Origin Of Batman The Drowned DC Metal Tie In

This issue jumps around harder than a kid’s bouncy ball. We get taken to the past and then back to present day where Bryce Wayne basically drowns Amnesty bay. Then aquaman and Mera comes to stop her but the heroes fail and Mera gets turned into a zombifed member of Bryce Wayne’s army of the undead. It’s a bit confusing as to how she got her powers but more on that later. Dr Fate once again yanks Aquaman out of harm’s way and we end the comic with Bryce Wayne the Batman who Drowned overseeing Amnesty Bay being completely submerged under water.

There are a few things I did enjoy about this one shot but it suffers from the same issues I had with DC metal tie in Batman the murder machine – the story does not progress much at all. Unfortunately for Batman the drowned #1, I’m left scratching my head a lot more than I did with Batman the murder machine or even Batman the dawnbreaker.

Batman The Drowned – The Bad!

So lets go over a few things that didn’t work quite well and then we will end it on a positive note about what did work for me in this issue.

As I mentioned, the story jumps back and forth so often that I didn’t feel it had good flow. At one point, I stop reading present day events and I only focused on reading the origin of Batman the Drowned then I went back to read about her fight with Aquaman and Mera.

Her origin at batman or Batwoman was never explained. This is a good thing because by now, we are probably sick of Batman’s origin story so we jump straight into how this drowned Batman came to be, and it’s pretty cool. She basically genetically modified herself with everything including the kitchen sink to get her new powers. We know she has accelerated healing, she controls water and she can summon an army of undead. How the hell can she do that with science? The primary Batman is more a man of science and technology. He has been known to dabble in magic before but he rather rely on teaming up with Magic based super heroes like John Constintine and Zatanna. But this Bryce Wayne played operation on herself and now she can control water? I can understand the accelerated healing but controlling water? Batman the drowned battles it out with Mera who has Aquakinetics which is magic base but somehow, Batman the drowned overpowers Mera’s magic and takes control of the water. I know comics can be quite far-fetched but come on!!!

And then her final ability, the power to summon an undead army to do her bidding. The undead grabs Mera and turns her into one of them so they are basically zombies that understands they have a boss. Maybe there is a bit of Magic in her origin story but this brings another problem with this comic book.

And the problem is that she has such a rich origin story that leaves a ton of loopholes such as how she obtained her powers. Another factor I wanna know is – who started the war? If the atlantians came out of self-imposed exile and wanted to connect with the world again, what stopped them? Did they initiate the war or did the Batman who drowned start it?

So now we go into what motivates this drowned Batman. She talks about losing her lover or boyfriend or husband, it was never clear. Due to her loss, she grieves by bringing on the pain and the Atlantians are an easy target. The aftermath of her war against the Atlantians resulted in her entire world completely submerged under water. I guess the ice caps melted and now we have an abundance of water on earth. It isn’t clear as to who survived because we only get shots of her in solitude looking over her lonely kingdom so it’s up to us to guess as to what happened. I’m gunna go with Batman the Drowned is the only one left on earth and everyone else is dead. So as you can see, they set up a really intricate back story filled with so many unanswered questions mixed in with strange new abilities. This is either too completed or too strange for me to grasp. Because of that, I didn’t enjoy Batman the drowned origin story as much as I should have.

Batman The Drowned Had Some Redeeming Qualities

But on a positive note, there are some redeeming qualities of this issue that I wanna bring up. I love how Bryce Wayne the Batman who drowned is portrayed as the protagonist and Aquaman is the antagonist. This issue does this better than the other batman tie ins in Dark Nights Metal. The art is also really gritty and dark which adds to the mystery surrounding this character, because, let’s face it: We don’t know much even after her origin story.

Character design is also really cool. I feel like she could show up in the next pirate of the Caribbean movie and it would feel natural.

The change in sex is also a smart move. Barbatos brings us a bunch of Batmen from different multiverses so they gotta pluck a female Batman to add to their roster because….EQUALITY!

Ohh ya btw, her world was never explained as ending. How was she convinced to help out the batman who laughs? We know that the dark multiverse is collapsing on itself but whaaaat? Did we just gloss right over this fact when it came to Bryce Wayne?