A review of Batman #686

The first part of this tale of the legacy of Batman written by Neil Gaiman and penciled by Andy Kubert, is a very good, trippy read.

The story is a tale of the death of Batman, in the vein of Alan Moore’s classic “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”

Gaiman does his best work with character driven tales where he is allowed to do crazy things, and bring up big questions. This story is so far an example of him doing what he does best.

I love the little callbacks in this story to various bits of Batman history. It manages to wax a bit nostalgic without being obnoxious about it. And I like how Gaiman managed to combine respective eras and distill some of the characters into their essence. Catwoman, Two Face and the Joker all make their entrances to Crime Alley, and their short interactions with a boy in the alley all manage to show us everything we need to know about their character.

There’s also a lot of good lines here. It’s a very quotable comic, even Jim Gordon’s quote with refers directly to the title of the peice. “I guess…I guess I always knew that this was how it was going to end. That one days somone would say “Hey, Jim. Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader? I’d tell them. “Pretty much what you’d expect. He’s dead.”

The comic contains two short stories, one is “The Cat Woman’s Tale” and “The Gentleman’s Gentleman Tale” (this one being told by Alfred). Both of them are the character’s version of Batman’s death. Alfred’s is particularly odd, but they are both good reads.

As the narrator notes, what’s happening in the comic doesn’t make much sense, and conflicts with each other. There is a sense of mystery of the whole thing, where we have to figure out what’s happening, and where we are and how it all fits together. I think there’ll probably be a nice payoff to this, and I’m excited for the next part.

Andy Kubert’s art is very nice, and captures the spirit of various Batman eras. There’s a few nice little sketch pages in the back of the comic.

So, I recommend this tale, though if you’re not okay with a little “weirdness” you  might not like it. I’m not sure if this comic will become a classic on the level of “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” but so far I’m enjoying it very much.