Batman: Dark Patterns #3 – Dan Watters, Writer; Hayden Sherman, Artist; Triona Farrell, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: This series has been hyped as telling us the stories of three unique cases from early in Batman’s career, but the creative team of Watters and Sherman have set the bar very high with the first. It not only gave us the Wound Man, one of the most visually disturbing Bat-rogues ever created, but shocked us by revealing that he wasn’t even the main villain. He was a mentally broken, deranged man lashing out at everyone who made him what he was – and the real villain was corporate greed, in the form of Ace Chemicals. The twisted company, led by Black Mask relative Christopher Sionis, had been poisoning a small town leading to a mutation that left the residents unable to feel pain. And while the Wound Man is the only one of them who became as warped as he did, the other residents of the town are not well either – and many of them don’t want Batman poking around their affairs.
Batman’s visit to this town ends badly for him, as the younger vigilante isn’t prepared to fight an army that can’t feel when he fits them. But back in Gotham, the tables have been turned as the Wound Man has been captured by Sionis and his goons, seeking to tie up loose ends. The flashback to exactly what happened to turn this ordinary man into a warped master of torture is one of the most disturbing segments I’ve seen in a comic in some time, and it unleashes a level of rage we rarely see in Batman. As he confronts the cold-blooded Sionis, who is confident in his ability to get away with these crimes simply because of his wealth, Batman uses a technique that he probably wouldn’t today, essentially using the power of pain to extract justice. This all feels like a darker, less controlled Batman than the one we know, and that works really well for the pitch-black tone of the series so far.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
