A crime thriller reveals a shocking secret

The run of Chip Zdarsky and Jorge Jiménez continues Batman is about to come to an end as Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb are soon returning for a sequel to Hush, but boy, Zdarsky and Jiménez are definitely going out with a bang as this current storyline is a fascinating murder mystery that connects all of Gotham City Things get into trouble as the Mayor of Gotham City has been murdered and there is no shortage of suspects, leading to an intriguing mix of suspects before a shocking twist at the end of the issue.

Batman #154 comes from writer Chip Zdarsky, artist Jorge Jiménez, colorist Tomeu Morey and writer Clayton Cowles and follows on from the status quo-changing first part of this story, which, unfortunately for readers who enjoyed this series, is certainly a read will be a great start to a long series of stories from this creative team. After introducing a number of interesting new characters and revisiting classic characters, the issue ended with the death of the mayor of Gotham City, and that brings us to the second part of the story.

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How did this crime thriller rock Gotham City?

As mentioned, Zdarsky introduced a number of new characters and situations at the start of this arc. One of the most notable innovations is that Bruce Wayne, once again in charge of Wayne Enterprises, is pushing the company to become involved in the non-profit sector, and Zdarsky does an excellent job of showing how certain elements of Gotham City's population are outraged by the change Company approach.

In this issue we meet the new leader of the Court of Owls, and this is where things get REALLY kind of sad for me as a reader, because Leonid Kull, the new leader of the group, is a fascinating addition to the Batman mythos, and it's a huge disappointment, that we probably won't see much more of him in the series, or if we do, it won't be from Zdarsky, and I was really excited to see where he wanted to take the character.

There's an excellent character moment where Batman forms a sort of friendship with the mayor's assistant as she laments the mayor's death and asks who would want to kill someone who was just trying to do good for Gotham City, and of course Batman is very thrilled I'm used to this exact question, as he's obviously asked himself this over the years in connection with the death of his family. So he has a very convincing answer, which you can see in the preview pages for the issue above.

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How does the end of the issue change things for Batman and Gotham City?

One of the hardest things in Batman comics is portraying Batman as a real detective. In the 1950s and 1960s this was “relatively” easy, as it was always just something Bill Finger or Gardner Fox read in a magazine, like, “Oh, this flower gives off this smell on your feet when eaten.” a person,” and then Batman would figure out the secret that way (Finger would fill notebooks with little bits of information like that, things he could one day make into a story).

With a standard murder, it's much harder for a comic to depict the kind of things that murder shows like “Columbo” do so well, but Zdarsky and Jiménez do an excellent job of portraying Batman working the crime scene with Jim Gordon (the still private citizen and works as a private detective). Then the big twist happens because the mayor's wife's phone (which she doesn't leave open for anyone to investigate) is “cracked” and it turns out that Gordon could very well have been the person who committed the mayor's murder .

Of course this is shocking information, but I like how ambiguous the ending is handled. It's a big reveal, but it's not SO set in stone that Zdarsky can't go back when he feels like it, just like a classic “Supercickery” cover that makes it look like Superman is cruel, but in In In reality, he actually helps his friends and it just LOOKS really bad. Likewise, Gordon could have accidentally killed the mayor, or it could be something else entirely. This is a great cliffhanger.

With that in mind, the previous issue's cliffhanger was dealt with in a similar manner in this issue, as we learned in #153 that Bruce Wayne has a brother who disputes Bruce Wayne's control of Wayne Enteprises. At the time, it seemed like Zdarsky was tying into the classic old story “Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths,” in which it was revealed that Batman had an older brother that Thomas and Martha Wayne hid from Bruce. However, in this edition it seems to be more of a scam as it is the son of Thomas Wayne's old nurse. We've seen this play out several times over the years that MAYBE Thomas or Martha Wayne weren't as nice as they seem, but the bottom line is almost always that they WERE good people, and I can imagine that being the case will Again, especially since the “brother” specifically wants half the shares of Wayne Enterprises, CORRECT when the Riddler tries to force a merger of his company Nygmatech with Wayne Enterprises (and, well, he's the Riddler, he could obviously faking a DNA test if it ever came to that.

This was a great second part of what seems to be the final Zdarsky/Jimenez arc, and it's a real shame that it ends far too soon.

Source: DC