Been there, punched that
So Natalya Trusevich, Batman's latest fling, was offed in a rather spectacular, if gory, fashion last issue. If I had a dime for every one of Bruce's girlfriends who've met with unfortunate fates, I'd probably only have something like two dollars, but still: this has happened far too often. It's stale, predictable and done to death. Bruce meets a girl who's not Catwoman, he dates her for a while, they grow close, he thinks "Maybe she's the one!" (lol no) and then something horrible happens to the girl, and Bruce broods for a while, then he spends some time with Catwoman, then there's some friction in their relationship, then Bruce finds someone else, and the cycle repeats ad nauseam. Inevitably, the horrible thing happens right after Bruce reveals his identity to the girl. It's the writer's way of saying she's disposable anyway, so what does it matter if she knows?
Near the start of the issue, there's this panel that made me literally laugh out loud. Batman see Natalya's body, causing him to adopt a woe-is-me expression, and then instantly snaps into serious mode. The juxtaposition of sad face and angry face is something I found amusing even though the setup is supposed to be somber and grim.
Right after that Batman goes Beast Mode over this new personal grief, as he is wont to do when placed in idiotic stories, and zooms off to confront the Mad Hatter. The entire confrontation with the Hatter takes place in a twisted funhouse that just reeks of throwbacks to The Killing Joke. Hatter attacks Batman with gases and powders that plunge him into nightmarish hallucinations --- the same bloody thing we've seen in this series countless times now. We just got out of a Scarecrow arc where Bruce spent large portions of time hallucinating about All the Bad Things that Have Happened to Me. The only redeeming part of this confrontation was the part where Bruce snaps out of it and demonstrates to Doctor Octopus how to properly punch off someone's jaw.
And now here's the thing: with the ability to mess with Batman's head taken away, Jervis is pretty much f**ked. He's hardly going to bust out mad ninja skills against an angry Batman, and so the outcome is decided then and there, via three pages of Batman savagely thrashing a defenseless midget in the most brutal fashion Ethan Van Sciver can muster. Hurwitz doesn't even pretend the Hatter stands a chance, because he doesn't, and I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is the end of aforementioned thrashing, where Batman tosses Tetch into a lake and leaves him to drown while Alfred pleads with him to fish the poor bastard out, so as not to become a killer, sink to their level, remember the Alamo, etc etc.
Really? Again? Was this not done in Hush, where Gordon stops Batman from murdering the Joker using precisely the same argument? Or in Infinite Crisis, where Bruce almost killed Alex Luthor until Wonder Woman stopped him? Or in War Games, where Batman was willing to kill Black Mask until Oracle stopped him? This is the biggest gripe I have with this issue: there's nothing remotely original about it, nothing we haven't seen a dozen times before, nothing we haven't seen done better. It's a collection of tired tropes and recurring plot points mixed with a few references to much better stories.
But then again the Scarecrow arc that Hurwitz started his run with had this problem too: promising start, anti-climactic ending.
