Batman #93 Review

                                                               

      We all know the Joker War is coming. What we don't know is how it's all going to look, or even play out. The wait has been intense as a little pandemic shut down the comic industry and new books were delayed but slowly, so slowly the books have finally been released. As a comic fan you have the debut of Dark Knights Death Metal and issue 0 of Avengers Empyre. All these series looked promising even before Covid, but now seeing them in the local shops has been nothing short of amazing. As a DC fan I read the Death Metal book before Empyre and that was a mistake because Death Metal was a beautiful, well crafted story while Empyre showed promise but stumbled a bit in the story telling and overall delivery. We're not here to talk about those books. What we're to talk about is Batman and how if you're patient, good things will happen. Problem is when this arc started there was a couple of books that featured first appearances and that drove the price of the books up. If you're just a casual fan, getting these books at a decent price are pretty slim unless you can find later printings of course. 

       While this is the end of an amazing story arc that started way back in issue #86 there's still a reason to read this. We're setting up for the Joker War which promises to be a legendary piece of story telling. All the pieces are slowly falling into place and in this issue we find out who the Designer is and we get a fight between Harley and Punchline. This is an issue that ties things together nicely while allowing us a glimpse of what's to come. It's all about the shock at the end and what a shock it is. The journey to the Joker War have been popping up in other titles and this one is a great entry. We see what The Designer was planning for Gotham and how it would end with the death of Batman. Think about that for a second. If there's no Batman, the greatest ctiminal empire ever created would rule Gotham without any resistance at all. The beauty here is seeing what Tynion is building toward. We see the reality of what's going to happen and it throws a curveball into what The Designer had planned and of course that curveball is The Joker.

        While this is an end to a story arc, it's also a step toward something bigger, something that could be one of the biggest books of the summer. If you aren't already reading Batman, this is where you should start or at least try and pick up the other pieces of the prelude to the upcoming Joker War. As with all the Batman books the art and dialouge are well done. Tynion knows Batman and his pacing here is exactly what it should be. As a fan of the Bat, I loved this issue and I love that ending and how it allows us to move forward and gets us excited for what's to come. When you have a great comic you can't help but get excited about what's coming. How will this all end? Sure, in order to get there we need to get to the Joker War, but we can see that this entire storyline was building up to that and if you haven't read it, well you should. Batman 93 is a must read book that has a lot of strengths and very little weaknesses. Sure, I would have loved the entire issue to be just a fight between Punchline and Harley, but I'm sure that's going to happen at some point. How could it not? Read this comic, enjoy the awesome stuff that happens here. Put this on your pull list so you don't miss any of the war that's coming.