Review by Frank Plowright
As Chip Zdarksy takes over Batman he’s dealing with Bruce Wayne no longer possessed of a personal fortune, but several touches in his opening story mark a thoughtful approach. Zdarsky’s considered the Gotham elite Wayne once mixed with, and how they’re seen by the Penguin, also born to wealth in the Cobblepot family but despised by his contemporaries. We see Batman fighting crime in mask, shirt and trousers, and given some problems beyond his capacity to solve.
It’s just the appetiser to the title story, but presented with a sense of the epic, much of which is down to artist Jorge Jiménez, already with some impressive Batman to his credit in The Joker War. Despite your having seen Batman in hundreds if not thousands of comics over the years, Jiménez can make him seem new and different. It’s partly via looking back to his earliest comics and delivering a more sophisticated version of an angular cape in the darkness or retro Jokers, much as Marshall Rogers did in the 1970s, or to films and drawing a savage version of Danny DiVito’s Penguin. Much, though, is new, and apparent in small touches such as the impressive road map hologram in the Batmobile. That’s all in the opening chapter, by the way, and he’s just as remarkable throughout.
The title threat is a form of robotic Batman seen assembling itself in the now abandoned Batcave, and established as credible via wiping the floor with Batman and all his Gotham allies. It calls itself Failsafe, and indeed that’s what it is, but why? Zdarksy has that covered, but the way of dealing with it is going to be divisive, again harkening back to Batman’s past and dragging back what might have best been forgotten into the present. In the course of six chapters it’s brief, but never convincing and will play a part in what follows.
At the heart of ‘Failsafe’ is Zdarsky inspecting the lengths to which Batman is driven to anticipate all possibilities, including his crossing a line. There are echoes of the earlier creation of Brother Eye and Omac, partly in the way Zdarksy widens the parameters to beyond Gotham, and isn’t afraid to turn the pages briefly over to other heroes. It all helps in establishing the extent of the problem. In the end, though, it comes down to Batman, as it should, and Zdarksy has a real surprise leading into The Bat-Man of Gotham, as he should. Unfortunately, though, it’s a compromised ending in two parts. The extraordinary journey at the start is thrilling, but the subsequent confrontation is rushed.
Pleasingly, this collection also runs the back-up strips from the serialised comics, albeit sandwiched between dozens of alternate covers to those comics. In ‘Two Birds, One Stone’ Catwoman is employed by a robot lawyer to track down ten people with a surprising connection. It plays out well, although is a prelude for something to follow, and after some initial problems, Belén Ortega’s art merges style and storytelling. ‘I am a Gun’ both ties more directly into the main story and is simultaneously miles distant from it. Excellently drawn by Leonardo Romero, it’s a meditation on Batman past, of necessity confusing and fragmented, which is weakness that supplies originality.
Overall, Failsafe is a very impressive start from Zdarsky.
