Review: Batman Death of the Family

Creepy joker, ominous title, I was sold from the start. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo wrote and drew a Batman series that hasn’t kept my this on the edge of my seat and panting for the next month’s issue since Hush.  While it helps to be familiar with the Bat family (can you identify everyone in the pictures above? good) you can still pick it up with minimal wiki searching on what they are talking about. I have a little nerd rage with the ending, but this is a series you need to pick up and read.

The Joker hasn’t been this really dark since (24 year old spoiler alert) when he murdered Jason Todd in Death in the Family. Before the series officially kicked off he had his friggen face cut off. I don’t even… yeesh. I love that they brought the psychopath back out in this guy – he is more than a goofy villain, and the more grand violent gestures I think the better from him.

Joker is going around systematically attacking and capturing all the members of the bat family – Alfred, Nightwing, Red Robin, Robin, Catwoman, Batgirl, and the Red Hood, hinting that he knows all of their secret identities.  He is all about how every single one of these people are bringing Batman down – he has too much tied in with them and he is no longer the nemesis that he needs. Meanwhile, Batman is running through Arkahm where Joker is waiting for him and you get to read through an incredibly deep and creepy monologue where Batman describes how the Joker is in love with him. How they are a bit of a yin and yang in Joker’s world where they cannot live one without the other.

All of this leads up to the final comic… SPOILERS LIE AHEAD.

No really… I’m going to talk about what happens.  Don’t read if you don’t want to know.  ‘Cause you could just go out and buy Batman #17.

Batman finds himself in the Batcave seated in front of a table with the caped Batfamily seated there, their faces hooded, wrapped in bloody bandages, seated in front of schafed dishes. Joker warns Batman if he tries to escape, the tinder under his chair will light everyone on fire and murder them all. Of Course Batman has a super secret attack plan, he has home field advantage. He escapes and triggers the water fall to flood the room, dousing the flames and setting them all free.

I glazing over this because I wasn’t super thrilled with the ending. Prior to Batman #17 coming out I was really trying to guess who was it that was going to die? I knew it couldn’t be Babs, Joker already killed Jason once, taking out another Robin would be… eh.. anticlimactic? My money was on the death of Alfred. I thought they were hinting at it with him not being at the table with the others, but he was behind the scenes, under the influence of the joker’s gas and brings out what looks like the cut off faces of the caped Bat family prior to their escape.

Joker sets off a trap so either Batman can chase after the Joker or he can help get his family free of the cave and the Joker’s gas, turning them into Joker murder fighting machines (who still have their faces, it was a trick to make Batman mad)… and more deep speeches from Batman later, he trusts his family to save themselves and goes after Joker. He catches up to him and this is the big confrontation. Batman throws Joker off his game by revealing that he knows his secret identity. Uhm…. really? This felt a little like the Adam west cut to commercial where you didn’t actually see the scene where they got out of the car before it went off the cliff. I feel like Batman knowing the Joker’s identity before he became Joker is something we would have heard more of in the past 80 years.

Lastly, to get out of the situation and to keep Batman from revealing his true name, Joker jumps into the waterfall and disappears. I think I stared blankly at the page a minute before I had a little bit of nerd rage. This was too much Reichenbach falls and Professor Moriarty for me. First of all, NO ONE DIED. Everyone is emo in the end but there is no death of anyone in the family or of the family itself!! They could have made the whole thing so much darker and more repercussions by actually cutting off the faces of the family – there are lots of talented surgeons in the DC universe to fix them afterwards, some fun scars to add in moving forward, or you could have had more than the getaway scene where you have to guess if the Joker is dead. Of course he isn’t dead or at least not for long, he is the Joker! Not Jean Gray.

SPOILER ENDED

I was disappointed in the ending of this series, but only because I felt they didn’t stick the landing. The art is amazing, and the story telling was captivating. The ending in all honesty wasn’t bad, it just didn’t meet the very high bar I felt Snyder made for himself in the series leading up to this comic. That being said, you really should pick up Death of the Family. It’s a bit of a nail bitter the entire time, and is well worth the ride. Just don’t make bets like I did on who was going to die in the family, because you’ll be out a round of drinks next time at the pub.