Batman has been on a tear lately with superstar writer Chip Zdarsky (the pen-name for Steve Murray) taking over from Issue 125 with two consecutive must-read story arcs. And yes, one of the arcs has Batman falling from the Moon to Earth relatively unscathed.
Failsafe
If you’ve been following the recent comic books (from Batman #126 to Batman #130), he was up against Failsafe, a nigh unstoppable android of his own making which was designed to be unleashed should Batman go rogue and take a life. In this case, the Penguin manages to frame Batman for having a hand in his death, thus triggering Failsafe. Batman literally gets his ass kick before escaping and Failsafe engages and defeats the rest of the Bat-Family.
The next couple of issues see Batman takes on his Zur-En-Arrh persona (last seen, if I recall correctly, in Batman: RIP) and it turns out that Batman’s backup personality was responsible for creating the contingency plan to a Batman gone rogue, Failsafe. Failsafe manages to take out Superman and the rest of the Justice League before heading back to take control of Gotham City. Two weeks pass while Batman recuperates in Aquaman’s care and as soon Failsafe realizes this (Aquaman wasn’t part of the heroes trying, and failing, to free Gotham), he takes the fight underwater only for Batman to lure him to the Justice League’s Watchtower on the moon.
Here’s the crazy part. While battling Failsafe on the moon, Batman manages to teleport Failsafe back to the Hall of Justice, only to find out that he himself has no means of escape back to Earth. Does Batman give up and surrender to the cold vacuum of space? He does some really impressive improvisations on the go that would make the Apollo 13 ground-crew proud, fashioning a makeshift re-entry into Earth using his grappling gun as propulsion and salvaging a ship’s oxygen canister for air. His suit takes care of the heat from the re-entry with his trunks being repurposed as a face make (ewww), and yes…his cape slows him down to a crash landing near Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.
The final panels see Failsafe finishing his objective by shooting Batman before departing to parts unknown after being infected by a computer virus that introduces “compassion” to his programming. Batman is then shown to be lying in an alley somewhere. Issues #128 to #130 also feature a tie-in, Zur-En-Arrh Year One, which gives context to why Batman created his Zur-En-Arrh personality in the first place.
The Bat-man of Gotham
Back to Batman. Issue #131 goes immediately into the start of the “The Bat-man of Gotham” arc which sees Batman transported by Failsafe’s shot to a Gotham somewhere in the DC Multiverse without an existing Batman, and where the villains are the folks in power. Issue #132 fleshes out this Gotham a little more, whereby the GCPD are a venom-enhanced force laying down the law along with the Riddler and Harvey Dent, and the rich are cloistered in a skyscraper named Athena. It’s also home to Darwin Halliday, this Gotham’s Joker who hasn’t transformed yet and goes by the moniker Red Mask.
Turn out this guy is totally obsessed with the Multiverse and the Joker, and was striving, through his experiments to unleash enough Multiversal energy (by infecting Gotham’s citizens using some sort of poison gas) in order to travel through the Multiverse (and back in time) to a point where the Joker was created. The Red Mask ends up hopping through universes, with Batman in hot pursuit, either ending up creating Jokers in universes that do not have one, making existing Jokers more evil and wild, and even resurrecting dead Jokers in universes where the Joker had died.
Batman ends up getting help from the Batmen from the universes that he is being pulled through in his pursuit of the Red Mask, including Batman from Batman 2099, old Batman from The Dark Knight Returns, the taciturn (and old) Batman from Kingdom Come and the campy Adam West Batman. He ends up having a showdown with the Red Mask in a universe created by the Red Mask, replete with gigantic, lipstick-wearing space sharks. He defeats the Red Mask, and it seems he gets saved by Tim Drake at the end of the chapter. But is it over yet?
Thoughts and Required Reading
It’s pretty much confirmed that Batman fans really enjoy their hero being put through the wringer, seeing him push past the limits and overcoming the odds since after all, his only superpower is the fact that he is rich. Writer Chip Zdarsky does this in both Failsafe and The Bat-Man of Gotham arcs and I’ve truly enjoyed the reading experience. I haven’t had this much fun since the Murphyverse.
While you are checking out Chip Zdarsky’s work on Batman:
Don’t forget to check these Murphyverse titles out:
