Overview: The Superfriends arc continues as Bruce assists Wonder Woman with a threat.
Synopsis (spoilers ahead): The Gentle Man, a warrior dedicated to defending our realm from invasion by the Hordes of Ghenna, comes to Earth to make good on an offer previously presented by Wonder Woman and Batman to take his place for a single day. However, time passes differently in that dimension, so while Selina Kyle is entertaining The Gentle Man in Gotham, ten years pass for Diana and Bruce with nothing but themselves to rely on.
Analysis: In the continuing adventures of the DC Universe visiting Batman and Catwoman during their engagement, we’re given a Justice League-level story taking place seemingly at random, to which Selina even comments upon. It’s a fun idea, the notion that being with Batman will sooner or later involve putting up with bizarre threats from other worlds per his relationship with the JLA. It’s also a frank confrontation of the type of super hero Batman is, done in a way which would have made Dennis O’Neil balk at twenty years ago. His Batman era was expressly in the “real world”, to the point that he virtually arm-wrestled Grant Morrison to keep the Dark Knight out of the latter’s JLA title. So this reads more ingratiating towards the Silver Age Batman, as have other elements of King’s run, which examined his friendship with Superman and the scope of his rogues gallery (Re. Kite-Man, continuously referenced once again in this issue).
There’s not a lot of examination in this issue however, as it reads more as set-up. King’s writing style is coy, putting a lot of tonal import into moments that don’t really deliver, and shouldn’t have bothered to begin with. It’s probably asking too much for the first three pages of Gordon running to the rooftop and meeting Wonder Woman to include more of a payoff than just him being flustered, but at the same time that’s already one-seventh of the issue used up. We’re nearing Brian Michael Bendis levels of decompression, because there isn’t much in the way of scenes in this story as there are moments with declarative statements; moments abruptly cut off with no transition. Batman got all dolled up in his medieval armor knowing he’d be away from Selina for several years, but we don’t him reflecting on that when he leaves her. Actually, we don’t see him leave her at all. One moment they’re in the cave, the next he’s with Wonder Woman. It swerves the reader, but only before they go back and think about it.
This isn’t going to be one of those reviews that cites “Why didn’t So-and-So do this like before when they did that” to wear a badge of greater nerdery on their belt, but for such an extreme event to be taking place out of nowhere, the mood of the book is weirdly laissez faire. We’ve never (to my knowledge) seen or heard of this Gentle Man character before, but we’re supposed to blindly accept that Batman would not only fight on his behalf to give the man a rest, but dedicate several years of his life, possibly the rest of his life, just to make good on a promise that, were it to really have been made, would’ve had an everlasting effect on him in order to take an indefinite hiatus from his War on Crime.
That’s the Silver Age nature of the issue. It’s not that Batman owns Bat-Armor easily imagined coming from the Shelly Moldoff days, rather that he’d seemingly give up his life for no reason just to have a sword-fighting adventure with Wonder Woman and to give this guy a powder. It’s ridiculous, and King has set himself up for a massive task in justifying this should he ever go back to present the untold story of when this deal first happened. It’s out of bounds with both Batman’s modern character and human behavior, but totally within reason for King’s era. In a period where Bat-Rogues such as Victor Freeze, Harvey Dent and Kirk Langstrom would blindly follow Joker or Riddler (they’d never), Alfred dresses as Batman and drives the Batmobile (he shouldn’t) and Catwoman beats Talia in a straight-up fight (PFFT), King brings the Caped Crusader firmly back to the land of make believe, where characters and their actions are as consistent as the story says they are. This is true for the larger extent of Superhero Comic Book characters in general. King’s not the first writer to pull the characters into crazy situations at a moment’s notice. It just feels starker, lately.
So by the end of the issue Selina realizes that Bruce has been away with Wonder Woman for upwards of hundreds, potentially thousands of years, and we see Bruce and Diana deduce that it’s been at least ten years they’ve been alone together, closing in on a kiss. It would be stunning if the build-up for the marriage between “Bat” and “Cat” took a hard turn right and became a love triangle book seeking to evolve the Batman/Wonder Woman flirtation once and for all. In the most likely scenario of that not happening, I would like to see Bruce and Diana have real-talk about their attraction towards each other in the same way that much of the last two issues was about the similarities and differences of Bruce and Clark’s relationship. What that would have to do with Catwoman remains to be seen, but it’s always good to see where certain writers stand on famous comic book pairings. This issue doesn’t do anything at all, but it sets up the possibility for that kind of exploration to happen next time.
Final Thoughts: Overall, the issue falls flat as it feels that this situation was forced and the redeeming aspect of the issue is the art.
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