- Cover by Sean Murphy
- Written by Kyle Higgins
- Art by Thony Silas
- Colours by Andrew Elder
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BEWARE OF SPOILERS
Chapter two of the ‘Recharged’ story begins to push the envelope of the story by scaling up the action and the emotion without branching out of the franchise so far that it loses its authenticity.
Picking up where the last chapter left off Commissioner Gordon visits the family of the recently deceased Mayor in the hunt for clues as to the cause of his heart-attack.
Very early on in this issue we see that Bruce is watching over proceedings from the original Batcave despite having severed ties with Terry and the team. His isolation cleverly mirrors that current climate in ‘Batman’ comics in the wake of ‘The Death of the Family’ story which recently took place.
There are several story threads which are now beginning to run through this title ranging from Terry and his continued inability to juggle the different aspects of his life to the fractured nature of the Bat-family. There’s a great multi-layered format to this story which is being balanced well even with the short chapter structure.
For somebody who is slightly out of touch with the ‘Beyond Universe’ it’s really interesting to see the separation between Bruce and Terry. It’s barely been touched upon in these first two chapters so I hope this will be dealt with in upcoming issues. In the meantime giving the young Batman a chance to work alongside the original Robin opens up the landscape for a new dynamic to push the story forwards.
Much like Bruce in the past Dick shows a paternal nature when sharing dialogue/scenes with Terry. I may need to go back and read how these two came to be working together but for the time being I hope that this relationship is allowed the right length of time to develop and be explored by the writers.
The setting of this title by default gives a huge amount of breathing space for the art to go wild. The cartoon itself had a well thought out and intricately designed vision of the future and the comic being set even further in to the future allows for Silas to push the boundaries even further and the story can call for out there props and technology but what Higgins does it ground the story incredibly well in its characters.
There’s not pages and pages of small character moments on show here due to the length of the chapter but when Higgins does well is push those emotional moments in between the action where ever possible.
Silas does run with some of that breathing space for set design and the artwork in general but again he never takes it too far. It all works well in the context of the ‘Beyond Universe’ and will hopefully prove to be one of the strengths of this series as it goes forwards.
7/10
