Review – Batman: Detective Comics #1054 – Tower Falling

Batman: Detective Comics #1054 – Mariko Tamaki, Matthew Rosenberg, Writers; Max Raynor, Fernando Blanco, Artists; Luis Guerrero, Jordie Bellaire, Colorist

Ray – 9/10

Ray: As we enter the last act of Shadows of the Bat, all the forces converge on Arkham Tower. Dr. Wear, who has been running an elaborate con game and holding both Penguin and the ruthless Party Crashers gang at bay, is seeing his entire plan come falling down around him. It’s time for Arkham Tower to open its doors to the city and welcome visitors to see how well everything is going—and for Mayor Nanako’s wife to check in for her own mental illness. Naturally, the perfect time for Deb Donovan’s expose to come out, and for Psycho-Pirate’s hold over the population to start dwindling. As he tries to break Nightwing’s mind, it becomes clear that his own is fragmenting—and soon enough the minds of everyone in the tower are free.

One of the best things about this story is how it lets the slow horror unfold naturally. We know how this all ends—with Dr. Wear taking a header off the tower and several members of the Bat-family trapped inside. But this issue lets the fall of the tower play out in almost real-time, as villains like Siphon and Ana Vulsion take full advantage of the break in Psycho-Pirate’s concentration to attack anyone in sight and take control of the Tower. Wear’s increasingly desperate scrambling and his despicable behavior towards his inmates makes his upcoming fate very satisfying, but Tamaki continues to do a great job of building a sense of dread into the inevitable fall of the tower.

Equally compelling is the House of Wayne backup, as the young boy has grown into a teenager roaming the streets in the aftermath of Knightfall. With Bruce in a wheelchair and Azrael increasingly unpredictable as the new Batman, Bruce deputizes Tim to try to round up the escaped young Arkham inmate before it’s too late—only for the boy’s toxic friend Elliott to pick a fight, giving Azrael enough time to arrive. This is one of the more twisted takes on Azrael we’ve seen in a while, with a single-minded obsession and cruelty. It also raises some questions about DC continuity at the moment, but it’s hard to quibble with that when the story is this good.

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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.