ICYMI Batman #3: Crown of Storms

Matt Fraction’s run on Batman has been a delightful mess thus far, filled with excellent character writing that has helped to overshadow a lack of originality and focus. Issue #3 continues this trend with a tangled web of great ideas that are fighting with one another for space to shine. With a mess of still-undeveloped plotlines from the last few issues and another major one introduced here, the direction of this title feels to be one chosen by a dartboard rather than any individual’s creative intent.

It makes it difficult to enjoy these issues as individual stories—something Fraction had intended for this run—as well as pieces of a larger whole. This issue splits itself between developing the complexity of Bruce’s relationship with Tim Drake, Vandal Savage’s police-driven war on Batman, the changing culture of Gotham, and the introduction of a new Arkham-born mystery. None of these find a moment to develop in any meaningful way.

The thematic intention behind these plots can be felt in how they all force Bruce to “re-evaluate” his mission as Batman and make significant changes to himself, but that is such an exhausting point to keep revisiting. Nearly every relaunch of this title has made that its mission statement. From Tom King to today, this character has been trapped in a constant loop of near-identical plot specifics for almost an entire decade. Not only is Fraction doing something repetitive and unoriginal, it’s been assembled with unintentional chaos.

There is hope with the new Arkham plotline introduced in this issue. It spins out of a tech program funded by Wayne Enterprises that aims to cure the mentally impaired by directly attacking their brain’s electrical functionality. We see the haunting impact of this in a Riddler encounter that is terrifying, but not at the expense of the villain’s classic identity. There is something new and potentially profound in this plotline, but as this run has shown, it may simply become another wrinkle in this title’s path across hollow ground.

The art team continues to do their best with the tonal and structural incongruity they’ve been handed. Jorge Jiménez is doing what he can to establish consistency across the narrative with his kinetic pencils, but his style is part and parcel of how standard this run has been. Tomeu Morey’s colors are exquisite, often elevating the pencils beyond their own capabilities.