Batman #9 – Matt Fraction, Writer; Ryan Sook, Artist; Wade Von Grawbadger, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: We’re building towards a new event, as Mayor Ivy (seriously, how did that happen without Batman noticing?) and Commissioner Savage tighten the screws on the Bat-family. A militarized police force is hunting vigilantes, targeting any who shows their head in the middle of saving civilians, and for the first time, they’re getting close to uncovering the Bat-family’s secret weapon – their network of safe houses around Gotham. With Tim on sabbatical/potentially retired from the Bat-family, Cassandra on a mission out of town, and others having their own cities or beats to protect, Batman calls in Signal and Spoiler to help him clean out the safehouses, while placing Damian on clean-up duty and relying on Oracle to coordinate the whole thing. But after a conversation with Alfred (who, for a hallucination, gives the best advice), he goes to Damian to try to sort out the tension between them.
Damian and Bruce’s relationship has had a lot of ups and downs in recent runs – Josh Williamson had them develop a tighter partnership, while Philip Kennedy Johnson actually had Damian consider leaving the Robin role. Fraction obviously had the big blow-up after Damian accidentally risked Bruce’s secret identity in front of Dr. Zeller, and Bruce reacted in an uncharacteristically angry way. The interactions between them here are really well-done, and it makes a nice contrast to the action-packed segments as the Bat-family dodges the GCPD and pulls off one daring move after another. Of course, based on the cover and the fact that a certain comic has been solicited months ago, we know how this is going to and it doesn’t end well for the Bats. This is a consistent problem for the comics, but when the stories are this exciting, it’s a minor obstacle at most.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
