Batman #84 Review

Writer: Tom King / Artist: Mikel Janin / DC Comics Can you be Batman and be happy? This has been the lingering, central question to the entirety of King’s run on Batman. From the very first time we saw Batman meditate on what a good death would be while wrangling a plane to the ground, it has been the singular concept connected King’s one hundred issue arc. We are a little less than 90% through the grand design between 84 issues of the mainline title and a few annuals here and there. The resolution of King’s vision won’t be realized until the 12 issue maxi-series The Bat and the Cat wraps up whatever thread are left when “City of Bane” wraps up. This is King’s penultimate issue on the mainline Batman title. This is part 10 of the City of Bane arc. And King is really determined to show that Flashpoint Batman a.k.a. Thomas Wayne is very much incapable of being both Batman and happy at the same time. Told in a pseudo-linear fashion, each page is prefaced by the single sentence “Earlier.” as King covers the entire backstory of Thomas Wayne in reverse. I imagine it would be a little bit disorienting at first read especially if you’re not already familiar with the Flashpoint mythos, although if you’ve been following Batman for this long, you probably have enough of a primer. My main tripping point didn’t really come up until near the end of the issue, and that’s largely because King got a little too clever with his parallelism and callback although it was a neat story telling trick…