With his armor losing power, Batwing goes into shock and fades to black, his fate in question (i.e. The entire asylum collapses in on itself and fall into the abyss below, taking poor Fear Toxin-stricken Alfred with it.Īlso caught in the collapse, Batwing barely manages to push Corrigan out of the way of falling debris, but his arms are pinned by rocks. So while the demise of Blackfire is pretty anti-climatic, it does set up the next big Batman Eternal plot development: With Blackfire’s magic no longer holding them in place, the tunnels deep below Arkham begin to cave in. He contains the breach between worlds, and damns Blackfire’s soul once again. Just when Blackfire’s domination appears complete, The Spectre is awakened in a deus ex machina flourish. If you haven’t read every issue, good luck understanding any of this), and trying to use Jim Corrigan and The Spectre as the key to unlock Hell on Earth.Īs Batman Eternal 30 begins, Blackfire has completed his ritual with Corrigan as his vessel and the gates of Hell are open. But he’s back, having taken over the body of Maxie Zeus (Batman Eternal seems pretty impenetrable to casual readers.

You can be forgiven if you forgot they were even around, since I don’t think they’ve shown up at all for like three months, and back in our discussion of issue 22 I wrote about Blackfire’s presence seeming like a weird, inconsequential digression. We didn’t cover it on the site, but Batman Eternal 29 dumped us right into one of those moments, with the return of Deacon Blackfire, Batwing, and - oh right - The Spectre. The narrative whiplash is part of the fun. I’ve read every issue since the title launched, and every few weeks I have a good “Hey, remember when this thing was about NANOBOTS?!” moment when something introduced months ago and seemingly dropped suddenly comes back to the forefront.

With that in mind, it’s enjoyable for me to watch the writers of Batman Eternal juggle the many, many plot threads they have introduced over 30 issues. Plot and action have to be metered out very carefully as to not burn through too much too fast, but at the same time every issue still has to feel like an event as readers have been trained to expect by monthlies. With the task of producing so much content, the challenges of serialization in a weekly title are magnified compared to a monthly title. Mark: In a few weeks, the Batman Eternal creative team will have produced more issues than even the longest running New 52 books. Today, Mark and Suzanne are discussing Batman Eternal 30, originally released October 29th, 2014.

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