Batman: The Brave And The Bold #6 Review

     

    

Written by: Guillem March, Ed Brisson, Rob Williams, Sean Lewis

Art by: Guillem March, Jeff Spokes, Stefano Landini, Javier Fernandez
Colors by: Arif Prianto, Jeff Spokes, Antonio Fabela, Javier Fernandez
Letters by: Guillem March, Saida Temofonte, Simon Bowland, Carlos M. Mangual
Cover art by: Simone Di Meo
Cover price: $7.99
Release date: October 24, 2023

Batman: The Brave And The Bold #6 delivers four chapters of Batman-adjacent adventure. Batman loses his memory but gains friends. Stormwatch's new team comes to a talkative end. Harcourt gets a new lease on life with new powers. And Batman attends a stage show that threatens to expose his secret identity.
Is Batman: The Brave And The Bold #6 Good?

Overall, Batman: The Brave And The Bold #6 is one of the weaker issues in the series. Two of the serialized stories end with mixed results. Guillem's take on Batman is strong, and Sean Lewis's one-shot is an odd mess.

Batman: Pygmaliion, Part 1

A man wakes up in a tiny Gotham City apartment with no memory of who he is or how he got here. The bed he slept in belongs to a small girl named Aurora, who explains she found the man unconscious on her fire escape after he took a vicious beating. If the man were anyone else, Aurora and her mother would have called the police, but the man they found was wearing Batman's cape and cowl.

Stories with heroes not remembering who they are or where they come from are nothing new, but Guillem March keeps the chapter lively by dispensing with the "I'm Batman" discovery almost immediately. Instead, March builds a sweet, heartfelt tale about a man who knows who he is by external evidence but not who he is on the inside or how he got here. It's a familiar tale, but March hooks you.

Stormwatch: Down With The Kings, Part 6

The team pays Kanja Ro an unpleasant visit to recover a Phantom Zone pistol. When they return to base, the team grapples with the (not so) shocking reality that Amanda Waller is the true authority in charge of Stormwatch. The chapter (and story) ends with a lot of talking as the individual team members decide whether or not working for Waller is a price worth paying.

Of all the ways this 6-part story could have ended, an anti-climactic series of hand-wringing conversations wasn't on the bingo card. Waller's arrival establishes a tweak to StormWatch's status quo, but the ending leaves at least half the team in an unresolved state and without a purpose for their scavenger hunts other than preparation. On a side note, Jeff Spokes's typically stellar art takes a dip with multiple duplicated panels, presumably due to lack of time.

Harcourt: Second Life, Part 3

Harcourt uses a smidgen of Lazarus Liquid to resurrect Weapons Master and permanently acquire her powers, which leads to a full return of her memory. Armed (literally and figuratively) with everything she needs, plus a healing superpower from her Lazarus Pit resurrection (???), Harcourt chooses to bide her time under Waller's thumb and goes after the person who really killed her.

What a weird and wacky way to end this story. Harcourt acquires healing powers out of the blue, she permanently takes Weapons Master's weapon-conjuring abilities (somehow), and her mission to kill the person who killed her (no spoilers, but he is identified) simply stops without a conclusion. Ron Williams either ran out of time or hoped the cliffhanger would be enough to warrant a one-shot or mini-series.

The Performance

Vain-glorious actor Rupert Pint puts on a one-man show, claiming the end will reveal Batman's true identity. Midway through the performance, Rupert's support rope is cut during an acrobatic scene, and he falls to his death... or does he? When Batman arrives later to investigate Pint's death, he finds the best actors make you believe what isn't real, and an ambush can happen when you least expect it.

I see what Sean Lewis was trying to do in this short, but the execution is disjointed, clunky, and confusing. Why pretend to be murdered just to draw Batman into an ambush with over-the-top theatrics? Javier Fernandez's amazing art is the only thing saving this short from being a complete pass.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

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Bits and Pieces:

Batman: The Brave And The Bold #6 is a disjointed mix of unsatisfying endings, enjoyable beginnings, and weird one-shots. Guillem March's first chapter is a hit, so there's at least one bright spot in this mixed bag.

6/10