Summary

The memorial for Mitchell “Matches” Malone is in progress. Bruce’s group of friends gather, all unsure of exactly what to say. They reminisce on a game they played as kids. They set a match book on the ground, taking in turn to flick a lighted match at it, with the winner given the power to choose a friend to commit a misdeed. Steal the magazine, buy the fake ID, Steal the M-80. Matches won 90% of the time, but he always chose himself. Stuck out his own neck, that’s just the kind of guy he was. With him being out of prison, no ones seen him a while. Except Bruce. He was last one to see him alive.

A month has passed since the Black Mask incident and Gotham is under martial law. A 10PM curfew, all construction projects halted, police on every corner, and a freak snowstorm on the way. Bruce is heading to the Elliot Bridge to meet up with Matches Malone and hopefully find a way to get onto the construction crew for Ark M, a private jail being built off the coast of Gotham. Matches shows up and turns out he did a little more than just get him the papers to get on the construction crew, but spent a week on the project to gather info. Just as he’s about to hand them over, blood burst out of every pore, and Matches crumples to the street, dead.

While the police report says one thing, Bruce knows that matches was killed by a biological weapon, and he plans to figure out what happened. While Bruce is about to head out, his friends stop him, and demand to talk about Batman. Bruce tried to keep them apart from his Batman identity, but that doesn’t seem to fit. He calls Harvey for information, trains with Croc, Slums it with Ozzie, and studies with Edward. Feels like they are 100% involved.

Batman takes off into the night with the information gathered from a short video that Matches took inside Ark M. There was a list of scientists and researchers from all over the globe, and one them happens to have a lab in Gotham: Dr. Victor Fries. His lab seems to be pulling enough power to light up 14 city blocks, so Bruce enters as a City engineer doing a routine inspection. While he is fascinated by the Mastodon, Sabretooth tiger and a scarab frozen in ice, the real horror begins when Dr. Fries shows the frozen display containing his parents.

They believed that ice held the wonders of the world and funded their research with a V-Core, a business where one could freeze themselves to preserve their bodies until a cure could be found for their incurable disease. When Victor was diagnosed with one, he went under the ice and was promised that all will be well when he awoke.

This was a lie. The ice isn’t what they thought. It wasn’t a peaceful preserver, but a painful, agonizing experience. To feel everything through those years, the grinding of the ice, it’s grace and its fury. Bruce turns to see Victor has turned into a grotesque creature with blue veins and black skin/ It reaches for Bruce, and off to the land of ice we go.

Review

This issue was a solid wind down type of issue where we get to see the fallout from the previous arc, a couple character moments to reset the status quo, and a villain reveal with a classic ‘To Be Continued” moment. While we are getting set up to discover what sinister deeds are going on inside Ark M, the scale of this story feels like it has been reduced down by quite a bit. Were going from a villain who was phytologically controlling an entire city to what is fundamentally just a mad scientist in a lab. It feels almost like an episode that would be in an animated series, and I wouldn’t say that is a bad thing, but the tone shift is quite noticeable.

On top of this we also are shifting to a new artist, Maros Martin, who is seems to be flattening out the artwork but upping the amount of color used throughout the story. While it is removing the depth that we are used to seeing, particularly with characters faces, it is allowing for events or objects to stand out so that your eyes are pulled towards a certain direction. While I definitely prefer the artwork from Nick Dragotta, I think the choice to switch artists when the story is also shifting is a great signal to the reader to expect something a little different.

The concept that is really sticking out to me in this story is Bruce’s closest friends, Harvey, Ozzie, Croc, and Edward. While Bruce is trying to keep them away in regards to his Barman persona, it is quickly pointed out that he has been failing at this due to Bruce leaning on their expertise when needed. I don’t know if this is going to lead to a support team to help Batman take on more dangerous foes, or if this is setting us up for a harder fall when they are turned against him through some sort of traumatic event. Either way I’m excited to see where they end up

The Moments

I mean, I think we all know what kind of guy Bruce is, but the fact that he took his cast and turned it into a weapon on a whole other level.

Either Victor knows that Bruce is Batman and him revealing his frozen parents to him was part of the plan to shake him, or he just very casually shows off the fact that his parents are on ice.

This is the most To Be continued moment I have ever seen in a comic. Also this transformation into a sort of really tall ice zombie is really wild, especially becuae whenever I think of this character I immediately think of Arnold Schwarzenegger