Batman: The Brave and the Bold #2 // Review
Wilde Manor is tense. Mr. Wilde is fairly convinced that he is going to die. He’s right, of course...but he’s going to be there with Commissioner Gordon, who will try his best to protect him. Time will tell whether or not Mr. Wilde’s murderer will be brought to justice in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #2. Writer Tom King leads a four-part anthology with artist Mitch Gerads. Also featured in the issue are the second part of a tale about Stormwatch written by Ed Brisson with art by Jeff Spokes, and the second part of a Superman story by Christopher Cantwell and artist Javier Rodríguez. Joëlle Jones rounds out the issue with an exploration into Bruce Wayne’s scars that turns out to be the single best feature in the book this month.
The Joker is only getting started. He may have a valid reason for wanting to kill Wilde. Or he may not have any reason at all. In any case, there is a poison dart. There is paralytic gas. And then the Joker goes to work with a sword. (He’s wearing a suit of armor at the time. It wouldn’t fit the motif if he’d shown up in plain sight.) Elsewhere, Bruce Wayne is suffering from some serious wounds. He’s collected quite a few of them over the years. They are what make him who he is.
King constructs a well-conceived script that opens with a first-person narrative of the Joker. It’s scattered and intimate. There is a strength in the narratives he tells that informs on a deeper level than the character is often allotted in his own book. So it’s nice to see how that comes together in an issue that he’s not as prominently featured in. Jones’s issue-ending one-shot story is a remarkably concise and thoughtful look at the toll that Batman’s lifestyle has taken on Bruce Wayne’s body.
Mitch Gerards opens the issue with a series of tight close-ups that mirror the intimacy with which King is exploring the Joker’s psyche. They also provide an overwhelming sense of tension as the imminent death of an ostensibly innocent man approaches. There’s a striking depth to the visuals opening the issue as well. The blood red of the Joker is contrasted against the sickly green of the room that he’s filling with blood. At issue’s end, Jones’s black-and-white art stylishly delivers the tale of Batman’s scars in a way that feels as engaging visually as it is conceptually.
Not everything in the issue works perfectly. Though Rodríguez’s art on the Superman story is undeniably cool, Cantwell’s story seems to need longer chapters to build up the narrative momentum that it needs to engage the reader. The mix of different stories within the anthology should bring forth a sense of experimentation. The best moments within the second issue of Brave and the Bold work really well on their own without having to connect up with a larger narrative structure.
