Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

PART 3: KnightsEnd

And so we come to the last “part” of this novelization of the story arc that explored what a more violent Batman would actually be like…except we haven’t really explored that. We’ve gotten glimpses of Jean Paul Valley as Batman but most of this darker Batman’s questionable actions were told to us by Tim Drake, with most of the focus of part 2 being the injured Bruce trying to rescue his metahuman doctor from a madman who wanted to use her powers. I know O’Neil couldn’t adapt everything given how many different Bat-Titles there were at the time and that’s not even counting potential cameos elsewhere. (The Justice League at the time featured mostly unknown characters and wasn’t the A-Squad of previous incarnations.) If Owen Likes Comics is right about what the Knightfall storyline was supposed to be about thematically then the novelization has already lost something compared to actually reading the comics. It might have been necessary for the format change for all I know since I wasn’t there when deciding what stories to adapt, but it still loses some of the theme of “Batman doesn’t kill and you really don’t want him to” that the story is supposedly going for.

So Bruce has found his doctor, his back is functioning again…but that’s only half the battle Bruce is back on his feet but he’s not reclaimed the cowl yet. KnightsEnd, which I hope includes stories from Knightquest: The Crusade, should be about him working to regain what made him Batman. We see his detective mind and all the tricks of Batman are still with him. However, Batman does need to fight, to use the shadows, to do more than thrown a Batarang or break out a little gadget in order to win. Bruce reclaimed his body, but his mind still needs healing. That’s what this part of the storyline should be about, so let’s begin.

The chapter, and part three, continues where we left off, Jean Paul’s hunt for Abattoir. He’s already doing 70 on the snowy road, and as someone who has driven on snowy roads before and almost had an accident when I skidded on a soft patch or possibly hidden ice–and thankfully I remembered you turn INTO a skid and was able to regain control–I can tell you that’s already a bad idea. He’s in such a hurry to punch a guy that he decides to speed up. Not surprising that he crashes into the bus.

Graham notices that they’re going the wrong way, so Abattoir stops in the middle of the road to force everyone out. He’s going to kill all of them and absorb their souls, but only his remaining relative’s will actually nourish him. I should note that Abattoir doesn’t actually absorb souls or even have any kind of supernatural anything. He’s just insane but in the DC universe nearly anything’s possible. He has Graham out and wants the kids to follow…until Not-Batman plows into the bus, pushing the front tires off the edge of the mountain road. Not-Batman gets out and manages to punch the villain out, but then Graham calls for help as the bus, with the kids inside, heads for the fall. He hesitates, wondering if the hundreds Abattoir would kill isn’t worth the lives of the handful on the bus but he actually takes time to think what Bruce would do and manages to use the Batmobile to hold the bus long enough for Graham to get the kids off the bus, then managing to crash the car into another tree trying to pull the bumpers apart.

Abattoir escapes, which he wouldn’t have done if Jean Paul hadn’t been so eager that he got into an accident. It is possible that he was thinking about saving the lives if he didn’t get there in time, but even with what’s presented here saving the students definitely about to die versus stopping the villain who might kill hundreds shouldn’t have been a concern. Stop the crime you know is happening rather than the the one that might happen. Also it seems that the armor is fully designed, since it mentions him wearing it but it hasn’t been that clear, at least to me, until this chapter.

At this point it does appear that some of Bruce is rubbing off on Jean Paul. He actually put saving lives over vengeance…eventually. What we also see is a bit of incompetence. He’s never been in the forest and doesn’t know how to track someone in the snow, which I would think would be part of his training in case Azrael’s target was in the forest in winter. He crashed into the bus because he’s in such a hurry to get to the cabin rather than seeing if they stopped along the way. It may not be the violent Jean Paul Batman I was expecting but it’s not making him look that good. What happens next? We’ll find out next time.