Review: ‘Batman’ #136 Gets Grounded

Bruce Wayne’s latest string of adventures have been the furthest from grounded they possibly could be. But now that Batman is finally home and recovering, he’s about to face his greatest adversary — himself.

Chip Zdarsky, Belen Ortega, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles let Bruce go home, while Zdarsky, Jorge Corona, FCA Plascencia, and Cowles reveal Batman of Zur En Arh’s past.

Batman is home, but his trip through the multiverse has taken a toll. Even worse, he can no longer trust his own psyche, knowing that the Batman of Zur En Arh failsafe nearly destroyed him. Can Batman continue his mission, especially cleaning up after the events that took place in his absence, when he can’t even trust himself?

After nearly a year, it feels like Zdarsky is settling in with a firm direction. Batman’s confidence in himself is broken both thanks to his alternate personality and from his physical ability, now that he’s operating with an artificial hand. So while Bruce struggles with that, Zdarsky takes him on a trip through the new status quo of Gotham — both broad and deeply personal. It’s the best issue of the run to date from a writing perspective.

Ortega’s art on the main story is great. She’s able to pack in a lot of emotion into Bruce’s masked face, whether it’s his horror at the physical damage he did to one of the Penguin Twins or the sorrow at how he hurt Selina Kyle. Her layouts are chaotic, but they’re intentionally so in a way that echoes Bruce’s chaotic state of mind. With Morey’s colors, she sets the stage for the next phase of Zdarsky’s story.

The back-up is little more than a lark, but it does illustrate how desperate the situation with Zur En Arh is. Corona’s art is always welcome to see and his cartoony style fits this story better than I expected. He also has a great sense of the action in the story as Zur test drives Failsafe. Cowles does a wonderful job as always with his letters, pushing Bruce’s personality to the forefront.

Batman #136 is available now from DC Comics.