Thursday, March 12, 2015

Detective Comics: Endgame #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Brian Buccellato
Art By: Roge Antonio, Ronan Cliquet, Nick Filardi
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 11, 2015

Endgame Side Notes


As we've all seen......... Well, if you've been reading Batman you've seen, the Joker is back and he means business this time around.  There's a toxin on the street making all of Gotham crazy and our Caped Crusader isn't able to stop it.  For this one shot, we'll be dealing with the regular citizens of Gotham as they deal with their city turned upside down.  So directly from the pages of Detective Comics, where Matches Malone talked to a young man who once hacked Wayne Enterprises, our main character is Lonnie aka Moneyspider.  Let's see if Lonnie can traverse Gotham Gone Crazy as he searches for his mother.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with Lonnie Machin who like I said in the beginning was the one kid who hacked Wayne Enterprises but who older fans will remember being the original pre New 52 Anarky and after reading the finale to that story line in Detective Comics, I was a little worried that Lonnie might pick that old Anarky habit up here in this continuity.  It's a good thing for us readers who like to think that good will triumph that Gotham has gone crazy with this new Joker toxin because Lonnie doesn't seem to have the time to get his evil on.  The streets are rampant with crazies and Lonnie is right to believe through this book that the zombie apocalypse is going on because man that's what I'd be thinking.  Lonnie is pretty desperate to find his mother and during that quest gets saved by a kid named Dax, who introduces Lonnie to the rest of his friends who are surviving during this Gotham crisis.


After all the kids seem secure with their safety, Lonnie uses a computer to hack his mother's job's security cameras and finds out that his mother is trapped inside her workplace and a mob of jokerized civilians are trying to force their way in.......... Well, civilians isn't exactly right.  They're mobsters and Lonnie's mom's job is at a strip club.  So like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead who the survivors believed came to the mall they were living in because of some natural instinct to return to the place they loved the most, I guess these mobsters loved themselves some lap dances.  So of course Lonnie freaks out and leaves the safety he had and then all his new found friends have to go chasing after him to make sure he doesn't get his dopey ass killed........... Well, them and our Bat heroes.  That's right folks, first we have Bat Woman saving him and then we have Red Robin join the party and eventually after Lonnie pleaded his case about why he's out and about during this crazy night, Spoiler is sent to lead this group of kids to Lonnie's mother.


In the end, when our main characters reach their destination, Lonnie figures out the perfect way to get past the jokerized mobsters.  He finds a bunch of leftover Anarchy masks and paints them up like the Joker and even though the people on the streets are crazy, they aren't crazy enough to go up against the Joker so they quickly leave the scene.  As the issue ends, Lonnie is reunited with his mother and it looks like he has a whole group of new friends........... You know, to help him make sure that he never actually becomes Anarky in this universe.


That's it for this one-shot of Detective Comics: Endgame and for what it is, it's alright.  It feels like a fun little break that takes the seriousness of Batman Endgame and calms it down a bit.  Yeah, we have crazies on the streets but we dealt with the positive nature of these kids and it was really refreshing to see regular people of Gotham stand up and do something heroic.  It's funny though, with all the heroes in this book fighting in Gotham, it really comes off as a side story that might have gone down in Batman Eternal instead of an off shoot of Detective Comics or Batman.  The art was very enjoyable and it really enhanced this little story higher than it really should have been.  I hope that all of the Endgame one shots are as good as this one.  Now I leave you with something that I have no idea about.  While you could just see this as a Endgame side story that doesn't matter, it could be a prelude to June's We Are Robin book.  I have no idea if this is accurate but this could be a fun way to get all those kids together and give them the superhero bug.

Bits and Pieces:

While you don't need to read this to get your full Batman Endgame story on, it is a fun side story about what's going on in Gotham from the perspective of teenagers.  With a great art team this unneeded story is a fun escape from the seriousness of the Joker getting his Endgame on.  While it doesn't feel like a Detective Comics story, it does feature a character from the last Anarky story line and after reading this, I hope we see a lot more of him and his new group of friends.  

7.8/10

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