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

Last time, Bruce finally confronted the supposedly killing Batman, and we finally got to see him kill someone, or not save them and letting them die which according to Christopher Nolan isn’t the same thing. I however am not Christopher Nolan.

Each of the parts have had an interesting image transition through the books. While not featuring illustrations (which would have been odd given this is a novelization of a comic book storyline), each chapter starts with a different Batman symbol. In part one an inverse color set of the classic Batman logo slowly overtakes the usual symbol, black bat on white becoming a white bat on black. You can see a variation of it on the cover, only it’s Jean Paul’s Arzelized Batman colors taking over. It probably should have been Jean Paul’s bat symbol given that part two just has that at the start of every chapter, with no change.

Part three is having Jean Paul’s symbol cracking like glass, with shards falling off. Eventually it will be the original bat but I think this isn’t done right. Part two should have had the altered symbol slowly replaced with Jean Paul’s symbol, demonstrating how Jean Paul was taking over the role. However, we don’t see a lot of that. Jean Paul was barely in it as the focus was on Bruce’s mission. Now it’s cracking early while Jean Paul still seems to be up for the mantle while Bruce has been shown to not be ready yet. The symbolism is rather disconnected from events, which is a shame. Now, let’s see how Bruce handles Jean Paul’s latest not-Batman action.

You want relatable? I’ll give you something relatable, but first the summary. Tim tells Bruce what happens, and Bruce is forced to tell Tim that Abattoir managed to kill his victim, left in a garbage pile behind the bowling alley. Jean Paul’s new armored suit is leaving enough doubt to thrown suspicion off of the actual Batman, which is a good thing, though we do get some continuity that he’s still wanted for questioning involving the prostitutes Bane branded with a bat. I don’t know if the comics remembered that but it was nice of O’Neil to remember it for the novelization.

However, it means Robin missed looking for anything he might have missed and it’s possible Abattoir’s cousin died while Robin was chasing Jean Paul and Abattoir. So that’s some bad news, and Tim can’t handle it, reminding Bruce that he was the one who hired Jean Paul, though I guess he didn’t know Alfred suggested him in the first place.

Bruce knows he can’t confront Jean Paul again as he loses himself to his Azrael-corrupted Batman persona unless they’re back on equal footing. So he begins training to regain his stamina but makes a shocking revelation: with all the down time and all that’s happened he’s lost the violent edge that helped make him Batman. Batman isn’t all about the violence but he needs the capacity for it to punch and kick the bad guys. Otherwise all that martial arts training is absolutely useless. Batman doesn’t need to be “edgy” but he does need to have a certain edge to put that fear into the criminals. Unfortunately all that’s happened to him, where he was questioning if he’d ever be Batman again due to his injuries, seems to have gotten to him. He can unstiffen his body but while retained his mental detective skills he’s basically been Michael Ironside, an old TV detective played by Raymond Burr who was paralyzed and served as a consulting detective for his old police precinct. He has the mind of a detective but he’s lost the mind of a fighter.

This is where that relatable thing comes in. Marvel may be the relatable heroes and DC the aspirational but you can have aspects of both. I relate to Clark Kent’s morality, not his powers, the same way I do Peter Parker. The powers just make the adventure exciting. However, I’m currently where Bruce is at this point in the story. For those of you who came in late 2016 was not a good year for me. Crohn’s disease was already annoying enough when it hit in 2008, though long story short I wouldn’t have this site if that hadn’t happened–check the about section, that I stopped going to clubs and was worried about needing to use the toilet when I went places. Even in remission (supposedly) there are days when I’m in the bathroom too much. Loosing my job in 2013 and my mom two years later wasn’t that helpful either. However, 2016 is when the fan took on that poop smell.

At the beginning of the year I got hit with diverticulitis, which we got rid of but the damage had been done. My appetite wasn’t returning even though my stomach felt empty. My digestive tract was still inflamed so we scheduled a simple robot surgery. A week to the day, and this is the part that always gets me, I was in so much pain I had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital, where they determined they couldn’t wait. That sucker had to go now. Lucky for me my surgeon was available but they did it the old way, though according to him being bedridden in the hospital for weeks and then going to a convalescent home to relearn how to walk would have still happened.

Three days after I got home I passed out in the living room due to a blood clot that developed in my leg during all the bed rest. Wish it had happened during my time doing therapy at the convalescent home but that meant more hospital stay and blood thinners for a year. After six months of pooping from my stomach into a bag (sorry for that mental image) I was deemed ready to finally have my internals reconnected so I could poop like a normal person again. During all that they stirred up Mensa [EDIT: I think you meant MRSA, past me. Idiot!] so that will haunt me with any future hospital stay and I developed a hernia that restricted my movement s until it was finally removed a few years ago. I also recently passed two kidney stones, one of which required a procedure I’ll spare you the details on. Not as bad as a broken spine and I didn’t have a metahuman doctor with magic healing powers but that was all flavor to set up the important part. Bruce had one big problem, but par for the course in my life I had a lot of little ones and the occasional big one. Nearly dying counts as big, right?

Right now, after all that, I regained a lot of the weight I lost not being able to eat. Possibly too much as now my gastrologist is worried about a fatty liver, but if you saw me in 2016…and you can because I posted videos of my progress that year since I couldn’t post as many articles being in and out of the hospital…I lost a little too much weight. The big problem is outside of walks I haven’t been able to take this year because of the weather only being good on days I’m tired, I’m not used to being mobile. I wasn’t able to be mobile, which is partly when BW articles went up a bit. What started as me getting thoughts out of my head became the only thing I can do. So when Bruce is having trouble being his old self, getting himself training again, and worried a part of him was lost during the inactivity, I can totally relate because that’s what I’m going through right now. I’ve been too sedentary and getting myself back into shape (I’ve had a gut since high school but I wasn’t this bad…look at my last video vs the 2016 updates) has not been easy. There may also be a mental block seeing being how thin I was in 2016 as a bad thing due to how it happened and that’s also something to overcome the way Bruce is the “violent” instincts that make him a good fighter.

Hopefully we can both overcome are issues. We know Bruce will due to history and branding, two things which aren’t helping me. Still, maybe I can learn from his actions, and that’s what a good fictional hero can do just like the superheroes and crimefighters I grew up with watching helping to form my morality and sense of what being a hero is. Next time, we’ll see what Bruce plans to do about it…and it’s going to be a bit more radical an approach than I would do.