Review – Batman #10

Batman #10 Written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV Art by Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, Rafael Albuquerque, FCO Plascencia, Dave McCaig, Richard Starkings, Jimmy B, and Dezi Sienty Covers by Greg Capullo, FCO Plascencia, Rafael Albuquerque Released: June 13th, 2012

The Night of Owls is almost over, we’ve seen Batman and his allies kicking Talon butt all over Gotham. Now the Dark Knight is fed up, and he’s bringing the fight right to the Court of Owls. If you’ve been following so far the Court has taken Batman hostage, nearly drove him insane, attacked his home, and tried to kill almost every important person in Gotham. So far there have been loses, but there have been far more wins and the Bat-Family looks to be coming out on top. So you’re probably wondering how issue 10 was right? Did Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo pull off another stellar issue?

Of course they did, these guys are at the top of their game and every page just explodes with this amazing story. If you’ve read any previous reviews than you know I’m a big fan of what these guys are doing to Batman comics right now. Out of all the books centered on the character this one is easily the best. Capullo has been perfect at capturing whatever Snyder puts to paper. I can only think of a few artists that can take the written word and turn it into a visual story that is so complete you don’t even need words to understand what’s happening. When you take artwork like this and mix it with one of the best storytellers in the business, you’ve got a 100% chance to be enthralled with it.

Snyder manages to add so much to this story, even with Greg Capullo’s artwork showing so much of the story the inner monologues and dialogue shed so much light on the feelings of the characters. When you see Batman traveling through the city heading to the Court’s hideout you can see that it’s been a struggle, he’s got a haggard look to him. Then you read his thoughts and his conversations with Alfred and you can tell he’s not tired, he’s focused. He has one task, and one goal, and he knows what he’s got to do.

Ok so first off..holy shit what a ride. Snyder has been creating an amazing history for Batman, taking things we already knew, or at least what we think we knew and making it new. So Batman has a brother that was raised in a children’s hospital. He was too young and seems to have repressed the memories or something, I’m sure we’ll find out more in issue 11. That isn’t even the craziest thing, this brother of his may just be Lincoln March, who we saw get killed by a Talon previously. Oh and it just keeps getting better his brother, Lincoln March wasn’t killed by the Talon at all, he set it up because he was actually a member of the Court of Owls.

Just wow what a giant pile of twists, this was literally the last thing I expected to happen, and when it did I was dumbfounded. When Batman entered the old childrens hospital my mind was going in a completely different direction. I kept thinking it would be one of his rogues, or maybe some trusted ally or old family friend from his childhood. Maybe even Alfred’s father Jarvis. Any of these would have been a pretty big twist. But to have it be the brother Bruce never knew he had, to have it be someone we’ve seen in recent comics as an ally to Bruce and Gotham end up being the one pulling all these strings. I can’t think of any other words to describe this than wow.

You may be saying to yourself “But how do we know it’s true, this guy could just be lying to make Bruce soft”. And if you are saying that, then you’re right. The answer is we don’t, it could all be an elaborate trap. The one thing we do know is that Bruce was supposed to have a sibling. We find this out at the end of the issue in the backup story by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV. It’s the second installment of the story “The Fall of the House of Wayne” and we see the more recent ties to the Court of Owls that the Waynes had. Specifically the Court’s relationship with Bruce’s mother, Martha Wayne. We don’t know the full story yet, but we do know Martha Wayne was pregnant and pretty far along when she was drawing pretty strong attentions from the Court of Owls. Bruce was a young child 3 or 4 I believe so it’s completely reasonable that if something terrible happened he would have blocked it out or not remembered it. We’ll just have to wait until Issue 11 to find out if he is fighting his brother, and what exactly happened between Martha Wayne and The Court of Owls.

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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