Comics Review: "Batman #12"

Batman #12

This story is wedged during the early days of NOTO, focusing on a character named Harper Row. She's a young lady who lives with her homosexual brother, a target of local bullies. She works on fixing Gotham's wiring under the streets, and one day, she got a ticket to the Wayne event where Bruce discussed his plans for the city, from the first issue. She goes there, meets Alfred, and returns to her home, to find her brother beat up, badly. She decides to take matters into her own hands, and next time they encounter the bullies, she tases one of them. They start to gang up on the siblings, but Batman comes to save the day. Harper becomes obsessed with Batman and discovers he wired special bat boxes into the city's electrical system, helping to sustain it, while allowing him to disappear from CCTV cameras via remote access. At one point, Harper discovers his bat box isn't working, and he's visible, so she goes to save the box. Turns out Batman had the box disabled to allow the police to help him in the case, and he tells her to stay out of his way. But, she decides, she won't. And the story ends there. The artwork, not by Capullo this time, is far from the style I like. It doesn't look as good. The story is fine, but I was expecting something more along a epilogue of sorts to NOTO. This will be good if Harper becomes a supporting character in future issues. Next time, we see Bruce's beginnings in Gotham in Batman #0.

I just read IGN's review of the comic, and it changes my mind. I have to check, but Harper apparently was here before. This was a good story to show Batman and Bruce's perspective from an outsider, and also tackles issues like bullying and homosexuality, real world issues. Good stuff in hindsight.


Ohh, it's the girl who defibrillated batman in issue 7. Super cool! Makes much more sense now, nice tie in. Sweet. Good issue in hindsight, still not a fan of the art though.

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