Batman The Widening Gyre #1 was solicited in June 2009 and was announced as a monthly 6-issue miniseries penciled once again by Walt Flanagan. The issue surprisingly shipped on time in August of 2009 and the story, which was apparently set in recent continuity and featured fan favorite Bat-girlfriend Silver St. Cloud, was actually fun and engaging. Smith deftly re-introduced Silver into the Bat continuity and then paraded out a host DCU villains for Batman to engage while he simultaneously reignited his romance with Ms. St. Cloud.
Let me sidebar this discussion for a moment and talk a little bit about Silver St. Cloud. Silver originally appeared in Detective Comics #470 (1977), during the famed Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers run, and quickly became a most formidable love interest for the Caped Crusader. During the course of their courtship, Silver was, it must be said, one smart cookie and she quickly deduced that Bruce Wayne was, indeed, Batman. Instead of freaking out about it and demanding he quit the job, Silver understood that wasn’t going to happen and that Gotham needed it’s Dark Knight Detective. She also realized, albeit in the nick of time, the being the Girl Friday of a super hero was a losing proposition and high-tailed it out of town before she ended up dead due to her connection to Batman. I always liked that she was the one girlfriend who was smart enough to get out while the going was good and I enjoyed her sporadic appearances in the Bat Universe afterwards. To me, she represented not only the best qualities of super hero paramours, but was also a living representation of the kind of life that Batman could look forward to if he had ever decided to hang up the cowl.
Unfortunately for ‘The Widening Gyre’, Smith’s chronic production delays began to kick almost immediately and by the time issue #3 came out the book was running a month behind schedule. This loss of steam culminated with issue #6 which, after at least one resolicitation that I can remember, finally came out months late this week. I have to admit that shipping delays on books barely register with me anymore, but, in this case, it really did hurt the flow of the book and when I picked up the issue to read on Wednesday I really had to strain a bit to remember exactly where the story had left off.
This where I have to post the inevitable *SPOILER ALERT* as I know there are many of you who haven’t had the chance to read or even pick up your copy of the issue in question. There are probably more than a few readers who, knowing Smith’s penchant for late books, have decided to wait for the collection in order to read the story. Unfortunately I can’t lance this particular wound on my soul without giving away the particulars of the ending. So if you don’t want the ending totally spoiled then this is the point where you should STOP reading. I’ll talk to those of you who can’t continue next week.
Is the coast clear? Good then I’ll begin my bitch-fest. The Widening Gyre had two main story tracks. The first, as I’ve already mentioned, involved Silver St. Cloud returning to Batman’s life and the second involved the introduction of a new vigilante to the famed skyline of Gotham, a character in a medieval devil mask named Baphomet. As the series winds on, Smith shows us the reignition of the fiery love affair with St. Cloud while also chronicling Batman’s new partnership and respect for the nascent hero Baphomet. Along the way we get a bunch of very special guest stars and villains, including such luminaries as Robin, Catwoman, Nightwing, Etrigan, Riddler, Two-Face, and Killer Croc as well as lose bags like Calendar Man and Baron Blitzkrieg who all add a nice touch of continuity and fanboy fun to the proceedings. Bruce Wayne has fallen hard for Silver St. Cloud again and he is possibly eyeing the mysterious Baphomet as a potential addition to the Bat Family.
All of this is well and good for the majority of the series. Silver is one girlfriend who completely understands her place in Batman’s life and, while she may not entirely understand his obsession, she certainly has no intentions of coming between Gotham and its protector. Baphomet also seems on the up and up and it looks like he’s set to become another trooper in the war against Gotham’s freaks. The story meanders a bit at the beginning, but quickly picks up speed as it races to its ‘conclusion’.
I say ‘conclusion’ because it doesn’t really have an ending. After months of lateness and delays the damn book ends on something of a cliffhanger with a smug ‘End of Book 1’ tag at the end with no indication when to expect a Book 2. Normally that would be no big deal. In fact, while researching a bit about the book before sitting down to write this I realized that it was always billed as being a 12-issue storyline broken down into two separate 6-issue miniseries. I had forgotten this little tidbit, possibly due to the long wait between issues.
Anyways, the sixth issue of ‘Batman: The Widening Gyre’ literally races towards its ending with, after issues of dithering, Batman taking Silver through a whirlwind courtship that goes from the Batcave to the Fortress of Solitude and ends on the Justice League satellite. There, with Earth spinning serenely below them, Batman chooses to romantically pop the question to Silver. Naturally she tearfully accepts his proposal of marriage and they embrace passionately. Cue orchestra music and fade out the picture.
If the series would have ended here then I would have been deliriously happy. It was a great moment and, despite the corniness of the situation, it left me smiling. That smile continued on through the next couple of pages when Catwoman gets wind of his pending nuptials in a scene that was even I have to admit was funny and touching and would work great on the big screen. My smile continued to the point where Batman, Mr. Paranoid himself, suddenly decides to dramatically make sure that Silver isn’t a robotic assassin devised by Professor Ivo. My enjoyment and sense of romance were, quite literally, stopped dead at the end of the book.
Batman, after 5-issues of waffling about it, decides to finally bring rookie hero Baphomet into the fold of the Bat Family. He introduces him to Jim Gordon and decides to bring him to the Batcave, reveal his secret identity, and then introduce him to his bride-to-be. All this goes by without a hitch, until the camera pans around just in time to see Baphomet stand revealed as Onomatopoeia who is shown slitting Silver’s throat and apparently murdering her in a wash of blood and gore. Yes, you heard me. He kills her in cold blood, In the Batcave, with Batman standing there staring.
I am still filled with a fanboy’s unreasoning rage over this scene. I am so unnecessarily angry about it that I’m still waiting for a Red Lantern ring to come flying in through the window and for me to start vomiting up everything I’ve eaten since the third grade. I honestly cannot believe that anyone thought that this would be a good idea or constitute a good story. The ‘To be continued’ line was just the final smack in the face. The whole point of Silver as a character was that she was THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY! It was the charm of her character and, as I mentioned above, she represented the life that Batman could have had or the life that was still waiting for him at the end of his mission of justice. To so blithely throw that symbol away for the sake of a cheap shock ending is silly and unforgivable. The fact that an obsessive-compulsive like Batman would even allow something like this to happen requires more of a suspension of disbelief than the days when Superman could move planets out of orbit pushing them around.
I honestly still can’t believe he did it. And, yes, I know there are still 6-issues of the damn thing to come out and that the story is only half over, but I am still filled with sadness over the death of this character and the shabby way in which she apparently exited the book. Kevin Smith killed Silver St. Cloud and it was an act of stupid brutality which I don’t think that I can ever forgive him or his work for.
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