With The Dark Knight Rises just around
the corner, DC Comics has been reprinting numerous trade paperbacks
of Batman’s encounters with Bane, the villain who is set to appear
in Christopher Nolan’s swan song. We’ve had new editions of the
classic Knightfall saga, the introduction of Bane in
Batman vs. Bane (which collected the Vengeance Of Bane
one-shot and Bane Of The Demon miniseries), and now we
have Batman: Venom, which collects the 1991 Dennis
O’Neil and Trevor Von Eeden story from Legends Of The Dark Knight
issues 16-20.
The storyline finds Batman, still new to his
war on crime, starting to use “venom”, a new synthetic drug that
gives ordinary humans superhuman strength. After failing to stop a
young kidnapped girl from drowning, Batman is racked with guilt at
not being strong enough to lift the rock that pinned her down. He
goes to the daughter’s house to tell her father, Randolph Porter
that he failed. It’s here that he sees the venom drug, which Porter
has been working on and is planning to sell to the FDA.
Unfortunately, what Batman doesn’t know is that Porter is not only
planning on selling the drug on the black market, but he also
orchestrated his daughter’s kidnapping to snare Batman into becoming
his guinea pig for the drug. Along with Timothy Slaycroft, a corrupt
US General, Porter is planning on creating an army of subservient
super-beings to start, you guessed it, world domination.
As soon as Batman starts taking the drug, his
moods start changing and he becomes DUMB. Like hit in the head with
a tire iron dumb. While I understand O’Neill’s decision here,
showing how Batman’s intelligence is just as important as his
strength, but having Batman say half sentences and being an
incoherent mess is extremely distracting, and it didn’t really work
that well. If anything, it made O’Neill’s writing suffer, which is
a shame, cause he’s usually spot on with his characterization of
Batman.
What follows is a pretty typical story
involving Batman realizing he’s been played for a fool, and after a
month-long sting of being locked in the batcave going cold turkey
off the venom drug, Bruce Wayne returns to being the Batman we all
know and love. With an epic beard. After spending six months getting
back into the swing of things, Batman learns that Porter and
Slaycroft have relocated to Santa Prisca, a South American country
that may sound familiar to fans of Bane. There the two have ramped
up their experiments on humans, including turning Slaycroft’s son
into a giant hulking brute. Batman tracks them down, takes them out,
and returns Porter to Gotham to answer for what he’s done.
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| The Bat-beard |
As I said before, Venom is the
unofficial start of the story of Bane, and while it doesn’t feature
the character, it does give us some insight into how the compound
works that gives him his strength, as well as its humble origins as
a small designer drug. The dialogue and characterization is a little
hard to swallow for Batman, but once you realize that this fits into
Bruce’s early days as a crime fighter it’s a little easier to take.
Some of this can also be attributed to being so used to Batman being
written as the “always ready”, “always stoic” badass with no time
for jokes. Von Eeden’s pencils are good, if a little stiff
sometimes. His facial work is awesome though, and you’d be very hard
pressed to not find someone impressed by bearded Batman.
It may be rough at points, but Batman: Venom
is a solid read for fans curious to see where Bane’s venom came
from, and to get a good glimpse into the importance of Batman’s
intellect as well as physical prowess in the fight against crime.
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