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Comics
Apr 17, 2019 2:31:48 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Apr 17, 2019 2:31:48 GMT
so i'm reading backwards because the writer confirmed that the bane conspiracy has been running since the very first issue of the series. i started reading around issue 15, so i have a little reading to catch up on. a group of terrorists called Kobra steal some military grade weaponry and they shoot a plane out of the sky over Gotham. Batman rushes to the plane and manages to get on top of it, and hopes to steer it away from the city and into the water as gracefully as he can. as he's doing this, we see Hugo Strange, a classic Batman villain, kill the Kobra terrorists and watch as the plane goes by. So Hugo Strange basically put Kobra up to shooting down the plane, then killed them when he was done with them to tie up loose ends. Hugo will later be revealed to be working for Bane. Anyways Bruce gets the plane over the water, and Alfred points out his survival is unlikely. Bruce knows this, gives him instructions on what to do when he's dead, and then asks him this: however, just as Bruce is bracing for impact, the plane is lifted up a gently placed into the water, saving everyone's life. he doesn't know who did it, it wasn't him. and then these two new heroes are revealed, Gotham and Gotham Girl. they saved Bruce's life and the plane.
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Comics
Apr 17, 2019 3:13:11 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Apr 17, 2019 3:13:11 GMT
batman kind of takes gotham and gotham girl under his wing. they fight solomon grundy, and batman intervenes and helps them. on his way out, however, he scolds the duo, and says they're good, but not good enough, and need to be more careful. after solomon grundy has been defeated, jim gordon receives a visitor in his office. the guy is nervous, and confesses to being the one who freed solomon grundy and unleashing him on the city. right after his confession, he grabs a letter opener off gordon's desk and slashes his own throat, but not before declaring "the monster men are coming!" while this is going down, bruce is at wayne manor being bruce wayne, hosting a gala. he dances with a random girl, because he's eccentric playboy billionaire bruce wayne. however, gordon summons batman, so he ditches her on the dance floor. batman meets with gordon on the rooftop of the GCPD, as he always does, and this time he brings Gotham and Gotham Girl with him. Gordon tells them what happened wit the Monster Men and the suicide in his office. Gotham Girl points out this is strange, because the Kobro terrorists from the plane crash also killed themselves (the reader knows it was actually Hugo Strange who killed them). So they think there's a connection that needs to be investigated further. finally, we cut to Hugo Strange, interrogating a prisoner with Amanda Waller and an army general behind him. Waller says they are finally gonna save Gotham City. Bruce pretends to be an FBI agent and meets with the parents of Gotham and Gotham Girl (Hank and Claire) and learns their story. He actually saved the family from a robbery several years ago, as Batman, and since then, the kids have kind of become obsessed with vigilante justice themselves. They trained and studied and devoted their lives to service. Somewhere along the way, they acquired powers. As Bruce is leaving their parents house, he gets word that a suicide bomber has blown up a bridge in Gotham. Her last words: The Monster Men Are Coming! So clearly, there's a recurring theme here. Anyways Batman arrives at the bridge, Hank and Claire are already on the scene trying to help. Together, they're able to keep the bridge from collapsing. He says he's gonna look for leads while they keep an eye on the city. He leaves, and later, sure enough, another building blows up. Hank and Claire rush to the scene, and they come face to face with Hugo Strange, and another villain called the Psycho Pirate. He does mind control basically, which makes sense that he's working with Hugo, because mind control and torture is like, his whole thing.
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Comics
Apr 17, 2019 3:30:19 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Apr 17, 2019 3:30:19 GMT
batman catches up to the scene of the second bombing, where he finds a bunch of dead soldiers, claire catatonic, hank missing, and the words "I am Gotham" written in blood on the wall. Batman takes Claire back to the Batcave to recover from whatever it is she saw, while Hank goes out into the city, clearly having lost it a little bit. he tries to save a guy from jumping off a building, but this guy says the same thing: the monster men are coming. then he blows himself up. hank is clearly losing it, he's trying to be a good hero, but is just acting like a crackhead. bruce tracks him down and confronts him. tells him the psycho pirate got in his head and made him kill all those soldiers. hank flips out and flies away. bruce and his ally duke find out said dead soldiers belong to task force x, the suicide squad. figuring this is all some scheme by Amanda Waller, he goes to pay her a visit. she is blunt with him: she thinks batman is bad for gotham and creates crime. so, she was gonna solve it. she was gonna use hugo strange and pyscho pirate to basically mind control all the bad guys to stop being bad guys. except, strange went rogue, and had the pirate drive hank crazy instead and kill a bunch of soldiers, and know who knows wtf he's planning? hank didn't kill all the soldiers tho. one of the survivors tracks down his parents and kills them for revenge for his slain comrades. batman arrives just in time to watch hank snap his neck. batman pleads with him to stop, and tells him the pirate is manipulating him. but hank isn't having it. he says he always wanted to fix Gotham, but realizes now, it's beyond saving. so instead, he's gonna destroy it, wipe the city clean and start over. he escapes.
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Comics
Apr 17, 2019 20:18:52 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Apr 17, 2019 20:18:52 GMT
so i'm skipping back to the present day, just because a new issue came back (not like anyone is reading this anyway) anyways, we have finally reached the last knightmare. Bruce is in his tuxedo in Wayne Manor, and he sees Selina sitting there in her wedding dress. He asks her to dance. as they dance, he explains what the villains are doing to him. even tho he's being tortured and hallucinating, he's still aware that it's happening. he knows bane, scarecrow, his father, and tons of other villains are working against him. as they dance through time and their relationship, he works it all out. As he dances with Selina, he deduces that the only way out of this nightmare is for him to face his greatest fear. He knows his greatest fear is related to Selina. They talk about their failed wedding, and how depressed he was. And he just wants to know one thing: Hallucination-Selina explains to him that Bruce made a choice long ago, long before he ever even met her, that he would always choose the mission over love. She says his vow to fight crime forsakes love, and they just simply cannot be together. His greatest fear? They he doesn't love Selina. He's like wtf no that's not true, but she sadly assures him that it is. Finally faced with this final revelation, Selina kisses him and leaves him, ending the hallucination. That was some pretty heavy stuff. So basically Batman's worst fear is that he isn't capable of love, that he isn't capable of happiness. He tries to tell himself he is, but at his core, he's afraid he isn't. So he thinks he and Selina can just never be together, they'll just never work. So he thinks he pushed Selina away, and all of this was his own doing. What he doesn't know is that Selina leaving him wasn't his fault, it was actually another one of Bane's manipulations. So he's basically punishing himself for something that was out of his control. Elsewhere in the issue, Bane and Thomas (Batman's evil father from another dimension) ((just go with it)) train together, talk about Bruce, and things get tense. For some reason, Bane has his dick out. so that's that. the knightmares were a nice deep dive into his psyche, but i'm glad he's broken free and hopefully he's gonna whoop some ass.
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Comics
Jun 6, 2019 22:33:42 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Jun 6, 2019 22:33:42 GMT
lots of catching up to do. batman wakes up from the knightmare torture devices in typical fashion: he was being tortured in the bowels of arkham asylum, but he's free now, and he's just kicking ass. as he fights through the hordes of villains awaiting him, he taunts Bane, who he knows is listening, basically asking him if some bad dreams is the best he can do. he's mopping the floor with the inmates in the asylum. having fought his way out of the asylum, he tells Two-Face to pass on a message to Bane: that'll he back tonight, and that he's gonna beat tf out of him, basically. however, we see that this is just what Bane wants. He goes to the GCPD, and despite Gordon's warning that he is not welcome (remember he punched Jim in the face not too long ago), he shines a red bat signal over the city. a signal to gather the troops. among the first to respond is Batgirl, it's nice to see her being brought back into the fold of the main batman title. anyways, he and the bat family return to Arkham Asylum to face off with Bane once and for all. They bust down the door and give a big dramatic speech: and there's nobody there. batman looks completely foolish and insane. Bane's plot to drive a wedge between Bruce and his allies and basically discredit him and make him look crazy is working, and he is playing Bruce like a pro. Kind of embarrassed, the batfamily retreats to a rooftop. Bruce obviously isn't giving an inch, still insisting that Bane is up to something. He looks like a conspiracy theorist, and Batgirl and Robin point out that he hasn't been the same since Catwoman left the city (and him). Bruce insists that this has nothing to do with Selina, and when Robin attempts to comfort him and says that they know he loved Selina, Bruce does this: Another victory for Bane. Bruce has been isolated, driven crazy, and had his reputation and alliances shattered. Selina's gone, Gordon hates him, the Batfamily thinks he's lost it....a mess. Then we flash forward to later. Bruce is alone in the Batcave, when an intruder alarm goes off. He enters Wayne Manor to investigate, where Bane taunts him and invites him to come join him. He finds Bane and his father awaiting him in the dining room. Bane smugly invites Bruce to sit and eat, and in a total power move, orders Alfred to serve Bruce something to eat. Instead, Bruce flips the table and says he's gonna beat the shit out of Bane. Instead, Bane knocks the fuck out of him and that's kind of that. Alfred is strangely calm. He helps Bruce to his feet, and somberly informs him that Bane has beaten him. From then on, it's mostly a big montage of Bane continue to pummel Bruce all over Wayne Manor. Narrating this beatdown is Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father from another world, who has come to this one to assist in his son's destruction. He muses about Bane's whole plot to take down Batman, since the very first issue of the series. How he has arranged a whole web of attacks and conspiracies and manipulations, first to bring Bruce and Selina together, and then to rip them apart. He targeted Bruce and Selina because giving Bruce love is the only thing a villain hasn't tried yet, basically. He gives Bruce happiness, so he can take it away. He lifts him up, so he can drag him down. And so he arranges some situations to bring Selina and Bruce together (as seen earlier in the series), and then he arranges their downfall. Selina's decision to leave Bruce was the result of a series of manipulations by Bane, performed by Booster Gold, Joker, and Holly Robinson, to plant the seeds of doubt in her mind and pull them apart. and it worked. Bane has isolated Bruce while his own army grows stronger than ever, and now he's gonna strike. and that's where we leave off. I'm glad they finally laid out exactly what Bane's plan was, and I want to see where it goes from here. good stuff!
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Comics
Jun 6, 2019 23:03:53 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Jun 6, 2019 23:03:53 GMT
On the Catwoman side of things, her story is still in a holding pattern, unfortunately. We continue on her uninspired heist storyline, where she continues her chase sequence and rescues her friend from the armored truck. Since this is a comic book and Villa Hermosa seems to be the DC equivalent of San Diego, they end up crashing a movie premiere, where Selina and her friend run across a red carpet and Selina punches an actress just for the fuck of it. Anyways, this storyline is boring, and they still have yet to explain why they're in this predicament at all. And the issue ends with them still running. However, Raina Creel is still plotting. Remember her? Anyways her one son is trying to go straight and narrow and run for elected office, while she's still up to her old gangster ways. With her half-dead abomination son laying on her lap, she violently warns her living son to stay out of her way while she ties up the loose end regarding her own beef with Catwoman. We see this take place in the form of Detective Yilmaz, one of the corrupt cops on her payroll, paying a late night visit to the pawn shop Selina's been staying at, where he pulls a gun on the old woman who lives there. Suspense!! or that's what they're going for. They also did a Catwoman annual, another story that didn't need to be told. The whole story is framed as a murder documentary. A bunch of girls turn up dead and people think Catwoman killed them. But the real story is- It's basically Selina in Villa Hermosa, she finds a troubled teen and takes her in, and nurses her back to health. From then on, she takes in some of the girls friends and kind of gets a little girl-gang together and teaches them how to steal and shit. However, these girls double cross each other. One of them plots with some metahuman (a kind of obscure character from the comics) to kill the rest of the girls. They go to "rob him" but he's waiting for them. Slaughters all the girls (except the one who orchestrated it, obviously) and then dumps the bodies at Selina's house to frame her. Raina Creel's corrupt cops obviously suspect Selina, and she sets out to clear her own name. Selina thinks she moved on too fast, and opened her heart up too quickly after the fallout with Bruce, so she wants to correct this and get to the bottom of the bunch of dead hookers that turned up in her apartment. She calls Lois Lane, her old friend from the Batman comics, and basically tells her the deal. Selina confronts the girl and the metahuman, and beats tf out of the metahuman and throws him out a window. Where Superman randomly swoops in and catches him. I guess that's what she called Lois for? Idk it didn't really make sense. And then Selina goes to chase down the girl, who was also being interviewed for this documentary, and finally catches her and interrupts her interview, presumably bringing her to justice and clearing her own name. This story wasn't good or compelling at all, and was just more filler to keep Selina busy while Bruce has an actual storyline. In the wake of their failed marriage, Bruce has had such a deep, dark storyline that really pulls at the heartsrings, and Selina on the other hand has done literally nothing but run around and make wisecracks. The difference in writing is astounding. Oh well. They announced a new Batman/Catwoman series starting soon, so it's obvious that a reunion is imminent. and it's written by the batman writer, not the catwoman writer, so the storyline will actually be good, thank god. So they can keep Selina busy for now, I guess, because it's clear she's coming back to batman soon enough.
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Comics
Jan 8, 2020 15:56:56 GMT
Post by TheMadQueen on Jan 8, 2020 15:56:56 GMT
they killed off alfred, like, for real...
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