Batman: The Dark Knight #2

Title: Batman: The Dark Knight
Issue: 2
Date: December 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Paul Jenkins, David Finch
Penciler: David Finch
Inker: Richard Friend
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Sal Cipriano
Editor: Mike Marts, Rickey Purdin
Cover: David Finch, Richard Friend, Alex Sinclair

Harvey Dent's tagline at the end of the first issue actually makes no sense at all, but that doesn't stop the drugged-up and muscled-up Two Face from beating on the Batman in a pretty one-sided brawl that ends when the Batman is effectively saved by the bell.

It turns out that someone has been injecting the Batman villains with a drug that I at first assumed to be Venom, but is actually some variant on the scarecrow's fear-gas. Its effects include superhuman strength, fearlessness, and really badly-drawn anatomy.

In spite of the rather goofy nature of the premise, the creative team milks it for all its worth, including a montage of Bat-Family members getting trounced by an array of second and third rate villains on (for all intents and purposes) steroids.

Some minor gripes:

More dead GCPD officers. Is this really necessary? These guys must spend their off-duty time doing nothing but attending funerals for their fellow officers. I don't have a grip with violence when it serves a purpose, but to draw in a few dead bodies of cops just for the sake of getting a villain over is lazy storytelling, and it has been happening way too much in the DCnU (in the old DCU in recent years too). How about doing this a lot less often but making an effort to get the readers to care?

Also, Damian Wayne only appears on two pages (good!), but he is completely out of character in this scene. Some consistency would be nice (even if it involves making a character consistently intolerable).

I was also a bit puzzled with the kid-gloves approach that the Batman takes with the White Rabbit, who is pretty clearly one of the bad guys.

On the good side, the pacing was great. Art was solid aside from the Image Comics 1990s look for all the drugged-up villains. And the story was a lot more complex than in the first issue. All in all, despite some problems, an improvement.

Rating: 6