By John Byrne, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-033-8
Batman is in one way the ultimate superhero: he is uniquely adaptable and can fit into practically any type or genre of story – as is clearly evident from the plethora of vintage tales collected in so many captivating volumes over the years.
One less well-mined period (so far at least) is the grim and/or gritty 1980s when the Caped Crusader was partially reinvented in the wake of the inspired and inspirational Crisis on Infinite Earths, becoming a driven but still cool-headed, deeply rational Manhunter, rather the dark, driven paranoid of later days or the costumed boy-scout of the “Camp†crazed Sixties.
This brief but satisfyingly punchy thriller combined the best of all worlds and even pushed the creative envelope with a silent/mime first chapter (no pesky words to read, fans!) as in the wake of the murder of his sidekick Jason Todd (see Batman: A Death in the Family) the traumatised hero is forced to re-examine his own origins during a bloody murder-spree that touches the very essence of what – and who – made him…
Collecting Batman #433-435 (May-July 1989) the mini epic opens in a shocked, rain-soaked Gotham with a ‘Period of Mourning’ as the city reacts to the sight of the Caped Crusader crucified in a dirty alley. His friends and enemies reel in shock, but soon that turns to something else as another Bat corpse is discovered. Meanwhile the real Dark Knight is finishing an international hunt in Paris when the news reaches him…
‘How Many Times Can a Batman Die?’ expands the enigma as the hero returns to Gotham to probe the mystery of six seemingly random dead men murdered in his costume. However they aren’t strangers to Bruce Wayne. Every one of them was a specialist in one particular field, and each had spent time long ago teaching an anonymous young man one of the many skills necessary to become the Batman…
The saga concludes in captivating and rewarding manner as a fair-play mystery is solved in ‘The Last Death of the Batman’, displaying all those composite skills as the Dark Knight shows himself to truly be “The World’s Greatest Detective.â€
Short, sweet and simply superb, this is a Batman much missed by many of us, and this tale, like so many others of the period is long overdue for the graphic novel treatment. To the Bat-Files, old chums…
© 1992 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.