Originally Posted by
BatmanJones
Although I love this Batman run more than any before it and although I've absolutely loved most everything that's happened since the wedding issue, I have to admit to a small sense of disappointment as we near the end.
When I saw the final panel of #50, it blew my freaking mind. As others complained about the decompressed nature of the subsequent issues, I always said I felt King was playing a long game and that when all was said and done I felt sure the resolution of this long run would be entirely satisfying.
I have to admit that with only 2 issues left, I fear that the promise of that last panel of #50 won't be fulfilled in the end.
Those characters we learned were working with Bane were so surprising I felt sure that somewhere in the next 50 issues (now 35) we'd get to see what led to all of those characters working with Bane. I understand now that the issue in which Thomas Wayne told Bane what his plan had been and asked how he could help (essentially a recap of the story to that point) is pretty much all we're going to get with regard to Bane somehow convincing Joker, Riddler, Holly Robinson, Thomas Wayne, Ventriloquist, Skeets(!), and others joining his cause. And I have to say that's a major bummer to me.
This is not at all to say I haven't enjoyed what we have gotten because I have. Still, it seems King is a lot better at writing cliffhangers (Bane breaks Batman's back, Tim gets impaled, Batman gets shot twice in the gut, and most especially that last panel of the wedding issue) than resolving them. Instead, even to an absolute lover of this run, it's clear now that the cliffhangers that have been so shocking are never going to be resolved. Before Knightmares we got one of the most thrilling cliffhangers in the entire run with Thomas Wayne invading the Batcave to attack Alfred and Bruce. To wait through so many dream sequences (all wonderful by the way), waiting for the story to pick back up where it left off, what felt like one of the most exciting scenes just never happened. Why so many cliffhangers with so few resolutions?
I hate to post this on the day that such an emotionally rewarding issue came out but, being we're finally on the verge of the end, I've finally given up on the final 35 issues providing a satisfying solution to the many cliffhangers, some of which the story just sort of ignores ever having happened.
Every week when I pick up my new comics I talk with a LCS worker that's frustrated by the run. Every week since not too long after #50 he's exasperatedly said, "still no explanations." And every week I've said, "King's playing a long game. Just wait. All will be explained and it's gonna be great." It's a jovial exchange every week but after Dec. 18 I'm going to have to admit to him that I'd been wrong. I don't mind being wrong but I do mind being disappointed.
King had so many issues to give us satisfying explanations but in City of Bane he's using about 9 issues to give us about 3 issues worth of story. And the ultimate arc of the run, misleadingly titled "City of Bane" featured Bane only in small cameos. This feels like an awfully bad time to indulge in ultimate decompression. I don't typically mind decompression at all as long as the story is satisfying in the end. But, as with Heroes in Crisis (one of the poorer attempts to stick the landing in memory), I don't think there's any way the last two issues will allow a reader to cash the check King wrote back at the end of #50.
Nothing is going to stop this run from having been my favorite run on my lifelong favorite title, but I'm already a little disappointed in a failure to provide a satisfying resolution to so many long-held questions. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I wonder though if other lovers of this run harbor similar concerns or disappointments.