Batman The Dark Knight (The New 52) # 2

By Mark Rodriguez

Someone is releasing all of the Arkham villains and Batman automatically thinks Two Face is behind it. It turns out a mysterious Playboy Bunny is behind the break out, and Batman runs into an over-sized muscular Two-Face calling himself One Face.

The One Face thing is so lame, even the cover refuses to call him that

Issue Two, called ‘A Rush of Blood’ starts with um… One-face beating the living crap out of Batman, until the drug he took, conveniently made him bleed through his eyes, making him pass out. Yes, even Commissioner Gordon calls it convenient, since that’s the only way Bats got out of that alive.

 Two-Face mentions a ‘white rabbit’ drugged him, so Bats has Alfred search the web for girls in bunny lingerie… which his aged butler is more than happy to oblige.

Meanwhile, all the powered-up crazies are tearing shit up all over Gotham and all the other Gotham vigilantes, namely, Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman and the Birds of Prey have their hands full. While it's good to see Dick and Damian team up again as they face a muscle bound version of the Ventriloquist, but then this panel had to ruin it.

Did.... they confused Damian with Tim or something? I don't think even Tim would have said that

For anyone that knows Damian, he is one extremely cocky, self-important and arrogant little bastard. He would face Killer Croc on his own, and if things goes bad and he needs saving, he'll still tell you he didn't need help. Paul Jenkins.... David Finch... what the hell you guys? The Ventriloquist, being on Venom or not, is nothing Nightwing and Robin can't handle.

It is cool seeing Batgirl cameo, as she runs from a muscular Mr Zsasz.

We find out this toxin, other than buffing you up, removes fear from your mind, but as the body tries to reject the toxin, it makes you bleed from the eyes. The fear part makes Batman and Alfred suspect Scarecrow somehow is involved, however, they get another lead.

Batman gets word from Alfred that the Joker was spotted on a train, so he boards it and takes down some clowns. He sees the white rabbit again, who entices him to chase her (which already makes me think she is somehow Jaina, despite the different skin tone and hair color). Batman runs down the train after her to see  her cuddled up with the Toxin-Powered Joker… quoting Nicholson.

My Opinions

So despite Two-Face being on the cover, his scene was rather short and this new Toxin takes him out. We find out that this chemical makes you muscular, but eventually makes you bleed from your eyes and almost die, which sounds very not fun. 

It was cool seeing the other Bat Family members have cameos.... but man, I still can't get over how they screwed up Damian's characterization with just one line. 

The last issue ended with a boss fight, Two-Face, and this one ends with another boss fight, The Joker. One thing you are going to notice as the story goes on is that it is extremely random and has all sort of characters just showing up here and there. Some make sense.. and others are just... wtf? You'll see.

The art is very detailed but ugh... all the muscular bad guys just look bad. Not just cause they were meant to look grotesque, but I mean some of the panels just look bad, like 'One-Face' being strapped down. The only characters that look drawn very good without the art being off are Batman and the White Rabbit.

Dark Knight got the most flak and a lot of 'was a fourth Batman comic really necessary??' comments out of the 4 Bat-books that came with the New 52, but I guess if all you really want to see is good art, Batman fighting all sort of different bad guys left and right, and hot girl in bunny lingerie without much of a deep plot, this is the one for you. 

Stay tuned. This is gonna get crazier....