The last time we saw our new member of the Bat family, Batwing, his house was being invaded by the Marabunta, a group of mercenaries.
Batwing, Luke Fox, was positive that the Marabunta had discovered his secret identity, and were taking revenge for his intervention in their illegal mining operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It turns out that Luke was wrong. The Marabunta have come for his father, an employee of Bruce Wayne, Lucius Fox. After the Marabunta successfully kidnap Lucius, Luke’s family is left in disarray .
It turns out that Lucius Fox has been kidnapped in retaliation for Bruce Wayne’s dealings with the illegal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Seclorum, the parent company of Independant Diamond Exchange, is seeking to repurchase the mine from Wayne Industries, claiming that they were not responsible for the Imperial Diamond Exhange’s illegal activity. Not believing Seclorum’s claims, Bruce Wayne refuses to sell the mine back, and Seclorum’s representative leaves angrily, but not before delivering threats.
Batwing is instructed by Batman to stay out of the conflict, and promises to find his father. Batwing, definitely not content to be sitting this one out, successfully infiltrates Bruce Wayne’s files on the computer. He learns that his father has been assisting Batman with his equipment. After learning of this connection, Luke informs Batman of what he found, and he begrudgingly agrees to let Batwing along on the mission.
Lucius is easy enough to trace, Bruce Wayne makes all of his senior members of the company be implanted with tracers, given their high profile positions in a high profile company. While knowing his location is definitely a positive, they run into a lot more than they bargained for on the ship where Lucius is being held by the Marabunta. They have a lot of manpower, as well as some especially powerful members of the organization for Batman and Batwing to deal with.
I am definitely enjoying the storyline. Batwing is a good character. I like that Batman has someone to take care of his international business for him. Gotham is a dangerous place and Batman has his hands full. He can only spend so much time traveling the world, so having an ally to take care of that business for him is a nice team member to have.
The Marabunta fit in well with the plot and tone of this story. They are a group that may not have place in a story where the setting is exclusive to Gotham, but in a international setting they fit in very well. What I really appreciate is that international story lines fit better into the Batman line of titles than they did before, at least in my opinion. Instead of Batman having to handle international missions on his own, he now has someone to do it for him, which allows Batman to continue the fight in Gotham.
I like that this storyline is tackling issues of corrupt corporations. This adds a nice element to the story, and allows Wayne Industries to be an important part of the story. Running a big company like Wayne Industries, Bruce Wayne is bound to run into dangerous criminal activity once in a while, so this title definitely deserves its place in the line of Batman titles.
I am looking forward to seeing where this story is going. Being on a big ship offers a lot of possibilities as to what could happen next, especially if the ship can get far out into the ocean.
The art by Eduardo Pansica is really good as well. I really like the look of Batwing especially. He costume is very sleek, and I like that his suit is technological but not clunky or robotic.
Wayne Industries and international missions are without a doubt part of the Batman canon. However, in my opinion they can be difficult to integrate into a good, modern day Batman story. However, the writers, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, are doing a great job blending these elements as well as making Batwing a good character.
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