Batman: Off-World

It may be early in Batman’s career, but he feels he’s got a handle on how to handle the human thugs and freaks he encounters in Gotham City.  Then a mob from the East End hires an alien for protection who manages to clean his clock and the Dark Knight realizes he has a lot to learn about protecting his city.  So he takes off for the stars to find out what he needs to know.  Which is a lot as Batman soon finds himself at the mercy of the Blakksun Twins, the corporate overlords of this part of the galaxy.  Against them, it’s going to take more than he has to give, which means the Caped Crusader is going to have to make some new friends… IN SPAAAAAACE!!!

On paper, the pairing of writer Jason Aaron with artist Doug Mahnke seems like a match made in heaven.  You’ve got a writer who delights in conjuring up the most extra and over-the-top threats for superheroes to face teamed with an artist who thrives on illustrating strange, weird, and brutal things.  For the most part, it is!  A lot of “Off-World” is as un-subtle and ridiculous as you’d expect as Batman fights through a galaxy’s worth of bad aliens to make it a better place.  There’s even that bit about how he’s learning more about galactic threats to make Gotham safer to tie it back into the character’s history.

Except that the longer this story goes on, the more it starts to feel like Batman has been plugged into your standard sci-fi story where a hero and his companions/sidekicks overthrow an evil empire.  The things making this feel like a “Batman” story become more tenuous, and the story relies more and more on the wild bits to provide entertainment as its core narrative is beyond predictable.  Mahnke’s art is on point throughout, even though it feels like he’s pursuing cleaner and smoother linework compared to his memorably craggly efforts in the past.  It’s not bad, overall, but I was expecting better.