Batman #48

Say goodnight, Commssioner Batman!

Rating: +1 Ranking. There's a lot of talk about gardeners and gardens in this issue because Snyder's analogy finally came to a head and popped. I guess gardening is war and so when you try to garden, the garden gets angry. Or something. I wouldn't know since I like my backyard to have a natural, chaotic look. I'm more like Batman than Commissioner Batman so I don't have any horrible monster plants moving in to teach me a lesson about trying to force too much order on what is a naturally chaotic system. Or, you know, something.

My favorite part is also, on a theoretical level, my least favorite part. I loved the idea of The Joker finally being happy because he has no Bat-obsession to eat away at him. It's kind of heartbreaking to see him plead with Bruce Wayne to leave the Bat behind because The Joker knows what that means for him. He'll go back to being crazy. Which is my least favorite part which ties in with the whole Mister Bloom rising up because Commissioner Gordon took over.

I hate that it's simply an accepted fact that Gotham will always balance in some horrible way. Batman rises to help keep the city safe so The Joker appears to make the city less safe. Commissioner Gordon and the Powers Company ratchet up the level of political and corporate policing and so a wild monster like Mister Bloom appears to effectively counteract it. The message seems to be you can't even attempt to improve the city because some force is going to fight back just as hard to fuck it up. I suppose that's why The Court of Owls work! They understand Gotham's mystical property of maintaining perfect equilibrium and have come up with a system to manage it to the best of their abilities. Maybe they really should just run Gotham?

How about those last few pages, eh? I think maybe it's just time for Alfred to retire. He obviously can't handle this shit anymore.