Things get a bit chaotic in this one, as all the villains start arranging their next plan at once whilst Batman is still out of town, forcing the Bat-Fam to split off and try to each take one of them down. Also, y;know that big cage that Hush is in? It was exactly as fragile as we all thought it was. It’s Batman Eternal #47!

Writer: Tim Seeley
Consulting Writers: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes and Kyle Higgins
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Letterer: Steve Wands

We’ve both seen the cover, so we know that this is going to be Hush-centric again. I’m not happy about it: you’re not happy about it. We’re just going to have to put on a brave face and work through it as best we can. Hope you’re still here at the end!

In the Batcave, Alfred is asleep at the main console again whilst Hush watches him and gets rhapsodical on him, wondering what kind of dreams he might be happening. Alfred subsequently wakes up and yells “Julia”, so there’s your answer, Hush. Julia is out at the moment though, racing across the rooftops and following a Bat-Signal which somebody has lit over the town. It turns out to be Catwoman, so Julia puts on a mash with a giant bat over her face and drops down, which is certainly a fashion choice. Speaking of – Juan Ferreyra is another great artist showing up late to this series, and he goes a great job actually making this costume look pretty decent.

Catwoman – who had set up a whole fancy dinner for this and was clearly looking to get laid – is disappointed and starts to walk off, but after a quick fight scene with Julia she changes her mind and hands over the shipping manifest which Leo discovered last issue. Clearly the villains are starting to resurface again, and Catwoman wants Batman and his team to be ready. Julia swings off, which is a shame, because I bet Catwoman would’ve been open to sharing dinner after the fight.

Batman returns from Pakistan confident that Ra’s Al Ghul isn’t involved in anything and was just a tease designed to stretch on the series a little longer. He all but states that it was stupid for him to ever consider this a possibility, because it’s completely out of character for all concerned and frankly Batman should know better than that. Julia returns and sends Alfred back to bed, before letting Batman know that there’s a chance the other villains are all coming back soon for the endgame. She’s taken care of it, the Bat-Fam are already assembled, everything is going to be fine, she says. Batman is visibly squirming the whole time at the thought of having to work with somebody who is actually effective, it’s great.

The first villain to start setting up his next big plot is Scarecrow, who is on top of Gotham Cathedral for some goddamn reason. He’s got a bunch of drones from Waynetech, and the plan is to release a bunch of gas on people, y’know, the standard stuff. He’s put little black feathers on all of them because he’s a weirdo, but before he can get anything started Batwing shows up and smacks the drones out the sky.

Clayface has hijacked a film studio and is forcing a low-rent bunch of actors to pretend to be Batman villains whilst he pretends to be Batman, all filmed by a crew. When his co-star delivers a poor rendition of Joker – nice to see Jared Leto getting to make a cameo in the comics – he prepares to kill him as punishment, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Red Robin. Tim’s got some freeze pills, revealing himself as an avid fan of the Arkham City games.

Strangely, Bluebird has been assigned to take on Mr Freeze, who is contentedly making ice statues of a family (complete with a pet dog!) presumably so he can have some friends around. There’s also Batgirl, who finds herself at the carnival from The Killing Joke, ugh. Joker’s Daughter is in there, double ugh. Finally, Red Hood is at a bar – no change there – but he’s tracking down some Russian tech that was delivered in.

Julia watches as they all get ready to take out their respective B-Lister (Poison Ivy looks like she’s going to get away with whatever her plan is) but then the lights all go out in the cave. Something knocks her out, which wakes up Alfred. He’s knocked out as well, I think, but it’s not Hush doing it – Hush is still in his cell. Weird.

At the bar, everybody is watching Red Hood with the sort of overt suspicion that means he’s walked into a trap. Incidentally, there’s also a cage match happening in the back, with six luchadores walking out to do battle with their opponent… Bane! Who is, uh, wearing a robot suit like Iron Man, and is called “the man in the machine” by his ring announcer. This is such a strange comic it could only have been written by Tim Seeley.

Stephanie Brown and Cullen Row (who let her out of the taser device from last issue) are watching telly, but Steph wants to be involved and get stuff done. She heads to the Gotham Gazette website and finds Vicki Vale’s page?

Alfred wakes up at the Batcave to find Hush is out of his cell and is now in charge. He’s tied Julia one of the escape hatches, which he duly launches with her inside. It’s… an escape pod though? So it’s actually not a major deal. She lands in the river, swims back up to the surface. When she gets there, though, she sees Gotham is on fire. What is happening? We’ve landed into a major final battle with barely any warning here.

Hush finishes off the issue by overriding all the controls of the Bat-Jet just as Bruce returns to Gotham, forcing the plane to crash-land in the airfield and explode pretty nastily. This is a lot to take in at once!

5 issues to go!

 

Steve Morris runs this site! Having previously written for sites including The Beat, ComicsAlliance, CBR and The MNT, he can be found on Twitter here. He’s a bunny.

 

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