Recap
The latest issue of Scott Snyder's amazingly awesome
Batman run kicks off with the Riddler ruthlessly ruling the roost in Gotham city, striking terror in its citizens by demanding they step forward and attempt to stump him with an unsolvable riddle. Those that fail get dumped in a pit full of hungry jackals with a hankering for a small smackeral of man-flesh.
While Ed Nigma is drinking his tall glass of narcissism, delighting in his ever magnificent intellect and brain power, Batman, Jim Gordon, and Lucius Fox are plotting his demise. Fox is seen in the opening panels creating a recording for his son, Luke, telling him that he plans to take the Riddler up on his challenge for an unsolvable riddle, and that more than likely he's going to end up as a steaming pile of Jackal poop.
Fox then joins up with the Dark Knight and Gordon to formulate a plan to track the Riddler's signal and get his location within the city. Bats tells his miniature A-Team that he'll volunteer to challenge Nigma and keep him blabbing so they can get a lock on to where he's broadcasting from.
Batman, in true Capullo style, comes bursting onto the scene riding a motorcycle, ready to accept Nigma's challenge. Ole Bats, he always knows how to make an entrance doesn't he? The real challenge for the Bat is keeping Nigma yaking for a full 20 minutes while Gordon attempts to lock on to his signal.
As everybody's favorite brooding billionaire bad boy tries to keep a lively conversation going, Nigma decides he's had enough and drops Batman in the pit of jackals. Only now they aren't jackals, but two very majestic, awesome, hungry, and seemingly pissed off lions.
Batman, in the ultimate display of steel cojones, crafts a miniature flame thrower out of gas from an old car, a match, and his mouth. Hey, wait a sec. This sounds like the plot to a really old episode of that ancient television production called
MacGuyver.
Anyhoo, Bats spits fire at one of the lions, sending it running for its life (and the nearest PETA protest). In true Dark Knight form, Batman then wrestles the remaining lion in an abandoned vehicle tying it up and rendering it harmless. Badass. To quote the great Gump, "that's all I got to say about that."
Gordon manages to lock onto the signal and helps rescue Batman from Riddler's final attempt to snuff him out of existence. Now Batman and friends are one step closer to nailing Nigma and the Year Zero arc tantalizingly closer to it's epic conclusion
Verdict
Scott Snyder has consistently written top notch quality issues for
Batman ever since getting put on the book, and this particular release continues to live up to the hype.
While there isn't a super significant amount of action in the pages of issue 31, there is still a lot of excellent plot and character development. Snyder wove some great flashback scenes into the narrative that provide readers with a glimpse into the tortured mind of a teenage Bruce Wayne, who is just starting to feel the Bat spread it's dark leathery wings on the inside of his soul, calling him to his life as a masked vigilante. Also seeing Batman actually needing and even relying, on the help of others was a bit refreshing.
Greg Capullo provides some great art for the issue, although in my opinion, it somewhat reminds me of Frank Miller's work on
The Dark Knight Returns, which while good, was not my cup of tea. Of course, the story was so dang good that I could ignore what I didn't like about Miller's work, which is also true of the work Capullo and Snyder did with this issue.
Overall, the story was excellent, as most of the issues in this run have been, and provides some excellent entertainment. I give it a score of 8.5 out of 10, and I highly recommend that if you haven't read it yet, pick it up!