Batman #45 Comic Book Recap/Review

Batman #45 Recap/Review – Party On, Wayne!

Batman #45 Comic Book Recap

Jim Gordon is trapped in an inferno.  The industrial sized furnace is burning his costume and searing his flesh.  The gun is damaged.  The temperature is eight hundred degrees and climbing.  In about thirty seconds, Gordon will be turned to dust.  It’s time to do something amazing.  He launches a Batarang at some exposed coolant.  He will do this.  He will.

Upstairs, the surviving gang members are fighting with one another, when Batman emerges from the trap.  He demands to know where Bloom is, but the gang members are furious.  They swarm him, and stab the man in the abdomen.  Batman falls, and they prepare to finish the man off.  Suddenly, they are all engulfed in a bright light, and the mech suit arrives.  Darryl contacts Jim and says Julia is safe, and they commence a rescue operation.

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Using the suit’s auto-pilot mode, it charges the gang, picking up two dead sharks and using them as massive flails.  The gang is knocked back, and the tech takes Jim out of the warehouse under heavy fire.  Batman thanks the mech, calling it Rookie, and the rescue mission is a success.

Elsewhere, Bruce Wayne inspects the wreckage of The Joker’s attack during Endgame.  Many of his parade floats have been dumped beside the learning center, and the city has been slow to clean them up.  The Narrows, where the virus started, was hit hard by the events of Endgame.  The dense population, lack of police and military, and widespread poverty ensured that more lives were lost here than anywhere else.  It’s always like this during disasters.  And this place is the last priority for government aide.

This morning Bruce found a few kids hurling dirt into the dump.  When he asked them about it, they explained they were trying to hide the Joker’s stuff, so the next time a villain attacks, they won’t come for these things.  Wayne realized this means the kids don’t feel safe.  They’re just waiting for the next big attack.  Julie Madison asks if Jim Gordon’s visit is still on the man’s mind, and Bruce falls silent.  She goes on to say that during their childhood, Julie lived on in perpetual fear of her father.  But Bruce had always been strong, even back then, in the face of the traumatic loss of his parents.

She asks if Wayne wants to be helping people on a bigger scale, like he used to.  But that man is gone.  This new Bruce doesn’t know anything about robotics or criminology.  He doesn’t have money or power.  The other day, he went back to the manor, to look through some of his old clothes and try them on.  But he noticed that the old Bruce Wayne had no pictures there.  There was no trace of a life.  Of family or friends.  The death of his parents did something to the old Bruce Wayne.  And behind the facade, it was like the real Bruce didn’t exist.  Being a part of things feels right for the new man.  Julie says they’ll figure things out, and what they do here matters to a lot of people.  He kisses her on the,  forehead, declaring his love for this woman.

Elsewhere, two guards are hit in the head.  They fall down, dead.

Meanwhile, Jim Gordon goes to visit Geri, the Powers CEO.  She takes him to a collider her company has built.  These machines smash together atoms to make new particles, but these new elements are usually unstable.  But last year, the Powers company managed to create four new elements.  Stable building blocks, at a higher number on the periodic table of elements than was ever thought possible.  She introduces Jim to the newest element – #206 – Batmanium.  Even this small sample is too dense to pick up, weighing in at two tons.  It also functions as a super conductor.  Gordon is confused by all this, and wants to talk about Mr. Bloom.

But Geri interrupts the man.  She’s firing Jim.  The dust-up with the Devil Pigs is all over the news, and she wants Gordon to resign after going rogue.  She offers Jim to help them pick the next candidate, but they need somebody that the public can have faith in.  This new Batman is bigger than all of them, and the people need to be able to trust this new program.

In the Powers building, Darryl is repairing the Batman suit, when Duke breaks in.  The two know one another, and embrace.  Darryl wants to make sure the boy is okay, but that is not why the young man is visiting.  He gives Darryl the seed he stole from Bruce’s office, and asks him to find out more about it and Bloom.  Darryl says nobody wants to catch this villain more than him, revealing that he helped the original Batman years ago try to find out what happened to his cousin, Peter Duggio.  He looked for Bloom over many years, but never found it.  Duke understands, and all he wants is some help.  He presents Darryl with an extra Robin badge, insisting they are family and need to work together.  Darryl reluctantly agrees to help, even though he insists the new Batman doesn’t need a Robin right now.

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Over at the learning center, Julie is shocked to see that Batman is re-purposing the Joker’s old things into a playground for the kids.  Bruce insists that these aren’t ugly reminders of Endgame, but trophies of the people’s victory over it.  The kids should look at these, and feel proud.

That night, the Powers company is holding a press conference to announce the resignation of Jim as Batman.  Julia Pennyworth tells Jim that he should fight for his position as Batman.  It’s the people who will ultimately decide who they want protecting them, and she says Jim should go out there and show them who that needs to be.  But it soon becomes clear something is wrong.  The mobile Batcave, which should not be out right now, approaches Geri from behind.  Gordon leaps into action, telling everybody to get down, and for Rookie to take a knee.  The automated mech suit obliges, Gordon leaps off of it, and he saves Geri at last minute from being crushed by the wayward vessel.   Everyone begins to panic and flee, but many people in the crowd are impaled by thin white tentacles.

“Wait, wait, wait!  Hold on a minute!  Where are you all going?  The party’s just starting!”

Batman #45 Comic Book Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island!  My name is Arden, and this is my recap, and review, of Batman #45.

Well, it feels like it’s been a while since we’ve checked in on new Batman.  Still, I enjoyed this issue.  The art and writing were great, which at this point doesn’t surprise me.  I’ve been on board with this creative team for a while now, and in spite of them occasionally doing something weird or making choices I expressed doubts over, they have, on the whole, been doing some really remarkable stuff with Batman.  Sure, that Batmanium idea is a little silly, but I do like how Snyder has been consistently bringing real world scientific ideas like hadron colliders and biological immortality into the world of Batman, and it’s hard to fault him on what could be a very interesting idea if executed well.  Just… could we pick a better name than Batmanium?  That’s a bit hard to swallow, is all I’m saying.

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But overall, the new Batman is really starting to click with me.  I liked and would recommend this issue.  There are some highlights here that I do want to talk about.  I like the frantic rescue mission at the beginning.  Honestly, if you still find yourself complaining after a mech suit starts swinging sharks around, I think you need your head examined.  I am also impressed at how Snyder manages to keep so many characters involved here without things seeming too complicated or cluttered.  Duke and Darryl really showed some interesting colors.  We learn how Darryl played a direct role in the events of Batman #44, and we got some fun little nod’s to Duke’s role in the new We Are Robin series.

So yeah, thanks for watching and I hoped you enjoyed the video.  Let me know what you guys think in the comments section below.  And don’t forget to like, subscribe, and keep reading comics.