Mother unleashes her ultimate plan, and the Batfamily is sent reeling trying to contend with it. This is definitely the most action packed issue of Batman&Robin Eternal yet. There’s barely a page that goes by where someone isn’t getting attacked. To the creative teams credit, this issue is faced paced and extremely high energy. You’ll be done reading before you know what happened. However, I can’t help but feel that some of Eternal’s more subtle undertones have been thrown to the wayside in exchange for bombastic action.
I feel like this plot of Mother’s to take over the world is going against the grain of what she has been established to be. In my mind, she doesn’t seem like the kind of character who would raise a standing army and take action by attacking someone using overt force. Her methods seem far more covert, underhanded, and sophisticated than all that. I’ve pictured her as the kind of villain who is already roughly in control of the world. We just don’t know it yet. I only see half of her “children” as fully accomplished assassins. The rest of her sleeper agents have been designed to infiltrate the controlling class. Some are married off to prominent political leaders in order to influence their decisions, while others have simply worked their way to prominence themselves. All the while, Mother used her resources to blackmail the competition out of the way or simply eliminate them in what would appear to be tragic accidents. Her machinations have essentially already shaped the world into her own little kingdom. At least, that is the way I thought it was.
Replace all that dialogue with the word “brainssss” and you have a completely different franchise.
The way I pictured things going down, was that the team would stop a major catastrophe from occurring that the world wasn’t even aware was about to befall them. As it stands, we get a massive “zombie” invasion of a small town. That’s definitely the kind of thing that would make the world news. Then again, in a universe where men can fly and alien races have tried to take over the world, perhaps this would be a small news story on page three instead. In any case, this has gone from an unnerving spy thriller filled with subterfuge and elaborately designed schemes to nothing more than a cliche battle to stop another psycho from achieving their goal of world domination through open violence. All the classiness has been swept away, and instead, we are faced with something rather generic.
Even though this issue is brimming with action, I still kind of felt like nothing happened. It’s weird to say when there is so much going on, but this really just felt like a holding pattern to me. I didn’t get the sense that the story was moving forward. This one was all about the spectacle, and it really lacked any kind of true relevancy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got plenty of great little moments, but they ultimately don’t matter in the greater scheme of things. Seeing as how Tim Seeley of Grayson was the writer for this story, I guess I just expected to get a little more out of it. At the same time, it’s not like he crafted the overall story, he was just responsible for delivering this piece of it.
Art for this issue is handled by Paul Pelletier. He handled a couple other issues of Batman&Robin Eternal, and to be honest, I don’t really have anything new to say about his art. While he still has the same tendency for peculiar looking face that he had last time, his work suffices. As usual, nothing really jumps out as overly impressive, but at the same time, I’ve got no real major complaints.
While I’m usually all for talking to no end when it comes to comics, this issue really left me feeling underwhelmed and with little to really discuss. I know. It’s crazy….right? But there it is.
Recommended if…
- You love ACTION.
- You want some more action.
- Did I mention that there is some action in this issue?
Overall:
Action, action, and more action. So much action…is there even an actual story hidden underneath all the blood and viscera? While there is, I don’t feel like it really took us anywhere. What’s more, gone is the feeling that we are dealing with a secret society of assassins hellbent on world domination through subterfuge. Instead, it’s a full on assault by Mother to kill everyone who would resist her, and mentally enslave the rest. It was just a little too unintuitive and generic for my taste.
SCORE: 6 / 10
