Batman: Last Knight on Earth #3 // Review
Scott Snyder has been writing Batman comics since his “Black Mirror” arc in Detective Comics in 2011. Greg Capullo has been drawing Snyder’s Batman comics since the beginning of the New 52 later that year. Eight years later, as 2019 draws to a close, they’ve made their final statement on Batman in Batman: Last Knight on Earth #3. It’s a shame that that last word isn’t entirely clear.
In this issue, the young Batman clone we’ve been following through this post-apocalyptic world and his sidekick (the Joker’s disembodied head) mount their final attack on Omega. The mysterious despot who has taken control of Gotham City using Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation. The Joker gets a new body and finally gets to call himself Robin, while Batman’s acolytes battle many of Batman’s original villains. The good guys win, the bad guys are vanquished, and then a new infant Superman appears (this last part was quite confusing).
Scott Snyder is a man of ideas, and it’s clear that he used every last idea he had left for Batman in this miniseries, some to great effect. He gives the Joker (of all people) a rousing monologue giving the young clone of Batman permission to be the real Batman, and Snyder seems to be saying something about how Batman is a symbol. A person who does the most good in the name of the Bat is deserving of wearing that symbol. The whole thing is muddied, however, by the revelation that Omega is not another Batman clone, as initially suspected, but the original Batman himself. It’s jarring to have the hero of so many of Snyder’s comics become the villain out of nowhere.
Greg Capullo’s art is at its idiosyncratic best here. Snyder gives him an embarrassment of riches to draw, from the terrifying Omega to the withered Martian Manhunter, and Capullo (with inker Jonathan Glapion) takes it all in stride and delivers. The colors by FCO Plascencia are surprisingly traditional for a Batman story, given how much Plascencia liked to play with neons and other exciting choices in the New 52 Batman run with Capullo and Snyder. Letterer Tom Napolitano juggles all the various different word balloon and caption styles well, keeping it all legible where it could easily have become confusing.
Snyder and Capullo’s collaboration on Batman has been an achievement, any way you look at it, and the first two issues of this series were an exciting part of that monumental task. It’s unfortunate, then, that Batman: Last Knight on Earth leaves so much unexplained.
