Deep space. A crew’s vessel is alerted to an alien intruder onboard. The alien is tricksy, zips around the spacecraft, picking off its crew one by one. The alien is called… Batman?
So here he is, at long last: Jason Aaron has written a Batman book! At least if you’re a fan of Aaron’s, as well as Batman, like me, then that’s pretty big because you’ve also been waiting years for this. What I don’t think anyone expected was Aaron’s first Batman book to be basically a Green Lantern comic with Batman in the lead and no magic ring-bearers in sight!
And yet… doing the unexpected, instead of another Batman/Joker thing, is kinda cool and Batman: Off-World is also fun at times and overall quite decent too.
The main question everyone’s going to have is: what the Batman Odyssey is Batman doing in deep space?! And there is a direct answer to that but I also noticed other things like the names of the characters - that Steppenwolf-lookalike on the cover is someone called Captain Syyn (there’s nothing New Gods here) and his boss, Lady Wrath, is one half of a space vampire duo called The Blakksun Twins, who run a space mining company that ostensibly deals in genocide!
Here’s a snippet of the dialogue Aaron writes for Batman:
“I was not raised in combat. I chose it. I wake every day still bleeding from the night’s battles… and I choose war. All over again.”
Batman’s companions on this adventure are a hot Tamaranian stormchaser (bounty hunter) called Ione, a giant barbed wolf, which is a giant wolf made of barbed metal, and Punch Bot, a robot that likes to get punched. There’s a Czarnian-looking Hawkman-esque character called The Thanagarian. And everyone is punching everyone, all. The. Time.
So what is Batman doing in space? It doesn’t matter. Jason Aaron is turning up the macho camp to RAW, going full-on WWE with this book. That’s all it is. In addition to throwing Batman into a Green Lantern-background Royal Rumble with a bunch of brawny aliens, let’s have classic rock album covers as walking characters with a story reminiscent of the spirit of death metal. I feel like Aaron shouldn’t have even bothered explaining why Batman was in space, or doubled-down on the silly.
Speaking of Green Lantern, Doug Mahnke is the perfect choice to draw this comic given that he is one of the best Green Lantern artists of all time and Batman: Off-World looks stunning because of his supreme talent and extensive experience of drawing very similar stories for years at DC.
I won’t say I wasn’t entertained - I’ve never read a Batman book like this, and I’ve read a lot of Batman - and there’s plenty to enjoy. The novelty of the premise, the over-the-top-ness of everything, the art, Punch Bot. But the story does get a bit repetitive after a couple of issues, like Aaron can’t quite get out of third gear. It’s just Batman punching an escalating succession of death metal caricatures and it never becomes anything else. Which is also true to the WWE-ness of it all, but also shows the limitations of that type of entertainment.
Batman: Off-World is both off its nut and a shallow adventure too. It’s not even attempting to be remotely deep but I prefer Batman stories to have more substance than this, so, while it’s not a bad comic, it’s a little boring in how relentlessly over-the-top it is. I grew out of wrestling years ago (it was called the WWF when I was a kid - that’s how long ago it was!) but if you’ve ever wanted to read a WWE-style Batman comic set in space, here it is - fill yer boots! Still, glad that Jason Aaron is at DC now and I’m looking forward to reading more of his work in the DCU.
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