If there’s been any driving force for this story, it’s been the mystery of who the killer Asema is. In and of itself, that’s fine. Lots of detective fiction sets the villain’s identity as its central mystery. In fact, early on I praised the story for making Detective Comics once more a comic about detective work. However, if you’re going to hang the entire narrative’s suspense on one question that lasts its entire span, it better be a good one. It needs to keep the audience invested and guessing, with each new installment further developing the mystery in interesting ways. Now that everything’s been revealed, it’s safe to say that didn’t happen.
The story opens by confirming that Scarlett is not Asema, finally ending that hook. I’ve been commenting for a while now about how it had been teasing her as being Asema’s secret identity so much that it probably couldn’t be her. When you spend so much energy saying “what if it’s Scarlett?”, it would be incredibly anticlimactic to simply reveal that it was, in fact, her. However, as I said last issue, this creates a no-win scenario because now having that possibility strung out over the entire story feels like a waste of time. This is especially true if you caught onto the smell of red herring early.
If not Scarlett, then who? Well, Batman says that he has two other possible suspects. This surprised me because as far as I could tell there’s only one other possible culprit (more on them later). Well, the comic needs to keep the suspense going for just a little bit more so it throws in a last minute, dark horse candidate: Martha Wayne. I genuinely have no idea where this idea is coming from. Batman says that he’s seen people come back from the dead before so it’s possible, which I guess is technically true, but there’s still no evidence at all suggesting that it would be his mom specifically. I suppose you could argue she would be mad at Joe Chill for killing her and therefor want to kill all criminals, but that is the absolute thinnest of justifications upon which to base such an absolutely wild hypothesis.
Thankfully, no, Asema is not secretly Batman’s mom back from the dead looking for revenge. It’s actually Scarlett’s mom Evelyn out looking for revenge. I’m not supposed to “call my shots” in these reviews because that’s not what they’re for and you look foolish if you’re wrong, but I’ve been alluding to the fact that it was probably her for at least a few issues now. Who else could it be? The story fell into the classic mystery story blunder of introducing a killer with a secret identity the same time you introduce new character from the hero’s past. Scarlett fits this mold as well, but given that even she was too obvious, we then turn to the other person from that flashback who has all the same (if not more) motivations as Scarlett would.
Ironically, although Evelyn becomes the obvious culprit based on narrative convention, there’s not actually a lot pointing to her from Batman’s perspective. We know that it’s her because there’s no one left in the story it could be, but Batman doesn’t live in “the story”; he lives in Gotham. Process of elimination doesn’t work because there’s about 10 million other people who are possible suspects. If he’s open to the absurd solution that it could be his own mom back from the dead, then why not some other random person? Motive alone isn’t enough.
The only clues he tells us is that Scarlett said her mom “wasn’t well” and that the real Dr. Forster, whom Evelyn had been pretending to be, actually died of Malaria a decade ago. That’s a great start to an investigation, but there are so many steps between that and “therefor this Dr. Forster is secretly Scarlett’s mom and also Asema.” If you want this to be a real detective story, actually show Batman following up on those leads. That’s the sort of thing that noir fiction is built on. But no, showing that Batman suspected anyone other than Scarlett would ruin the shocking reveal.
With Asema’s identity solved, the story still needs to somehow reach the sequence between her and Batman that opened the arc. The way it does that is by having Evelyn accompany Batman to where she’s been keeping Joe Chill. So much of this sequence only works if you don’t think about it. I can buy that he needed her along to find him with Oracle indisposed, but for some reason that I cannot fathom, he lets her keep all her Asema gear and weapons. She should be in custody, not following him with her Freddy Krueger syringe hands. Shockingly, she uses this opportunity to attack him as she did in the story’s prologue.
This whole scene reads like the story is struggling to come up with a reason that the scene still happens, and the result just doesn’t make sense. It requires that Batman’s actions be totally irrational, like he wanted the fight to happen. In fact, it’s only after she attacks him with the weapons he gave her that he gets the brilliant idea to handcuff her. By the end of it, we at least get a pretty good speech from Batman about his moral stance on refusing to kill, but there have already been multiple of those in this arc by this point.
While the main story has been following Batman and Asema pretty exclusively, the rest of the bat family is given something to do by taking down the prison that Damian had infiltrated. In a way this wraps up that subplot, but honestly it always felt only slightly tied to the larger story. Damian himself got some good character moments from his undercover work, but at this point it just feels like an excuse to squeeze in a few moments where everyone in Batman’s larger orbit gets to show up for some splash pages. If you read Taylor’s Nightwing, you’ll be very familiar with this sort of thing. Barbara’s need to be here for this is also why she’s not available to help Batman. You can tell this is not particularly crucial to the plot because it’s presented in a way where most of it happens off-page just to quickly wrap everything up.
While the bat family sequence is superfluous, it does give Mikel Janín a chance to remind everyone that he’s very good at drawing action. The panel-to-panel movement is exciting and the energy is maintained for each character, even in larger group shots. It makes the prison fight serve as a shot of adrenaline for the reader in between the much slower conversations between Batman and Evelyn. Janín’s art also keeps those moodier moments feeling tense and atmospheric, even if what’s happening in them doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Recommended If
- You’ve been dying to know who Asema is
- The conspiracy plot so far has kept you interested
- Mikel Janín’s art has been a highlight of the series so far
Overall
The story’s final revelations end up resulting in an unsatisfying mystery plot that relies on nonsensical misdirection for the sake of a shocking “twist”. Its overly predictable structure makes most of the big moments fall flat, and it struggles to justifiably deliver on the promises from the beginning. At the very least, Mikel Janín’s art makes the whole thing great to look at.
Score: 3.5/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
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