Batman: The Murder Machine #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Ghost In The Machine

Written By: Frank Tieri, James Tynion IV

Art By: Riccardo Federici, Rain Beredo, Tom Napolitano

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: September 27, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time for our next installment of the many Batmen of the Dark Multiverse and this time we have the Cyborg Batman coming at us with all of his Murder Machine goodness........ or badness....... however you'd like to put it actually....... I'm not here to judge.  Anyway, going into this issue there isn't a lot to say besides that this is Dark Nights: Metal tie-in and after reading Batman: The Red Death last week, I hope that we explore what the Dark Multiverse is a little more with each of these one-shots because goddamn am I confused about what's going on with the worlds that these Batmen come from and what made them become one of the Dark Multiverse worlds in the first place....... since we start out there and then see how things turned shitty.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Cyborg can stand against his dark Batman counterpart.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Cyborg on the Justice League Watchtower getting a hold of his father to make sure that everything is alright in with him and Detroit in general, since both Gotham and Central City have fallen at this point.  Too bad that Silas is a stubborn fool, who refuses to leave Star Labs and just go home and stay out of it because by the end of this issue, it really seems like it would have been in his best interest.......... but really, he probably would have been plucked out of his home too.  Anyway, while Vic is talking to his father, a Justice League member teleports into the Watchtower and the computers read it as Batman, which Vic is happy to see because Batman's been MIA for a bit now, but to Cyborg's shock.......... this isn't any Batman he's ever seen.

So yeah, while this Murder Machine is just beating the holy hell out of Cyborg, we jump back into this past and see that it was the murder of Alfred by a bunch of Batman's biggest rogues gallery members that put this Batman over the edge and because Bruce is just a scared little boy at heart that needs a parental figure, he pleads with the Cyborg of his Earth -44 world to help him activate a Alfred AI that he's been working on.  Yeah, things don't go as planned because this AI's main program is to keep Bruce safe and to do that, it created hard light constructs of itself and started murdering all the villains in Gotham.  Eventually, because like I said, Bruce is a scared little boy, he tries to fix Alfred instead of just shutting him down, against Cyborg's wishes and Alfred's programming figures that the best way to keep Bruce safe is to remake his body and purge him of his emotions so that he'll never be weak again.  

In the end, we jump back to our world, where the Murder Machine has downloaded all of STAR Labs' information, including the nation's defenses and we see this Cyborg Batman, with the help of the other Batmen of the Dark Multiverse, just tear Vic apart.  As our issue closes, we see that Detroit is the next spot to be hit by these Batmen and that they've completely taken over the Justice League Watchtower and made it their own.  The biggest part of this issue though seemed to be Cyborg's connection to some metal within him that could have been harnessed by our hero at some point if he knew anything about it, but now that it's in the hands of the villains......... who knows?

That's it for this issue of Batman: The Murder Machine and while I liked the backstory for this issue more than The Red Death's, because of the robotic speech of this Batman and how he went on and on and the static art style of the book, this came off really boring in the long run.  Yeah, there are some decent scenes in the Murder Machine origin story, but everything dealing with our Cyborg just came off flat and the art style in the long run seemed to do more harm to this issue than help.  Really though, it seems that these one-shots are just going to be the same thing with each of the Justice League characters and what I want more than anything is for these issues to give us a better understanding of what the Dark Multiverse is and how these worlds wound up there in the first place........ or even what world they originally were before breaking off and winding up in the Dark Multiverse........... but it doesn't seem like we're going to get that.  Hopefully though, we do see more about this metal that's within Cyborg because while it's hinted at here, we never really learn anything about it.  

Bits and Pieces:

While I liked the backstory for this Batman more than I did with The Red Death, that's about all I liked more about it because the art style lacked any kind of motion and the dialog was robotic.......... and while that last part should just be accepted because of what the character is........ it led to a really boring read.  Hopefully, going forward, we'll learn more about a development that is only hinted at in this issue and that the rest of the one-shots start focusing around that instead of a simple counterpart beat 'em up.

6/10