Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire (Batman Beyond (DC Comics))
Azzarello's Batman is a dark, angry, bitter man, way beyond kissing anyone--certainly not the woman here, who is just another spy-cum-dirty-trickster in a cast full of them. Batman gets involved with the spooks when an intelligence-officer friend of Bruce Wayne's is incinerated in a flash fire, and all clues point to a psychic firestarter, one of two guys whom Bruce's friend and a gunman code-named Deathblow failed to get 10 years ago. Their other quarry was the firestarter's supposed boss, the Falcon, and finding him becomes another objective of Batman's investigation. Batman gets ever grimmer as his pursuit lengthens; finally, he seems to drop out of the story. Artist Lee Bermejo makes a flashback-strewn tour de force of the tale. He limns every wrinkle, crams panels with veristic detail, and doesn't allow a scintilla of daylight anywhere. Wash-tinting makes other colors struggle through blue, green, and brown veils and keeps the aura foreboding and the mood seething as whiplash scene-shifting tips the reader deliciously off-balance.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved