Review: Batman #38

We are now four issues into the Endgame arc, and Scott Snyder continues to do a fantastic job. This review is going to be relatively short, since there is only so much I can say about the issue without giving the kind of spoilers that would defeat the whole purpose of a positive review. As with my review of the latest The Flash episode yesterday, I will add a spoilerific section at the bottom for the benefit of anyone who has read the issue and wants to talk about that.

Suffice it to say, there is some very clever stuff going on here. Almost too clever, as is more or less de rigeur for Scott Snyder Batman stories of late. As with its immediate predecessors, the issue occasionally risks getting bogged down in complex, plot-hole-filling explanations of why exactly we are going to the next place we are going to, or why precisely this chemical will have the effect that it does. I very much appreciate the research that must have gone into these passages, but it does sometimes threaten to bring the whole enterprise to a grinding halt.

That, however, is a minor quibble, and there is much to love about this latest issue of the arc. In fact, I think it is the best issue of the arc since its first one. That first issue, if you will recall, was terrific in the way that it brought the rest of the DC Universe crashing into the insular world of Batman in the most violent way possible, but all of the issues of the arc since have brought back the insularity to enhance the claustrophobia factor. Happily, Scott Snyder finds a way to expand the scope of his story without sacrificing the closed-in feel that has made the arc so scary so far. This will be discussed in more detail below in the spoiler section.

The issue also ends with what might be the best end-of-installment cliffhanger that Snyder has yet written for Batman. Even if I had no other reason to return, that ending would have me coming back for the next issue.

Spoilers--
The idea of tying the rest of the DCU to the story by giving an in-narrative explanation of the immortality of various unkillable characters is absolutely brilliant for the reasons cited above, and the idea that the Joker is one of those infected immortals ties back to the opening narration of the Death of the Family arc, where Batman has to talk himself into remembering that the Joker is a mere man after all. And that final page...Oh, wow, that final page. It conveys how desperate Batman is, suggests several possible ways forward for the installments to follow, and leaves enough mystery to make the reader want to come back. This is a callback done right, a cliffhanger done right, and an issue of a superhero comic done right. Full marks!