Batman #75 Review

Writer: Tom King/Artists: Tony S. Daniel & Mitch Gerards/DC Comics Issue #74 of Batman ended with Bruce and Thomas Wayne duking it out in the desert with no clear winner. I presumed that the winner was Bruce, which would’ve punctuated his time spent in the darkness. But it looks like I was wrong. Issue #75 takes place some time after this fight and reveals that Thomas was the one to climb out of the Lazarus Pit and make his way back to Gotham City. Some time has clearly passed since then, as Gotham is a totally different place. So much so, that it’s not entirely clear if what we’re reading is part of the current narrative or if it’s another pipe dream/headcanon similar to the issues following #60. This is actually one of the flaws in this issue. The ideas that it presents are overall ambitious and respectable, but feel out of place with no lead-in. With all of the tricks that King has played on readers recently, this feels like a poor time to expect us to make logical leaps of our own. This is probably the time to hold our hands a bit until we can trust what we’re seeing again. For example, the issue starts out with the Riddler and the Joker working as partners on the Gotham City Police Department. First of all, what?!?! Second of all, how did we get here?!? The shock of the issue continues as we see that all of Batman’s villains are essentially being used as a militia to do the bidding of Bane and Thomas Wayne by keeping the city in check through their own villainous mea…