Batman #43 Review and *SPOILERS*

What Happened To Johnny?

Written By: Tom King

Art By: Mikel Janin, Hugo Petris, June Chung, Clayton Cowles

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: March 21, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to finish up our "Everyone Loves Ivy" arc and see how our Caped Crusader is going to stop a villain who has taken over the entire world and with that, learned all of the world's secrets as well, including the identities of its heroes.  In our previous issue, we saw Batman winding Ivy up to the point where she had Superman punch Batman's brains in, but don't worry because with the power of science, magic and medicine, Ivy was able to bring Bruce back from the dead, where we left him in the care of a mind controlled Harley Quinn.  Let's jump into this issue and see if this finale is able to tie everything up or if this just continues not making any sense.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with both Bruce and Selena talking to Ivy, Bruce through the controlled Harley Quinn and Selena actually talking to our villain in person as they walk through a park and it's during this time that we discover that the reason that Ivy is doing all of this is because she's never gotten over killing those mobsters at the beginning of The War of Jokes and Riddles............ you know, because apparently Poison Ivy has only been a villain then and now and has no kind of history in between............... nonsense.  

So the overall plan now.......... even though we had an entire issue previously that seemed to point to some kid named Johnny, who couldn't eat vegetables and who has been hidden away by Ivy, but who doesn't seem to matter now, is to distract Ivy so that Batman can reach Harley's consciousness, which would be on the surface compared to everyone else because of Ivy and Harley's friendship, which he accomplishes when Catwoman kicks Ivy in the face, but then wakes her up real quick because we're given a definite answer here about Ivy controlling everyone in the world at the same time.  So yeah, can't keep her out too long because.............. she's flying all the planes in the world........... fuck those commuters on the highway though.  So with that plan, Harley comes to, Batman jumps down with her out of the hospital, where he conveniently lands in the Batmobile, which shouldn't be there and we have Harley talk Ivy down from her world controlling scenario.

In the end, Batman explains to Ivy that she didn't actually kill those mobsters during the War of Jokes and Riddles, but that Riddler had gone back and shot everyone of them in the head later on........... Which is bullshit because it tells you to go look at issue #26, but you don't see any gunshot wounds in these guys heads so I'm going with Batman's a filthy liar........ or........ Tom King doesn't care about his own continuity and just throws things out there all willy nilly.  As we close this issue, we see that Ivy's been suffering PTSD and is going to be checking into the new purpose of The Sanctuary in Happy Harbor, which is either a reformatory for villains who don't want to be bad anymore or a hospital just for PTSD.......... either way, this is lame as hell.

That's it for this issue of Batman and where I was hoping that this issue would tie everything we've been given so far with this arc together and have everything make sense............. like it had some kind of thought put behind it, instead we get a revisionist history about what went down in the War of Jokes and Riddles, even though you can go back and see that this wasn't the case.  Poison Ivy's somehow the victim here even though her actions in taking the free will away from everyone in the world is some next level super villainy that should put her more in the top echelon of villain in the DC Universe.  With that, we're given no answers about if anyone remembers their time under Ivy's control or any kind of ramifications with Ivy knowing....... pretty much everything in the world, including all of our heroes' secret identities.  Just a complete letdown that actually steps away from the humanization of Batman to the point where he's the ultimate Bat God because not only did he know that if Ivy killed him that he'd be brought back, but would be under the care of Harley Quinn, who he wanted to get to in the first place.  With all that, I've been loving Mikel Janin's art, but this issue didn't really give us the gravitas of what he's capable of doing with this series........ and really, being the only selling point to buying this book.

Bits and Pieces:

The "Everyone Loves Ivy" arc comes to a close with this issue and with it.......... everything we've explored for the last two issues are thrown away to give us an ending that doesn't make sense with the rest of not only this arc, but with Tom King's own continuity to this series.  The art is still great, but not as great as its been and with that, this series sinks even lower than it's been in my mind.

3.8/10