All-Star Batman #7 Review and *SPOILERS*

Working Backwards To Go Forwards

Written By: Scott Snyder

Art By: Tula Lotay, Steve Wands, Francesco Francavilla

Cover Price: $4.99

Release Date: February 8, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to get our All-Star on and we're heading into Poison Ivy territory with this issue.  In case you might not know, the next couple of issues, while seeming like one-shots because of us getting a new villain each issue, is actually a story arc all about Batman getting help from his enemies in order to stop what happened in the previous issue with Mr. Freeze releasing an ancient bacteria onto the world......... or was it the government?  Yeah, we ended the previous issue with Batman looking like he stopped Mr. Freeze's plan by infecting himself with a virus that would go air born and destroy the bacteria, but who knows how well all that worked with the government stepping in and fire bombing the whole damn area.  Let's jump into this issue and see what Batman needs Poison Ivy for and what it has to do with that ancient bacteria.  Let's check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Batman walking through the desert in pursuit of Poison Ivy, who apparently shows up in this area every year for the past five years.  We find out that she's been experimenting on what's considered throughout time as one of the Trees of Life, which are fabled to have helped countless people with the fruits it produced and other plant like matter that could be used to help people throughout time, but that fable continues by going into detail about how being used as much as it was, the trees began to spoil and the gifts it produced started hindering people instead of helping.  This tree that Pamela Isley is working with is no exception.  At one point in the past, it too became spoiled and with her connection to The Green, Poison Ivy is working backwards throughout the tree's lifespan to see if she can eventually get it to become what it once was.

This is good for Batman because the reason he's searching for Pamela is for a cure to the ancient bacteria that was released by Mr. Freeze because even though he thought he neutralized it, it somehow turned up in a woodland garden of a young girl, who became infected and only had thirteen hours to live.  Like the previous issue though, it seems that the government is on Batman's trail and a team of soldiers, wearing stealth armor show up and force Batman and Poison Ivy to team up to take them down........... Well, that's what we ultimately find out is what happened, but Ivy believed that she was controlling our hero at the time.

In the end, the Tree of Life is burned due to a wild flamethrower and even though there's nothing that can be done to save it, because Batman helped Ivy and because she deduced that the girl had already died and her body was incinerated, Ivy gives Batman a possible cure to the bacteria, but on the stipulation that he make sure that they don't name the illness the young girl contracted after her because she had already suffered enough.  With that, Batman moves on to his next adventure.

As for our Cursed Wheel story, well where I really enjoyed both the story and the art in the previous issue, here it's all just a little underwhelming because we find out that Duke survived his ordeal with the Riddler's explosion in the previous issue, but we never actually get to see what happened. This time we only see Duke train on the same scenario in the Mud Room and sneak out to fight crime without Bruce's permission.

That's it for this issue of All-Star Batman and for the most part, I enjoyed this issue.  Yeah, some of the art because of its stylized nature was a little tough to decipher and I'm not positive why Batman's wearing a costume that looks like a variation of something we would have seen on a Kenner Batman action figure in the early 90's, but I thought the depiction of Poison Ivy was great here and I hope that we get to see more of the character like this because it's a version that seems to have some real depth to her compared to the normal, where she's just an eco-terrorist and one who seems to just kill out of spite.  I'm interested in where this story arc is going because I really didn't expect this to continue after the conclusion to the previous issue, but I'm liking what I'm reading and it doesn't hurt that we get a new member of Batman's rogue's gallery with every issue.  As for the Cursed Wheel backup........ Well, both story and art seemed to be a step down from what we got last month and that was disappointing because I was really interested in what was going on there.

Bits and Pieces:

In this issue of All-Star Batman, we got ourselves a really interesting look at Poison Ivy and the desperation that Batman's feeling when it comes to the events of this story arc.  Yeah, I had some problems with some of the art and the backup this issue, but for the most part I had a really good time reading this and find myself looking forward to what's coming next.

7/10