Comic Retrospective: Batman Universe

With the advent of COVID-19 ruining lives and forcing us all back into the veritable caves we call home, movies have been delayed left right and centre. So, with the advent of streaming services and access to an unbridled amount of content from the past, we at Sequential Planet thought that we’d bring you a host of reviews on old movies, TV shows, and comics. So please, enjoy the new series of content coming your way for the foreseeable future. 

Wow.

That was the best Batman comics I’ve in years.

Batman Universe is a universe-spanning (hence the title) series that has Batman hunting for a Fabergé egg that is more than meets the eye. Along the way, he encounters a range of characters and villains, set against a sea of different locations in a book that can only be described as epic.

Bendis has a grip on street-level characters to an insane extent. His Superman may not be for me, but his Ultimate Spider-Man remains to this day one of my favourite takes on the character. Saying that however, I wasn’t expecting to really enjoy his take on Batman. Modern Bendis is not really for me, but he completely and utterly knocked it out of the park here and delivered one of the most… Batman-y Batman’s in recent history. Batman doesn’t have to be a total angst machine, he’s allowed to have other interests and crack jokes and have friends. Not only does Bendis understand that he revels in it. Batman meets up with multiple characters, with Green Lantern, Nightwing, Vandal Savage, Thanagarians, and Jonah Hex all featuring throughout the story, At one point Batman even goes to Gorilla City, which is not something I thought would ever happen.

Nick Derington’s art is stunning. He’s got a grasp of so many different characters to the extent that I think he’d be perfect for a Justice League book. He’s tasked with drawing so many different characters to, with things ranging from the aforementioned Jonah Hex to the entire Green Lantern Corps. Yet he never falters, and none of his art is ever less than excellent. He’s done art here and there on titles such as Doom Patrol and Batman/Superman, but this is by far my favourite example of his work.

Batman Universe is fun, beautifully drawn and coloured and just an extremely refreshing version of the Dark Knight. It’s nice to see a Batman who’s willing to be happy on his adventures for a change and doesn’t need artificial angst to move a story along.