Batman #694 Review

Though I was not a very big fan of Tony Daniel’s writing on Battle for the Cowl he has really impressed me so far with this arc on Batman. It has actually been a fun story arc so far and one of the more enjoyable stories I have read so far with Dick Grayson under the cowl. Daniel’s current story has also done a nice job bringing in some of Batman’s supporting cast into the mix. Let see if Daniel can continue the solid storytelling with Batman #694.

Creative Team
Words and Art: Tony Daniel
Inks: Sandu Florea
Colors: Ian Hannin

Story Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 9 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 8.5 Night Girls out of 10

Synopsis: The issue begins in Devil’s Square where Penguin is being helped by a couple women into an abandoned apartment building and is taken into his shower. Boosworth worries about there being a sniper on the roof but Penguin says that if Black Mask wanted him dead the sniper would have done it already. He tells Bossworth leaves and as soon as he does Batman sneaks into the bathroom and puts Penguin’s head underwater.

Batman asks Penguin about the girl from the party but Penguin says he does not know her and that he is clean. Batman is attacked from behind by Penguin’s chauffeur, Lark, but he quickly knocks her and all of Penguin’s men in the building out. Penguin finally talks saying the girl’s name is Kitrina but he does not know what she was doing.

Later that night Batman is outside of Gotham Children’s Memorial Hospital thinking about the kid, named Baby D, that got shot because of him. He tells himself that once the kid is out of the hospital he will make sure he does everything in his power to give the kid a life that will lead him out of the slums of Devil Square.

Several hours later in Devil’s Square the new Black Mask is screaming at the mask blaming it for all of the problems they are having with the military, gangs, and Batman. As he is about to throw the mask into the river but Fright stops him telling him that Dr. Death has information on Kitrina Falcone.

In Crime Alley Reaper goes to a cemetery to think about all of the crime in Gotham and promises that he will purge Gotham of all the crime in the city.

Two days later in Arkham Asylum’s Gen-Core Wing Bruce Wayne (Hush), Dr. Singh, Dr. Arkham and the other Gene-Core partners about the answer to get rid of mental disorders that Dr. Singh has discovered. Bruce says that the mental health industry will not like this and it should be kept inside of Arkham. Four of the partners of the Gene-Core call it a night and enter the elevator but as soon as they do the line of elevator snaps. Bruce, Dr. Arkham, and Dr. Singh go check what happened and see that the elevator has crashed to the surface below killing all of the partners inside.

Over at Gotham City Police headquarters Batman meets up with Commissioner Gordon who informs Batman about the deaths of the four Gene-Core partners. Gordon says that it seems odd that Dr. Singh is the only Gene-Core partner left. Batman says that they should not jump to conclusions and jumps of the roof. Batman later thinks to himself that there is only one person responsible for the deaths.

Somewhere in the docks Mario Falcone has Kitrina tied up and in a box asking her who helped her get into the safe. Kitrina says if she wanted to she could have screwed him over by giving the maps to the highest bidder since she is the one who created them. Mario has enough of her backtalk and has his men close the box and throw her into the water.

In the Bat-Bunker Damian is analyzing the drugs he and Dick found a few nights ago with Alfred watching his progress. Damian says that it is stupid that Dick was unable to find out what the drugs where and that he has found the drugs are a cure-all pill. Alfred congratulates Damian. Damian says he has had enough of the lessons and wants to have fun.

Dick enters the Bat-Bunker and throws Damian a mask from one of False Faces. Damian says that Dick is just having him solve all of his dead leads. Dick says he figured out the drugs formula yesterday morning (BURN!!) and he wants Damian to look over the mask because he needs a fresh set of eyes to look it over.

Dick has a meeting with Barbara over the computer and he thinks about how Damian has quickly picked up on being a good detective as of late. He also thinks about how Barbara refusing to talk to him in person as Helena’s kiss really seemed to upset her. He looks over the information Barbara sent him and sees that everything is pointing to Professor Hugo Strange as being the mastermind.

On a boat Fright is complaining to Dr. Strange that the professor has not returned for his daily treatment. Dr. Strange says that the Reaper body will tell him when he has to return as he needs them for his survival. Reaper arrives saying he needs his serum. Freight calls him by his name, Dr. Gruener, but he says his name is Reaper and he will cut her into small piece if she continues to talk to him like she is doing.

Reaper then asks Freight if they have met before. She says they have when she was a child. Reaper has a brief flashback to his childhood. Freight asks Dr. Strange what’s going on with Reaper and Strange just says he needs his serum. Dr. Death gives Reaper his serum.

In Devil’s Square Penguin is having his car shot up by Black Mask’s men. One of the False Faces hits the engine causing the car to explode. Lark holds off all the False Faces while Bossworth arrives in a helicopter for the three of them to make their escape.

We shift to somewhere else in Gotham where Huntress tells Batman that Penguin has been attacked by Black Mask with some saying he is dead. Batman says he doesn’t think Penguin is dead and he will resurface. Huntress mentions that The Riddler has not been seen since the bombing. Batman says that The Riddler was hired to follow Kitrina. Batman pulls out a picture of Kitrina from a week ago that was taken outside of Dr. Singh’s place. Huntress says that Dr. Singh just made it home from Arkham.

Before Batman takes off Huntress tells him that she just got the news that Baby D is dead. Batman goes off into the shadows. We then see a pissed off Batman on a rooftop. End of issue.

Commentary
The Good: Batman #694 was a great read. Tony Daniel is really impressing me with his work on this Batman story arc. Though I really disliked his writing over on Battle for the Cowl it is clear now that his writing on that mini-series was a story filled with editorial mandated series decision and Daniel had almost no freedom with the story. But with this arc on Batman Daniel is showing himself to be a talented writer when given the creative freedom to tell his own story.

What I am enjoying the most about Daniel’s writing is that he is writing Dick Grayson as someone who is comfortable and confident as Batman. The way Daniel is portraying Dick’s character is a lot like how Tomasi portrayed the character during his run on Nightwing. During his run on Nightwing Tomasi showed that even without the cowl Dick was just as good of a hero as his mentor by facing Batman Rogues like Two-Face and Ra’s Al Ghul as Nightwing and taking them down. And it was even pointed out by Barbara during that run that Dick was becoming a lot more like Bruce in his attitude.

Daniel takes how Dick acted during the end of Nightwing and is showing that even while wearing the cowl it does not mean he has to be comparing himself to Bruce. In many ways he is actually coming around to taking more Bruce’s in the shadows approach. A big example of this is how he confronted Penguin at the beginning of the issue was more of something Bruce would have done. But at the same time Daniel still showed that Dick has maintained more of a similar personality he had before with the little banter line he said before taking down Lark and all of Penguin’s men.

But even with Dick acting much more confident than he did in the previous story arc on this series and Batman and Robin we saw through his internal monologue that there are still things that Dick is trying to get used to. Daniel did a good job with all of the internal monologue as it showed us Dick mindset is much different than Bruce’s and how he analyzes situations is much different than Bruce.

He also did a good job showing that the way Dick interacts with his supporting cast is different to how Bruce interacted with them. His separate conversations with Huntress and Commissioner Gordon are a good example of this. With both characters the tone was much more like that of equals and friends.

Probably my favorite part of this issue was the interaction between Dick and Damian. Since Dick has taken up the cowl the new role of having to mentor Bruce’s son, Damian, has been the most interesting aspect of Dick being Batman. And the interaction between the two in this issue was one of my favorites between the two as we finally see Dick actually teaching Damian detective skills, with some help of Alfred. It is also good see Dick reign in Damian he is the one with the authority and that Damian will listen to him since up to this point he has allowed Damian to do what he wants when they are out being the Dynamic Duo.

I also like that Daniel is continuing to push the love triangle between Dick, Barbara, and Helena. Especially with what happened in Batgirl #5 between Dick and Barbara it should be interesting to see where the love triangle goes. And I would not mind it if it is a continuing this in future stories on this title and other Bat-books as there is a lot story potential with this sub-plot.

The scene with Dr. Arkham, Dr. Singh, and Bruce Wayne was an interesting scene with the supposed ties to Black Mask. From that scene and the meeting Batman and Gordon have on the next page it seems that there are signs pointing to Dr. Singh being Black Mask or at least working with Black Mask. Even though I am not a fan of Black Mask it was interesting to see Dr. Singh’s name being dropped in a few scenes.

And I liked that Daniel showed that Black Mask is not messing around by going after Penguin after Penguin gave Batman some information. Penguin was has been well written in this issue and I like how he is a villain that is suffering the most from the gang war instead of benefitting from it as it is a different role for the character to have.

Also, it is good that Daniel is continuing to develop the Falcone Family in their return to Gotham specifically Mario and Kitrina Falcone. While there were hints to the antagonistic relationship between uncle and niece in this issue it solidified that fact. I hope Kitrina will still be around as I found her character to be a nice addition to the series. And I am interested to see where Daniel is going to take the sub-plot with what is going on with Mario and his gang as it seems he is slowly building them up for the Falcone Family to the top of Gotham’s mob scene.

As always Daniel’s artwork continues to be excellent. Along with inker Dandu Florea and colorist Ian Hannin the art looked great throughout the this issue that was almost all talking heads. This issue was all about the emotional reactions of all the characters and Daniel, Florea, and Hannin handled all of the scenes in this issue very well. My favorite was the scene at the end between Batman and Huntress as they great jobwith the last three panels in the second to the last page to show the sadness Dick feels after hearing Baby D died.

The Bad: Though I liked the subtle clues to the identity of who the new Black Mask is I still am not a fan of the character. I found the new Black Mask’s rant to the mask to be boring and it is mostly because I just don’t find the character to be a very good Batman villain.

Also I found the scene with Reaper to be to preachy as all he does is stand around and talk about what he wants to do and not doing much else but go get his drug fix. Right now I don’t even know how Reaper would stand up to Batman and if he is an actual challenge since he has done nothing since being introduced.

My one complaint with the art is the final page of this issue. While the final page would make for a great poster image it was just an odd way to end the issue as there was not much of transition between the final page and the two pages before that one. It just seemed that Daniel wanted to do one poster like image in the issue since he didn’t get to do one at all in this issue.

Overall: Batman #694 was another great read in Daniel’s second turn at writing a Batman story. Daniel is doing an impressive job with his writing on this story arc. This is actually turning out to be one of the more enjoyable stories with Dick as Batman. Daniel has done a very good job balancing Dick’s personal relationships with his new adventures as Batman while also bringing him into more of Bruce’s lifestyle.

If you’re a Batman fan this is story arc I recommend picking up as it is turning out to be a fun story. Also this story has been very new reader friendly so if you haven’t read a Batman story in a while or have never picked up Batman this story is a good place to start with the new direction of the Batman franchise.