Review: Batman Incorporated #6

Overview: In Batman Incorporated #6, the group gets assigned to a new mission of stopping Professor Pig and his goons back in Gotham City.

Synopsis (spoilers ahead): As Batman Incorporated #6 begins, Raven Red calls his father after some time has passed from the last mission (seen in Batman Incorporated #5). He says that they are heading to Gotham for a mission and that the team is tense after the Phantom-One situation. Raven Red says he will come to visit after he completes the mission. Suddenly, Jiro appears and tells him that Ghost-Maker is calling for them in the meeting room.

In the meeting room, Ghost-Maker says that Lazlo Valentin, AKA Professor Pyg, has gone on a rampage on Gotham’s criminals, looking for an item stolen from him. He then splits the team into groups; Knight and Gray Wolf, Jiro and Raven Red, and then Ghost-Maker, El Gaucho, and Clownhunter. But Clownhunter, after everything that happened with Phantom-One, insists on teaming up with Jiro and Raven Red.

El Gaucho and Ghost-Maker go through some ruins and talk about how Clownhunter can dress like a person who wakes up in a dumpster. But he is his person, and Ghost-Maker isn’t going to stop him. Ultimately they don’t find anything, and they move on.

At the Narrows, a meat delivery truck is discovered with marks of something heavy. The tires looked like they ran over a spike trap, and there is no sign of anyone being there. Gray Wolf continues to look around and finds an oil spill from a car.

In Blüdhaven, Clownhunter, Raven Red, and Jiro stand on a ledge overlooking a pizza truck where kids gather around. Clownhunter says it is where kids go when they don’t have anywhere else to go. He goes to a basketball court and tells a kid what he is looking for, but the kid doesn’t care to help. A shy girl comes up and says that her friends stole a truck a few days ago and haven’t been seen since.

On Ghost-Maker’s ship, he asks Icon, his assistant, to look at security footage of Riddler’s building three days ago. They see Professor Pyg and the Dollotronss carrying Riddler. Then, Ghost-Maker also asks for the location of Professor Pygs’s hideout and uses all surveillance and satellite images to do so. Icon finds the location, and El Gaucho wonders why they didn’t start by looking for the location with Icon. Ghost-Maker says they will never know how to find someone if they don’t try.

Professor Pig tortures a tied-up Riddler asking where something is. After one final time, Professor Pyg orders the Dollotrons to take Riddler away as his warehouse burns down.

Then, we see all sorts of captured villains inside a warehouse with Professor Pyg. The villains captured are everyone from top-tier villains like Mr. Freeze and Clayface to lower-tier villains like Kite-Man. Professor Pyg states that he will let them go if they tell him where it is. The rest of them, however, will get chopped up by a chainsaw.

Over at a warehouse, we see the two friends the girl mentioned to Clownhunter attempting to break into the truck they stole. They believe that the truck holds some sort of loot. Trying to make their lives better, they finally break into the truck only to find a wood frame with spikes and barbed wire with a mask and red wig at the top. Suddenly Professor Pyg appears and says that he wants mother back.

Analysis: I think Batman Incorporated #6 was good, as it was a breath of fresh air after the Phantom-One arc. The main issue with the story is I can’t see where it is going. It isn’t that there can’t be more issues, but almost everything that is being investigated and built up is essentially concluded by the end of the issue. Sure, the boys need to be saved by Batman Inc., but that doesn’t seem to be enough for this to continue for an arc.

Ghost-Make found where Pyg is keeping the villains, and some of the other information the team discovers doesn’t seem to matter overall. What was the point of them investigating everything only for the AI to determine the information they needed? And the crazy part is El Gaucho points out exactly what we are thinking by the end of this by questioning Ghost-Maker for sending them on the wild goose chase. What was the point?

One last note, while not directly related to this issue, where did Wingman go? The last time he appeared, we last saw him crash the ship of Phantom-One. Raven Red said that Wingman wasn’t going on the mission, but it was left ambiguous. Is the plan for the series to just take certain players off the table for each arc? I don’t mind if they rotate certain characters, but they are still not building the characters in a way for us to care about them outside of an overall unit. Clownhunter had some time to shine, but even that was more about building Phantom-One and less about giving more to Clownhunter. What is the plan to make the individual characters connect better with the readers? If we don’t care about them, what makes us want to continue to read the series?

Editor’s Note: DC Comics provided TBU with a copy of this comic for review purposes. You can find this comic and help support TBU in the process by purchasing this issue digitally on Comixology through Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.