrael onto a battleship turned museum and them keep remarking about how the well being of some innocent civilians that have taken up camp in the ship since the dome appeared don't matter when fighting to save an entire city............ and man does it get old fast.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few....... or the one.  You get it.

While the Wetworks team scour the ship looking for our heroes, they try to drop us some clues on who they are and what they do by continually talking about their symbiotic suits that give them powers, but with no background besides for their symbiotes, I find it really annoying because all we get besides for the fore mentioned "kill few, save many" approach that they are taking is that they're cliched bad asses that are over the top soldiers that want to kill.  Very boring characters is what that tells me.  The only real fun to be found in this book is when Batman and Azrael get their shit together and start systematically taking out the crew one by one as they set up ambushes and traps and sadly it doesn't last that long.

In the end, Batman and Azrael take on a number of the Wetworks team and the only reason it doesn't turn into a full on blood bath is because Jean Paul Valley pulls a stand off where he's ready to detonate a grenade if Wetworks isn't prepared to listen to Bruce's plan of teaming up to try and find another solution than Thunderdoming each other.  With the threat of death all around, the Wetworks team agrees to the superhero team-up and as our issue closes we have a very strange decision by Azrael about him staying behind in San Diego to protect the city instead of joining the coup d'etat to overthrow Telos............ The End.

That's it for this issue of Convergence: Batman: Shadow of The Bat and while I wasn't a fan of the first issue, this issue does a little better of a job in actually giving us a Convergence story, but the lack of background on the Wetworks team and some very odd dialog choices for Batman really hurt this issue and even though not a lot seems to go on here, it seems very long winded and feels like it takes forever to read through simply because it isn't that interesting.  I had a bit of a problem with the art in the first issue, but here we get a new artist and I dig what we see here a whole lot more than last month, so at least we have that going for us.  This just isn't really a good story and it feels like one that you could probably skip.

Bits and Pieces:

This is certainly a step up from the last issue but with no real background or knowledge of who the Wetworks team are, this is just a issue about our heroes playing hide and seek with over the top caricatures of a 90's action movie........ a direct to video 90's action movie.  The art though was better here than in the first issue, but when it's all said and done, this tie-in is just a let down.

4.8/10