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Is It Good? Batman Eternal #42 Review

Comic Books

Is It Good? Batman Eternal #42 Review

Last issue of Batman Eternal finally got the Bluebird plotline (as in finally debuting Harper Row’s secret identity) going. Took them long enough.

Will we get to see Harper Row bust some heads? Is it good?

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Batman Eternal #42 (DC Comics)


batman-eternal-42-cover

Lead Writer: Kyle Higgins
Other Writers: Scott Snyder, Ray Fawkes, Tim Seeley, and James Tynion IV
Artists: Jed Dougherty, Gordon Sudzuka, and Roger Robinson

Story:

As more and more people become infected by the Nanovirus and are brought to the Mad Hatter’s hideout, Harper Row as Bluebird rushes to the scene.

She’s got her own gear and special outfit that is outfitted with a code that should prevent her from being infected herself. She has a plan to deal with this problem, but she may be way in over her head.

Spoiler Corner:

Elsewhere, Stephanie Brown wakes up in, surprise surprise, her own bedroom! Her mom is there as well, telling her that she hired Killshot to find and bring her back home. Mom tells her that she knows about what her husband has been up to and assures Stephanie that she’ll be safe now.

Bluebird enters the hideout and starting looking for an opening to strike. However, she is quickly found and knocked from a balcony. As she is confronted by nano-infected people and Mad Hatter, she stumbles through a couple of plans until she finally comes up with a good one. Playing up to Hatter’s ego and lowering his guard, she knocks off his top hat and takes it for herself. Since the hat controls, well… everything apparently, she puts it on and shuts down the virus, freeing everyone from its control.

Once the danger has passed, Batman swoops in and confronts the Mad Hatter. He demands to know who hired Hatter, but it turns out the villain got the same invitation that rest of the villains got — so the true identity of the mastermind remains in the dark. After that, Red Robin and Harper chat about what happened and reach an understanding, their earlier tension between one another seemingly subsided.

Back with Stephanie Brown: during the night when she goes to check on her mom, she finds her bound and gagged. Before she can do anything, Stephanie is knocked out with chloroform. The person who did that though turns out to be Selina Kyle, who has been searching for the young girl for quite a while.

Thoughts:

This issue felt a bit more eventful and it feels like we have nearly reached the point that Batman #28 started. Anyways, we’re finally given Bluebird’s first outing and it goes as well as you would expect. We’re shown both her inexperience as a new hero and her skill as well. She lucks out a bit at the end, but to be fair, a lot of heroes have lucked out in the past and overall, she shows potential as a hero.

As for the rest of the comic, it’s pretty good. There was only one other storyline that had any focus this time, but it did progress decently enough and wasn’t stretched out. The characters were good, the dialogue was fine, and so was the writing. The artwork had three artists on it, but it wasn’t really a problem I found since each artist worked on one scene alone. As such, there wasn’t any random artist shift during the middle of a Bluebird scene thankfully.

Best Moment:

batman-eternal-42-bluebird-smokebomb
I’m more curious how that Batarang fits inside one of your pouches there.

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