DC Comics Rebirth and Dark Nights Metal Spoilers and Review for Batman The Drowned #1 follows.
Batman: The Drowned #1 opens with the Batman / Aquaman female amalgam, Bryce Wayne, attacking a coastal city on Earth 0, the Prime Earth, and…
…that prevokes Aquaman and Mera to attempt to defeat her.
We then pivot to the Drowned’s origin starting in the Dark Multiverse’s Earth 11 where Atlantis feigned coming in piece to the surface world, but in fact they were conquerors.
Bryce Wayne as a female Batman killed the ruler a female Aquaman, but the war didn’t end. Bryce then mutated herself to be able to breathe and more underwater.
She won, but her world was drowned and dark; yet she still created light to pierce the darkness with her own bat signal.
Like with the other Dark Knights one-shots, the Batman Who Laughs came calling and recuited her for for Barbatos and opened her eyes to the Dark Multiverse and other brighter worlds per se.
Back to Earth 0 of the prime Multiverse, the Drowned sends creatures controlled by Dead Water, underwater zombies it seems, to…
…attack Aquaman and Mera. In fact, Mera is actually consumed by the Dead Water and thus does the Drowned’s bidding as…
…Doctor Fate saves Aquaman to fight another day as…
…the Drowned claims victory.
Up next week is Dark Nights Metal’s Batman: the Merciless #1.
This appears to be the Batman / Wonder Woman amalgam from the Dark Multiverse.
So…
Writer Dan Abnett really pulled together a dark story worthy of Halloween month. While I’m generally not a fan of the artistic styles of Philip Tan and Tyler Kirkham, likely because DC hasn’t put them on the right books, their dark and moody styles work really well for this kind of story. I would have liked to know more about Bryce Wayne before she became the female Batman and later the Drowned, but it was an entertaining issue. 7.5 out of 10.
