Stand in the Place Where You Are
So here's the fourth and final Batman book. There seems to be a lot of nice, tight interplay between the four books. (of course that’s easy now before everyone gets out of sync) This one seems to crossover slightly with Batman with the revitalization project Bruce is working on. The biggest flaw with this book is that although it's the exact (hint: not actually exact, per say) mirror image of Batman, it just doesn't work as well.
What do I mean about mirror image? Batman starts at Arkham and ends at a Bruce Wayne charity event. (If you ignore that last few pages with Harvey) The Dark Knight starts with Bruce Wayne at a charity event and ends with Batman at Arkham. Granted, many Batman books probably have one plot or the other, but it seems to work so well in Batman and fall so flat in The Dark Knight. I can't pointpoint why because both essentially have the same amount of action and the same amount of playboy schmoozing. Is it as simple as knowing that Batman was written by Snyder? I'm sure that tainted things a little because I KNEW something great was going to come of it. But perhaps it's just that the plot twist was way crazier at the end of Batman than the end of The Dark Knight. In fact, I didn't even understand the closing one-liner of this issue.
What I'm most excited about is the fact that the cops are pushing Bruce hard about Batman, Inc. It'll end up giving some consequences to the fact that Bruce went public. After all, as the reader, we know Bruce is cool. But in real life - admitting to fund a vigilante would not be cool at all.
A final note on the art - Bruce looks a lot older in this book than in Batman.
It's a slow issue, but it may be setting up something great. I'm not sure because the ending's cliff hanger appears to just be leading into a Bat Brawl.
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