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

I thought this story was supposed to be how bad a violent Batman would be. All we saw last chapter is that Jean Paul is just a bad driver, while we’ve seen him as a jerk towards the guy who gave him a second chance. Perhaps the novel’s focus on Bruce Wayne and not really doing as many of the Jean Paul tales dropped that point, which is strange because Dennis O’Neil was responsible for the whole arc. I need to rewatch Owen Likes Comic’s video. I may be missing something.

This week’s chapter is a short one and that’s okay with me. Time is something I don’t have a lot of today so the shorter chapter is to my benefit. It’s five pages but the next chapter is average length, around 9 pages, so we’ll make do. Bruce is coming home, and wait until he sees what’s happened to the place.

Bruce, now fully healed but a bit stiff from living the life of a near invalid for a few months, comes home to find Alfred indeed gone. I wonder if Alfred would have stayed on had he found out Bruce was healed? In a later comic after this storyline Nightwing does track down Alfred and gets involved with a plot to destroy Great Britain. He’ll be gone for the rest of this novelization, however. Jean Paul’s room is sparse, but Bruce gets out of his suit and into something suitable for jogging in the winter and goes to visit Tim. Jack’s looking at a strong recovery…though years later DiDio’s Darker DC will lead to him getting killed by Captain Boomerang as a sidebar to the unwelcome event “Identity Crisis” that Jack Drake wasn’t even part of.

Tim tells him about Jean Paul blocking all the Batcave entrances…though if he has books on his bed in the manor and went up for food once there has to be at least one entrance still open somewhere. He did talk to Alfred just before he left. Tim also talks about how Jean Paul’s Batman is more violent, but we still haven’t seen a lot of that outside of him taking down Bane the way he did. In the comics, maybe, but in this novelization there hasn’t been enough focus on Jean Paul Valley to show him as the more punch-happy Batman who kills. And since were on chapter 2 of 10 and we still need to see Bruce re-train to retake the mantle I’m not sure how much time the book actually has to do so. I’ll be surprised if we see the story with Huntress but I really want to see Bruce train with Lady Shiva.

It’s an okay chapter, but by necessity there’s not much action. It’s just Bruce getting caught up, but you need chapters like that for the full story. We’ll see next time how much of this actually comes about.