Batman: The Knight #9: A Pair of Twenty-Something Backpackers Trying To Find Themselves

Chip Zdarsky has created a beautiful, Oz-like take on the pit of resurrection, taking it from merely a means of bringing one man back to tenuous life into a system meant to restore the entirety of the earth to its original natural glory. The fact that this glory will come written in the blood of innocents is neither here nor there to either R’as Al Ghul or his daughter Talia.

Zdarsky has as much a knack for character-developing dialogue as he does for a rapidly ticking plot. I love his take on Talia; she’s as quick to eviscerate Bruce Wayne with her words as her father is with his blade, leaving the young man in a bloody puddle on the floor as he tries in vain to pull himself together. 

I also loved how effectively Zdarsky managed to draw a version of Al Ghul who could almost be a hero. His stated goals are unquestionably noble — it’s his methodology that’s the problem, and this moral line is difficult for a writer to walk without tipping too far in one direction or the other. 

Carmine Did Giandomenico’s art is vibrant, bloody, and ultimately as merciless as the mastermind it depicts. I was deeply impressed with the sense of place it generated. His international cities are never generic, and at the same time they are never portrayed via stereotypical visual shorthand. Even fictional locales have a vibrant, lived-in heft to the design that adds to the sense that this is an actual, inhabited world. Ivan Plascencia’s colors absolutely make the landscapes pop, painting sunsets and sand as vibrantly as spinal fluid or arterial blood. This is, to say the very least, a visually stunning book. 

This penultimate issue is a pulse-pounding, sweat-inducing, beautifully rendered thrill ride. If it doesn’t leave you gasping you’ve got no heart.