Batman #559

Down to the last few of this run of Batman I brought from my unread comics box in the US.

Title: Batman
Issue: 559
Date: October, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Bob Hall
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Rodolfo Damaggio, Patrick Martin

This is the last "Aftershock" issue in the Batman title, but not the conclusion of the crossover. And besides, Aftershock was really just a chapter in the bigger saga that will be No Man's Land, starting next issue.

With a mass exodus of refugees underway, the GCPD is hard pressed to maintain any kind of order. Bullock and Montoya find themselves defending Mercy Hospital from a siege by desperate gang members seeking drugs. Batman and Robin come to their aid, but the city continues to crumble.

Bullock totally steals the show here, even getting a (awesome) romantic subplot! There are some great characters introduced for this issue as well, and even the generic thug villain gets enough personality to make him, well, slightly less generic.

The writing is really tight, with good attention to detail, and an excellent shock at the end.

Rating: 7.5/10

Batman #558

Back to Batman and Aftershock!

Title: Batman
Issue: 558
Date: September, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Jim Aparo
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Rodolfo Damaggio, Patrick Martin

Continuing with the Aftershock storyline, this issue serves two purposes. It functions as a big infodump on the current state of affairs of Gotham City, by way of a radio address given by DJ (and current romantic interest of Bruce Wayne) Vesper Fairchild. It also shows an emotionally fragile side of Bruce Wayne as he grapples with despair at the sight of his city seemingly dying around him, and destruction of a scale that he is ill-prepared to handle.

Given those purposes, this issue handled them remarkably well. Vesper's narration added a human side to the department-by-department recap of all of the challenges facing Gotham. Alfred, along with some flashbacks to the funeral of Bruce Wayne's parents, provide the sounding board for Bruce Wayne's current emotional crisis.

That emotional crisis did feel a bit like it came out of the blue, given last issue's fairly standard team-up story with Ballistic (reviewed here), but I must remind myself that this crossover storyline does not progress in order of individual issues of any one series, so hopefully it was set up better in some of the other Bat-titles.

There's very little in the way of action here. The Batman takes on a couple of looters in a token fight scene. But I found the discussion of the aftermath of the Gotham Earthquake, and its effects on the city, to be quite engaging.

Rating: 7/10

Batman #557

Continuing to make my way through the Batman issues of Aftershock.

Title: Batman
Issue: 557
Date: August, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug MoenchArtist: Vince Giarrano, Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil

Ballistic looks like he walked straight out of the pages of one of those 1990s Image Comics superhero team books. He's even got the wardrobe made entirely out of belts and pouches. So many pouches!

He's being hired to go retrieve an evidence bag buried in the ruins of Gotham. Except the guys who hired him haven't done their homework. Ballistic is former GCPD (before somehow obtaining a fairly generic package of superpowers: enhanced strength, endurance, senses, invulnerability, what have you). He may not look it, but he's a good guy, and he's going to take the job, but he's also going to make sure justice is served.

Which does not sit well with the mysterious suits who hired him. In a sudden case of buyer's remorse, they try shooting him, which works about as well as it usually does on invulnerable-types. Plan B, then, is to arrange for a bunch of generic thugs to ambush ballistic in Gotham, begging the question of if the bad guys had this many thugs already in Gotham, why not use them to retrieve the bag?

It does get better once the inevitable encounter between Ballistic and the Batman occurs. They actually manage to break a lot of the hero-meets-hero clichés, and their interaction is made more interesting by the fact that Ballistic has encountered the Jean-Paul Valley version of Batman and is a bit thrown off by the reactions when, unknown to him, it's Bruce Wayne under the cowl.

The revelation of what was in the bag proves uninteresting, but I did find Ballistic's personality and his interaction with the Batman to be interesting.

Rating: 5.5/10

 

Batman #556

More from the 1990s Batman issues in the random unread comic pile.

Title: Batman
Issue: 556
Date: July, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Norm Breyfogle
Inker: Joe Rubinstein
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil

On the surface, this is an issue in which not much happens. The repair plans continue at Wayne Manor. The Batman makes short work of some bank robbers who tried to loot a bank in the aftermath of the Gotham earthquake. He goes on to rescue a man who refused to leave his structurally-unsound apartment building.

But this issue is a nice pause to assess the implications of the earthquake plot, and there is a lot of good dialogue throughout, all setting up future plot developments. The final scene between Bruce Wayne and current girlfriend Vesper is particularly well done.

This is the type of issue that helps make a large ongoing story better by giving the story a bit of breathing space.

Rating: 6.5/10

Batman #555

Continuing with the short run of 1990s Batman from my unread comics stack.

Title: Batman
Issue: 555
Date: June, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: John Beatty
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Kelly Jones, Patrick Martin

We're now into "Aftershock", which continues so directly from "Cataclysm" that one wonders why it needed its own title at all. Gotham is in ruins from the earthquake, and Batman and Robin are attempting to rescue a group of commuters trapped in a subway car in a collapsed tunnel.

Enter... The Ratcatcher. Yeah, not exactly top-tier opposition. And unfortunately, because Ratcatcher is pretty third-string in the Rogues Gallery, the writer felt it necessary to reintroduce him to the reader by means of a clunky infodump in the form of a soliloquy given to an audience of (you guessed it) rats.

In fact, Ratcatcher talks a lot in this story, and he doesn't actually say all that much when he does.

What does work well here is that the story makes very good use of the dangers of the collapsed tunnel, with a bunch of clever threats and twists to complicate the rescue.

And it's nice to see the Batman finally get Ratcatcher to shut up.

Rating: 5/10