Batman #22Comic Review by Mark Holmes
'The Button' Part 3 |
Colorist Brad Anderson
Cover by: Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson Inker Jason Fabok Letterer Deron Bennett Penciller Jason Fabok Story By Tom King, Joshua Williamson Variant cover by: Tim Sale, Brennan Wagner Written by: Joshua Williamson |
Gentle Spoilers To The Stories Plot Contained.
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After two nice story setup’s in parts 1 & 2, the plot thickens in the excellent part 3 of ‘The Button’. Firstly before I recap this part of the button which I thoroughly enjoyed, it would be remiss of me not to again speak of my love of the art on display in Batman currently. I praised it in my review of part one and I’m going to do it again here, Jason Fabrok’s pencils and Brad Anderson’s colours are jaw droopingly brilliant. I loved Norm Breyfogle’s Batman art from the 90’s as a kid and his is not far off that, it’s that good. Every panel looks sumptuous so applause again to these two.
Picking up from where episode two left, Batman & Flash, courtesy of the cosmic treadmill (I still can’t believe this is a thing, it’s the worst McGuffin ever!) crash back into the Flashpoint timeline and into Batman’s Dad’s cave. Thomas Wayne is not a happy guy, more Wolverine than Batman, we get a nice quick internal monologue from Batman Snr, brooding that the Flash did not repair the Flashpoint timeline (although he did) and is waiting for a final showdown Butch Cassidy & The Sun Dance Kid style with Wonder Women & Aquaman’s soldiers. An interesting side-line here is that the Aqua-Wonder civil war has ended in a truce in Flashpoint world, now they have a joint aim of eliminating all humankind. It’s at this stage that I should advocate reading Flashpoint, the way ‘The Button’ is developing you are going to need to be familiar with this arc to keep up with the developing plot points here. The main aim of this part is to reunite Bruce Wayne & his father Thomas (Thomas initially thinks this a hoax and throttles the Flash in rage, which is fun), with Bruce at first unable to look at his father in the eye due to the emotion of this unpredictable reunion has thrown at him. With some reconciliation It is also revealed that this Flashpoint world has been re-created by a mysterious entity (the main bad guy of this storyline) and not by any failure of the Flash to change events back correctly in Flashpoint….I wonder who this bad guy could be? *cough* Dysfunctional Father & Son relationships seem to be all the rage at the moment, given Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 has just given us a large portion of it in its sequel . I can only assume there were some terrible fathers in the 70’s & 80’S for comic writers growing up! Again, the script by Joshua Williamson & Tom King gives us some nice but too brief interplay between the two Batmen & Flash. |
Our Bat reunion is short-lived though as Aquaman & Wonder Women’s joint forces attack the Batcave, leaving the two Batmen to fend them off while Flash fixes the cosmic treadmill, considering they are battling Atlantians & Amazonians the Batman take their foes out surprisingly easy (this seems a bit sloppy in the plotting to me) but upon escaping we lose one of our heroes in a touching scene before a bad guy returns from nowhere to confuse the time line once more…
Three issues in and ‘The Buttons’ purpose seems to be one whole storyline just setting up what is to come. So far we have more answers than questions and plans to be unmasked (although your average geek has a good idea of what’s coming) and that’s fine, but the multiple time jumps are starting to jar a little and as I’ve said, indepth knowledge of Flashpoint is needed to enjoy this.
Overall I’m enjoying The Button but after 63 pages of big setup the plot needs to move a bit quicker in the next instalment….
Three issues in and ‘The Buttons’ purpose seems to be one whole storyline just setting up what is to come. So far we have more answers than questions and plans to be unmasked (although your average geek has a good idea of what’s coming) and that’s fine, but the multiple time jumps are starting to jar a little and as I’ve said, indepth knowledge of Flashpoint is needed to enjoy this.
Overall I’m enjoying The Button but after 63 pages of big setup the plot needs to move a bit quicker in the next instalment….
