Batman: The Dawnbreaker #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

In Blackest Knight

Written By: Sam Humphries

Art By: Ethan Van Sciver, Jason Wright, Tom Napolitano

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: October 4, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh man, it's the Green Lantern/Batman amalgam from the Dark Multiverse coming at us this week and from all the Dark Knights that we've seen working for Barbatos, this one is probably the one I was most curious about........... maybe the Drowned beats Dawnbreaker out though, just because of the whole woman angle.  Besides that though, let's find out what went wrong in this Batman's life that got him to go to the dark side and with that, work for Barbatos.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us seeing the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne at the hands of Joe Chill, but that's the end of the story that anyone will recognize because at that moment, Bruce Wayne just felt a void in him that made him not feel a thing....... fear being one of those things that he wasn't feeling is what drew the Green Lantern ring to him and made him the Green Lantern of space sector 2814.  That's the end of the story that makes any sense.  From here on out, Bruce Wayne is just making the Green Lantern rules up as he goes along, whether they make sense or not and that starts with his will power spiking to the point that he could override the no kill protocol within the ring and put Joe Chill on ice. 

I'm not really sure of the passage of time within this story, but with no training and with him in my mind still being nine years old, Bruce Wayne becomes the hero of Gotham, until he goes on a killing rampage that includes his villains, Bullock and even Lieutenant Gordon.  The killing doesn't stop there though because finally the Corps and the Guardians show up to stop Bruce, but since he's welcomed the void within him and made it a part of him, he's able to make shadow monster constructs that somehow disable the other Green Lantern rings and allows him to murder them as well............ Then he steps into a gigantic power battery that comes out of nowhere and become The Dawnbreaker.......... where he then destroys the world.

In the end, after the Batman Who Laughs brings him onto team Barbatos, we see The Dawnbreaker go to our Coast City, where he immediately overpowers Hal Jordan, before Doctor Fate steps in and whisks Hal away......... I don't understand this Dawnbreaker at all.

That's it for this issue of Batman: The Dawnbreaker and while I've come to realize that we're not going to really gleam anything of any importance out of these one-shots, I was at least under the impression that they'd be at least kind of fun, but this issue just makes up the rules as it goes along and just throws a concept at us, which I don't understand at all and I doubt we'll ever really get an explanation about how the Dawnbreaker does what he does or how anything in this issue actually works.  The artwork is amazing though and I just really wish that the story was as strong, but at the end of the day, it's just a mess that is there and will probably piss Green Lantern fans off.

Bits and Pieces:

While I've been liking the one-shots less and less as they've been coming out, the previous ones at least seemed like they were trying to make sense of their character, but this installment just throws concepts at us without really explaining them, which is a shame because as they are, they don't make any sense at all.  The art in this issue is great, but the Dawnbreaker just doesn't shine like I expected it to.

4.9/10