Batman and Robin #27 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (story), Patrick Gleason (pencils), Mick Gray (inks), John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Harvey goes full circle from P.D., to D.A., to D.O.A.

The Review: While it’s easy enough to mark the point where Harvey Dent’s life diverged from Gotham’s golden boy to one of its most terrifying threats, it’s a little harder to piece together why he flew between extremes so quickly.  It’s a bit too simplistic to believe that a scarring, no matter how seriously traumatic, can turn someone homicidal.  Surely the seeds of madness need to have been sown earlier than that.

Past issues on this arc have suggested precisely that, with Erin making repeated accusations of Harvey’s two-faced nature even before she literalized that figure of speech.  This issue initially seems to continue that trend, showing Harvey’s beginnings as a public defender, freeing criminals on technical errors in police procedure, as well as his role as the McKillens’ family lawyer.  It’s also hard not to view his switchover to D.A. cynically, especially as it’s prompted by financial and political backing from a younger Bruce and other men of influence.

But Tomasi doesn’t reduce the changes in Harvey’s life to purely mercenary aims.  His confrontation with the McKillen sisters in their prime reveals that he did have a moral brightline for protecting the guilty (“I won’t be a party to killing innocent men, women, and children—the McKillen family is no longer my client.”), and was driven by the sisters’ implacability (“You’re the family attorney, Harvey…we’ve got you on retainer for life.”) to betray them.  Even more interestingly, it’s his beloved wife Gilda who stamps her approval on his decision to “do a little bad to do more good[.]”  All in all, a more complicated relationship between the Dents and McKillens than either side would have you believe.

At the same time, this actually makes Harvey’s descent into insanity less explicable.  Had he truly been an ally to the McKillens who simply found bigger benefits working against them, then his transformation makes more sense; the acid merely stripped away his appealing exterior to the criminal within.  But given the fact fact was he skirted around the attorney-client privilege (which becomes a lot looser when lives are at stake anyway) solely to stop the McKillens from plaguing Gotham, the reasons for his complete turnaround are a lot harder to understand.

Wow—this must be the longest I’ve gone on a review of a Batman title without even mentioning Batman.  In some ways, though, this is a testament to the strength of his mythos, that it can be compelling in itself even with limited participation from its star.  For most of this arc, Bruce has helped grease the wheels of the story to keep it moving, but its real momentum is mostly generated by Harvey and Erin themselves.  Indeed, this story has such personal meaning for our two featured guests that you wonder how it ties to Bruce at all.  Tomasi offers a hint, when Batman finds himself trapped with the two criminals in a mausoleum, and he’s reminded enough of his own recent tragedies to admit his own struggle with himself.  But this is a rather tenuous connection between the arc at hand and the overarching plotline following Damian’s death.

Some artists can manage one or two standout images per issue; Gleason makes almost every page striking, with imagery that stays with you even after you’ve finished reading.  Even simple panels, which most artists would draw with hardly a second thought, look like Gleason labored for hours to produce.  On the final page, the McKillen goons publicly televise their capture of Two-Face, starting with an unbearably close shot of the villain’s disfigured eye, striations of blood vessels ringing angrily around the hellish pupil, which has dark spots swimming within, as if you can see his madness percolating inside.  Around the television are props and details you can spend whole minutes appreciating: photos of patrons, bottles of alcohol, even a loose screw next to the VCR.

Conclusion: An issue that complicates the inter-character dynamics while building inexorably towards an action-packed climax.

Grade: A-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Not unlike the protection Hawkeye gets from his Avengers credential, the Gotham mobsters are hesitant to off Batman when they have the chance out of fear of Justice League retribution.