Flashpoint: Batman - Knight of Vengeance #1 (of 3) Review

DC Comics
Flashpoint: Batman - Knight of Vengeance #1 (of 3) Review
By Dan Horn
June 2, 2011 - 10:42

DC Comics
Writer(s): Brian Azzarello
Penciller(s): Eduardo Risso
Inker(s): Eduardo Risso
Colourist(s): Patricia Mulvihill
Letterer(s): Clem Robins
Cover Artist(s): Dave Johnson
$2.99 US

I have to admit to not being an avid fan of Geoff Johns, but I did really enjoy his stint on Booster Gold. Even all of this Flashpoint stuff seemed like an interesting and fun comic blockbuster, that is, until I realized it wasn't that simple. In the world of comics "everything will change" has become a formula that's really nothing short of irritating. I feel as though there are more facile means of producing more interesting stories and the new readership that comes with them: contract better writers; newer writers; people who haven't been jaded by the mainstream modus operandi; people who can bring change simply by virtue of their elementary, yet revolutionary, ideas.

All of that notwithstanding, I was eager to see what the legendary 100 Bullets team, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, could do with this mess. They had tackled the character before, taking on the unenviable six issues directly succeeding Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's critical darling "Hush," not to mention their Wednesday Comics story. I was hoping that whatever shortcomings that Batman arc, "Broken City," may have had, Azzarello would improve on here. I was not disappointed.

In Knight of Vengeance #1, we see an elderly, cantankerous Thomas Wayne, an even grimmer Dark Knight if you can imagine that, colluding with Oswald Cobblepot and Chief of Gotham Security, Wayne's privatized police gestapo, Jim Gordon to locate the kidnapped children of Judge Harvey Dent. Thomas has been using his casinos to attract and eliminate criminals in Gotham, but one psychopath has escaped his net, making off with the Dent kids, and it is the most dangerous of them all: The Joker.

The one very obvious question here is what happened to Bruce? Azzarello addresses that during a viscerally illustrated rumble between the Thomas Wayne Batman and Killer Croc. It's a pretty incredible moment, I have to say, and once the fight with Croc is resolved, it's disturbingly clear that Thomas is a much different Batman from his son's incarnation.

Azzarello and Risso have concocted a slick, superhero neo-noir that really plays on presuppositions of the Batman character and his legacy. The artwork is fiercely evocative of Risso's 100 Bullets grit and grime, and the scripting is pitch-perfect. I would have loved to see this inspired reconceptualization as an Elseworlds book, but it's so good that I'm not too disgruntled by it being a Flashpoint tie-in. Obviously this is a character model that won't stick once Geoff Johns' epic has run its course, but it should be a compelling reverie while it lasts.

Rating: 9/10