Man-Bat #5 Review

The Truth Will Set You Free

Written By: Dave Wielgosz

Art By: Sumit Kumar, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Tom Napolitano

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 1, 2021

It's the finale to our Man-Bat mini and in it, we have a lot to do. Cure Kirk, maybe cure deafness, stop Scarecrow and hopefully turn Batman back to normal since in the previous issue he got a dose of sonic cannon that amped his aggression up tenfold. Let's jump into this issue and see if this Kirk Langstrom side story can end on a high note or if it limps across the finish line. Let's check it out.

For our final issue of Man-Bat, we see our title character going up against a raged-out Batman, while Scarecrow leaves the two behind so that he can continue his nefarious work in using the sonic cannon on the people of Gotham. Thankfully though, Francine is on Scarecrow's case and like a lot of things in this mini, the way Scarecrow gets her out of the way feels pretty forced and leaves me, like a lot of the issues to this, wondering what the rules are because we have a sonic cannon that Scarecrow can apparently program on the fly to have a wide shot that affects everyone around Francine, but not Francine herself, making people into essentially the rage virus people from 28 Days Later.  

Speaking of things that just happen because the story painted itself into a corner, we're at the final issue so even though it never seemed like Kirk worked on a cure for this disease until it showed up in the last issue, where it was just essentially venom, here it works right as the final pages started looming but then the best thing that this mini-series has done happened....... the ending to this ties into the beginning of the Justice League Dark series and explains the current status quo for Kirk Langstrom and ultimately, while I thought that the majority of this mini was unneeded and didn't follow its own rules, the ending to this actually elevated this mini-series a bit and made it feel at least that it had a purpose.

All in all, the art alright in this, like every other issue, it's never been something that I looked at and thought I need to follow this artist for the rest of my life, but it was never terrible either...... It's pretty damn decent all around and I wish I could say the same for the story, but this issue like the previous ones just kind of paints itself into a corner where then something miraculous and out of the blue needs to happen to allow the story to continue but at least this issue has the feeling that it was all for something since we end this series in a way that makes sense to the rest of the DC Universe. Ultimately though, the majority of this issue felt like filler with a battle that meant nothing and a Scarecrow scheme that never felt like it was going anywhere.

6/10