DCU Comic Book Reviews

SUPERMAN/BATMAN #85

The Secret, Part 1 of 3

August 2011

Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov

Pencils by Adriana Melo

Inks by JP Mayer with Greg Adams

Cover by Miguel Sepulveda

Synopsis

Some time ago…Jimmy Olsen is taking pictures of a model near a beach when he finds a dead body washed up on shore.  The body floated downriver from Gotham.  He was also a friend of Perry White, who thinks his friend deduced the identity of Batman.  Perry orders Clark to Gotham to continue the investigations.  In Gotham, Batman confronts Clark Kent and tells him to go home.  Later, Batman investigates the apartment of the dead man and finds evidence that links Batman to Bruce Wayne.  Before he can do anything, the police arrive.  Batman starts a fire to destroy the evidence, then leaves.  Hearing the police scanner, Superman rushes to help the Gotham fire department.  Afterwards, Superman confronts Batman and demanded to know what is going.  Batman admits he made a mistake.  He failed to remove a patent number from a piece of machinery that he had used, parts that were from WayneTech.  From that little bit, the dead man followed a paper trail that prove Batman had been pilfering from WayneTech, which mean he was defrauding the stockholders.  Superman tells Batman he needs help.  Batman refuses.  Superman tells him he’s wrong. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

If I were still doing the quickie reviews from the previous two months, I label this one Excellent.  It was beautifully executed, building nicely through the plot, doling out the bits of information as it went along, avoiding exposition and using characterization to show us what is going on.  Overall, I thought this well written, well done story. 

The opening was typical of a lot of crime shows on tv (in which the pre-credit sequence shows random people finding the body), but the addition of Jimmy was a nice touch to what amounts to a throwaway scene.  Then we get Perry White explaining who died and how that death will jumpstart the plot.  But in that scene we get some nice moments with Perry’s gruff demeanor and his remark about masks to someone who is wearing a mask.  From there, the story builds with Batman and Superman at odds with each other, the conflict coming not only from the mystery that both are in the midst, but also from the shared past as well as their alter egos.  Clark the newspaper man investigating Batman who is trying to protect Bruce Wayne and WayneTech.  The next scene in the dead man’s apartment was great, putting batman between the proverbial rock and a hard place, forcing him to make a tough decision.  The final material was handled well, putting the two leads together momentarily, showing a bond of trust to a certain degree when Batman shows him what he knows, but also showing Batman’s nature when he the rebuffs any help.  The ending may have been a little flat, or at least not typical of a comic books “wow” cliffhanger, but the story itself is strong enough to make me want more. 

The key to story, however, is so much that the reported may have deduced that Bruce Wayne was Batman, or at the very least supported Batman, but that he delved even deeper and found the financial improprieties.  It is one of the those “next step” type of thoughts that I am sure many people don’t think about it, but it makes sense.  Here is the boss, the CEO, using his company to provide private goods.  Imagine if you funded a company designed to build cell phones but instead it was building Oracle’s communication array.  That would be fraud.  I hope that Fialkov explore this more; I would really like to see how this affects WayneTech and Bruce.  Perhaps it becomes the impetus for Bruce to take back private control of his company?

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