Hulk out? I think there is a serious disconnect between you and the rest of the audience. Those scenes are clearly indications that he is suffering mentally and physically vulnerable due to the time he spent in the labyrinth without food and drinking the drugged water. Much of the last issue was his mind slowly becoming disoriented as he wandered through the place. This issue really was Bruce losing it, as we see in the more cartoonish scenes you panned and which undoubtedly were hallucinations. But also it was about Bruce recovering and pulling the rug out from under Talon and the Court. The differences are laid bare in the art styles. The ones in his mind are very stylistic reminiscent of a horror comic like Spawn while the scenes set in reality are less so.
Yeah, I thought it was pretty clear. And a nice use of art... that the art itself can be a part of telling the story, and not just be storyboards for the words.
Indeed. The switch between the Owl creatures and the regular folks in masks in alternating panels is a dead give away and should be obvious.
As for Batman surviving all the torture and abuse. He's Batman! Highly trained mentally and physically. Surviving is what he does. He's not "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
He's still a mortal man who needs food, water and sleep and being stabbed through the torso is going to cause him pain and to bleed badly. He's not had much food or sleep (if any) in several days and only some drugged water. It's a stretch to think he can just shrug off being stabbed through the chest and then provide anything of a fight. It's just, for me, a stretch. And I think his exaggerated looks for the "mental story" could have been done better without getting silly looking. (The splash page of him "Hulking out" just isn't attractive to me with the scattering of the little owl people and just the proportions and lines on the body/grin of his teeth.
Not much my style, I suppose. But the art is one thing and fairly minor, my biggest problem is how "unbeatable" and over-powered he came across in this issue. It'd be one thing if he managed to escape with all of his injuries and mental break down, got treatment and re-organized he thoughts and plans and
then went back in to kick ass but that didn't happen here.
He spent a week without food, minimal water and likely little to no sleep, he got stabbed through the chest, beaten to a pulp and still he manages to rage out, pose a threat to the enemy and even shatter his way through marble? Tough to buy and makes Batman a wee bit "overpowered" and probably as "overpowered" as people claim Superman to be. I thought the appeal of Batman was that his weakness was that he was still a mortal human and stuff like this
did pose a threat. If he survived everything he's been through in the last week of his life it seems like there's little that
can stop him which makes him a bit over-powered.
As I said above I liked this title better when it was Batman going around being the World's Greatest Detective, figuring things out and actually seemed somewhat human (like when he was stabbed and tossed out a window). In this issue? He seemed more meta-human and not much of a detective. He gets mentally and physically beaten over the course of a week, severely stabbed and he still manages to rage out into an unbeatable monster, defeat his foe and smash marble (which, yes, isn't exactly the strongest stuff but still it's pretty tough.) It's a leap and a stretch for me, I can't wait until this book gets back to Batman going around being a detective, figuring things out, and the "character" of Gotham comes back (again, what I felt was one of the nicest part of the first few issues.)
Las month's issue was good in displaying Batman's descent into a madness because of the mental torture he's been through for a few days. In this issue he stopped being human and became, well, something else entirely.
