Detective Comics: Elegy of Sand – Who is The Batman?

God and I, we have a complicated relationship. 

It’s not to say that I don’t believe in a god, or even ‘god’ himself, for lack of a better term, but I find it difficult to subscribe to religion for reasons that are too personal for this essay. Regardless, my belief system is all sorts of fucked, and my battery to keep going is largely self-motivated than anything else.

What does this have to do with Batman, you might ask.

Obvious answer out of the way: I don’t worship him. Or any fictional character, for that matter. But I find it deeply interesting when writers parallel him to ‘god’, or express him as a ‘god-like’ being, whether it be through an exaggeration of his being or from the perspective of someone else, especially when, as readers, his whole being is left bare to us, he is just human, like us, pushed to the peak of the human mind, body, and spirit maybe, but only human. But before I delve into the why, let me ask you a question: 

Who is the Batman?

I don’t mean in the sense of lore, in the way you know him personally through engaging with art about the character. I mean, who is he when you strip him of his humanity, when you elevate him to the myth, the larger-than-life being that is a part of the tapestry that looks at superheroes as the modern myth? 

The Batman is a force of nature, a creature of the night, sworn to protect. But he is more. As he protects through amassing power and control, he evolves into a state where he can only be described as “a fascist”. All the power, all the money, all the toys, all the control. 

In some ways, one might call him “god”.

After all, isn’t that who he comes down to? You look up at the sky, and you see him looking down, watching over you, over everybody, where his sense of justice, his sense of right and wrong, is law. We exist thanks to his mercy, we look up to him because he’s better than us, supposedly, what we could be if we gave our humanity up in service of something greater.

But you and I know that’s not true. We know that’s a surface-level read of the character. What someone who engages with art of him would say in bad faith, or what someone who lives in Gotham would say. He’s more than that. He’s human. He’s hope, he’s revolution.

As I was reading through Elegy of Sand, the latest arc of Detective Comics (#1081, #1082, #1083), written by Ram V, with art by Riccardo Federici and Stefano Raffaele, colours by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Tom Napolitano and Ariana Maher, I realized to what extent Ram V was taking the whole discussion of Batman as the myth and Batman as the man by putting him in place of Jesus when he went through his temptations in the desert, my mind sprinted to Cold Days by Tom King, Lee Weeks, Elizabeth Breitweiser and Clayton Cowles, in which Batman is also compared to a god in an interesting manner. I wanted to interrogate that comparison, what makes those stories work in conjunction with one another, and what they both have to say about Batman, in terms of who he is in relation to his humanity and his status as a myth, as a god, and Part 1 of that starts with me comparing Elegy of Sand directly to Christ’s temptations. 

Let’s establish the context of Elegy of Sand first. Right now, Batman is dead. Not the man, the idea. The existence of the Batman is slowly being forgotten by Gotham, but a few still remember. The man too, is slowly dying, as he fights against the Azmer deep within his soul, trying to survive. Talia travels away from Gotham, trying to get him to the desert where he can truly fight for his survival. In the meanwhile, Doctor Hurt (Bruce’s ancestor, one of the primary villains of Grant Morrison’s run), by himself and through Barbatos (a demon introduced in Miligan/Dwyer’s Dark Knight, Dark City, later a part of Morrison and Scott Snyder’s runs) wants to capitalize on this opportunity and get “the perfect son” – the perfect Batman out of it. 

Before talking about the narrative, I want to discuss the art for a moment. Evan Cagle’s three covers are phenomenal, each telling you about a stage in the tale. The cover of #1081 shows Bruce, left bare only with his cape, walking towards this sand sculpture that resembles his cowl, except with something like a skull grafted onto the human parts we see on the cowl – creating the idea of how, as the human walks further into the myth, he kills his humanity. #1082 takes us into the city with Dr. Hurt in the center, while everyone’s true faces are hidden from us and each other, while some dress as their idol, the Batman. #1083, the finale, shows us what temptation looks like through a larger-than-life Batman, the black giant holding the city of ivory towers in his grasp.

Interior-wise, both Riccardo Federici and Stefano Raffaele, with colours by Lee Loughridge, serve a specific purpose with each of their styles – and something that continues to elevate one of the best parts of this run overall for me, the fact that every artist fits the narrative they’re drawing. With Federici, the panelling is almost psychedelic; whenever the characters in question are in a state of “normal”, the panelling reflects that, but whenever they’re not, the panels are uneven, jagged edges, sometimes crumbling, sometimes overlapping each other. Conversely, Raffaele’s is rigid, exclusively 9-panel grids, in sync with the story where the Orghams have taken control of the narrative and put everything in strict order until he draws Batman again, and that rigidity is broken. 

In the story, Talia takes the (almost dead) Batman to the Aras desert by boat in imagery that places her in the position of Charon. There, she travels with him for twelve days and twelve nights until she meets three women, with whom she trades her true name for a compass and tea, before leaving the compass with Bruce and having him drink some of the tea so he can face his own demons on his own terms.

Right off the bat, there’s a lot of symbolism that dictates the journey Bruce is going through. Aras is a Persian/Kurdish name that means equal or balanced. Talia, represented here as Charon (of Greek myth, the ferryman of the Greek underworld), rows the boat that brings Bruce to this land, this desert that exists in between places – a balance between life and death. They travel for twelve days and twelve nights, representing Epiphany, until she finally meets the three women, the Magi (the three kings/three wise men that visited Jesus after his birth, bearing gifts) – originally assumed to be Persian – and does the trade. 

All of this is important, because the Magi represent the three ages of ‘man’, evident with how the women Talia talk to are of a young age, old age, and older age. On top of that, the Magi offered Mary and Jesus gifts, but here, at Aras, the desert of balance, she must make a trade – giving up her ‘true’ name – which means “the tears of gods”, for a broken compass, the broken moral compass of Bruce Wayne, and tea, which can be interpreted as a sign of rebirth in Jesus’ baptism (as per the New Testament). Only after this can he go through the journey to be reborn, to gain his soul back, which involves resisting temptation. 

Talia’s placement in this entire ordeal is fascinating. Circling back to the imagery of her as Charon, it’s a callback to her role in the tale that spans the mythos of the Bat. She’s the one always taking the ‘dead’ – whether real or metaphorical – through the rivers of life and death, but unlike Charon, who takes them to the land of the dead, Talia brings them back to life. Whether it be Ra’s or Jason (Red Hood: The Lost Days) in the Lazarus Pit, or Bruce, first in No Man’s Land, and now here. 

There’s also her placement as Mary, travelling with Bruce, the child of god (god being Doctor Hurt in this story, more on that in a moment). Once again, it reads as a callback to how – as Doctor Hurt was the ‘father’ in the narrative of Morrison’s Batman, Talia was the ‘mother’, but also with the addition of Barbatos, the demon that resides within Bruce being ‘Satan’. But even more than that, she’s the one helping god’s son be reborn, placing her in that position. 

That’s not the only Mary Talia is in place of, if Bruce/Batman is Jesus, then Talia is also his Mary Magdalene. You can compare a lot of their relationships through that lens – starting from how Jesus cleansed her of seven demons, similar to how Bruce helped her free from the demon (Ra’s), Mary witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, Talia witnessed Bruce getting hanged; Mary went to anoint his corpse only to find it missing, similar to how Talia found Bruce’s body and not his soul, and finally, similar to how Mary was the first to see Jesus after his resurrection, Talia was the first to see Bruce after his rebirth. 

After pouring the tea onto his lips, the water that helps kickstart his rebirth, Talia leaves him, as now, it’s all up to Bruce. As soon as he wakes, he finds himself at the feet of his maker, his creator, god, but also similarly, his devil, his Satan, so to speak, Doctor Hurt (as himself and through Barbatos). As they talk, Hurt reveals the other names of the desert:

• Gigunnga – potentially referring to the temple of Inanna of Zabalam, Gigunna
• Serhat – meaning frontier
• Daxtahrann – potentially similar to Dastarkhān (more on this later)
• Sizura – referring to the mythical city of Zerzura assumed to be in the Sahara desert
• Aras – meaning balance

Aras and Serhat speak for themselves, it’s the other three that are deeply fascinating to me in terms of what they have to say about the story. 

Gigunnga sounds a lot like Gigunna, the temple of Inanna of Zabalam, a hypostasis of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, or Ishtar – the ‘Queen of Heaven’. Inanna represented love, war, and fertility, while also being associated with concepts like beauty, sex, divine law, and political power. All of these are represented within our three core characters (Bruce, Talia, and Dr. Hurt), but since Bruce is our protagonist, it represents him in particular. Love is a core concept of Bruce’s character – without it, Batman does not exist. He loved his parents, and the loss of them is what starts him on his journey. After that, in a way, love is what drives him – love for his family, for Talia, and for Selina, love is what allowed his biological son to exist. War is what Batman fights every day – the ‘war on crime’, the war for justice.

Fertility might not be something directly associated with him, but in a more metaphorical way, it makes sense, given how many kids he took under his wing, and raised in his own way. Beauty is also tied to Batman, after all, who is he if not a big, beautiful beast of nature? Sex can be characterized as something that comes from ‘lust’, and who is the Batman if not someone who has a lust for justice, sometimes through violence, through his fists? Political power refers to the power Bruce could exert, being as rich as he is, but also what the Batman exerts, his sense of justice is governed by his own politics after all. Divine law, finally, is what will push back if Bruce goes too far, if he gives into temptation, and this is literalised through the three temptations – if he goes too far, if he succumbs to the darkness, he will be stripped of his humanity. That is divine law for Batman. 

Sizura – referring to Zerzura, is a mythical city that was rumored to exist deep in the desert west of the Nile River (from the Kitab al Kanuz, otherwise known as The Book of Hidden Pearls, a lost Arabic manuscript from the 15th century). It was described to be “white as a dove” – which correlates to the three “Gothams” our protagonist, Bruce, ends up visiting – and even further than that, describes the Gotham that exists right now as the Batman is slowly being forgotten – made of ivory towers. Each of these cities contains treasure too – the treasure being the temptations of the Batman, should he choose to succumb to it, similar to how Zerzura was full of treasure. Zerzura was also protected by ‘black giants’, similar to how Gotham was protected by Batman, and how each of his temptations are in cities protected by versions of Batman. 

All of these names, these titles, inform the journey Bruce is going to go through. Gigunn(g)a refers to how the desert is a temple, one that will test Bruce, and see if he’s willing to hold onto what he holds core to himself or give in to temptation and be greater. Serhat, meaning this desert is the frontier, the edge, and what lies beyond is unknown, acknowledging that no matter what happens in the desert, Bruce will not remain the same man he once was. Daxtahrann is spelt similarly to Dastarkhān, a Persian word that refers to a sanitary surface for food. Going from this, I might be making a point out of something that doesn’t have one, but just taking ‘sanitary’, you could say it’s similar to the word ‘purity’, and thus Daxtahrann could mean a place of purity since the desert is a place where your soul is at its purest, stripped to its rawest essence. Sizura/Zerzura refers to what he will see in the desert, his tests, and his temptations. Finally, Aras foreshadows to tell us that at the end of this journey, at the end of this desert, he will find balance.

After this, Hurt reminds him that he’s not quite dead, but not alive either, just on that edge, with no way to go back, only forward – and the way to go forward is to don the mask and figure out who he is as he traverses the desert, facing off against the wolf trying to reduce his memories to nothing while battling his own temptations. 

Intertwined with the tale in the desert is a tale of the Question in Gotham, where we see that as time passes, Gotham continues to forget who Batman is. Fragments of the idea remain, almost like a memory stolen, a hole that hasn’t been stitched up yet, but most can’t remember what that is.

Bruce continues to trek through the impossible desert, facing off against the Azmer wolf during the day, while at night he consults his compass – representative of his own broken moral compass, before walking towards a tree, the first resemblance of a landmark. It’s there where he passes out until he is awoken by a soldier, one whose story we were told all the way back in the third issue of this run (Detective Comics #1064), Farhad I Parethes. 

Back then, I commented on how it’s interesting that the story of Farhad – the Grim Soldier, and his love, Aleasa, paralleled that of Bruce and Talia. Looking back on it though, so many of those threads get pulled into Detective Comics: Elegy of Sand, but the difference is, while Farhad fails, Bruce succeeds. Starting at the beginning, the place where Talia and Damian duel is by the tall black stone at the edge of the desert, the final destination after one manages to successfully go through the desert. Secondly, the fact that the Aras desert is mentioned by name. Farhad was tethered to an Azmer too, but where Aleasa begged him not to go, Talia told Bruce to, telling him that she would wait on the other side. That wasn’t the only difference though.

Farhad succumbed to temptation, Bruce would end up not. 

“Batman always wins.” Who hasn’t heard this? Some associate it with the idea of the Bat-God, but the reason why it’s always resonated with me is that it’s the simplest expression to show how Batman perseveres, how he keeps getting up against all odds and still fights to his last breath. In fact, this whole tale, in a way, challenges the perception of that statement, its association with the idea of the ‘Bat-God’, and shows that what it should be associated with is the idea of perseverance against impossible odds.

During their conversation, Farhad reminds Bruce that he isn’t just Batman.

“The Batman is dead. But myths may never die as long as there is reason yet to persist. And as long as there are those who refuse to forget. The compass is not broken, Batman. It is merely without direction.”

It’s those very words that give him the strength to move on, to keep fighting, and to keep persisting as he travels through the desert until he faces the first taste of temptation. Just like Zerzura, it’s a city of ivory towers protected by a black giant, a Batman. 

Part 2 opens with our Batman and Dr. Hurt on top of a gargoyle – an object that is a part of Batman’s iconic visual language. They’re looking over the city, and from this angle, it really sells that idea of the perfect city. From above, the streets of Gotham are reduced to a glow, where you would normally imagine darkness in a dirty city like Gotham, there is now light. Similarly, we can see blimps in the sky, something that is present in the DCAU’s rendition of the city, but also on a wider scale, imagery we used to associate with a ‘perfect’ city within America.

During this sequence, Bruce’s first temptation, Dr. Hurt is essentially the stand-in for the discourse that echoes around the idea of the Batman, asking questions about how if he really does make a difference by donning the cape and cowl, and whether or not it would all be better if he just used his money to make the world a better place. That is what this Gotham represents, or rather, the illusion of it. Hurt tells him that if he gave up the money to make Gotham better, he could give up his humanity in order to be the perfect Batman.

As Batman is worshipped like a god (they literally call him Bat-God and Bat-King), a jester jumps down from a large stack of money, the money that helped perfect this city, and falls to his death, but not before Bruce saves him, even though he is an illusion. It’s here that he learns his first truth, that just throwing money can’t save Gotham. It’s akin to Jesus’ first temptation, where he was tempted to turn stone to bread, except instead of for himself, it is for the people of Gotham, he has enough money to metaphorically make something like that happen.

This is in direct contradiction with the discourse that surrounds the character, the myth on a very meta level, but is also a realistic depiction of the situation. As the jester says, “You could turn all stone to bread and shower your city with gold. But money has no morality,” and he replies with, “There will always be clowns who want to watch everything burn,” this very idea is literalized, and it works on two levels. 

On one level, this run on Detective Comics has been about cycles, we see this with Farhad, Aleasa, Bruce, and Talia. We see this with the reality engine, backed up by Detective Comics Annual 2022 (a story taking place in 1776, featuring the ancestral versions of characters we are accustomed to). In that very same vein, “There will always be clowns who want to watch everything burn,” is also about that same thing. As long as the stories persist, so will the villains. That’s the deal, it’s symbiotic, no matter what, one cannot exist without the other. 

On another, it’s also a depiction of the misinformed idea people have that throwing money at something will solve it, because it won’t, certainly not with a city, where those ideas of corruption run deeper than money could solve. It’s an inherent problem with the systems that run the city.

These two intersect, after all, it’s the systems of time, of cycles, that have continued to have Gotham be the way it is. You can’t just change a system by throwing money at it, it has to be more, it has to be bigger. Even as Bruce considers it for a moment, he realizes that the situation is just a lie. As the sun rises, Hurt leaves him with a concept that he must contemplate: the fact that Bruce Wayne doesn’t ever have to win, but the Batman has to, otherwise it’s all meaningless. His humanity doesn’t need a victory, but his myth does.

The story then cuts to Gotham, where the Question continues to search for answers. Even though the people are forgetting the name of the Batman, they remember his presence, and that is enough for the idea of the Batman, presented through Cassandra Cain, Batgirl, to appear. This too contributes to that very idea of cycles, of systems. Once an idea is in a system, you can’t truly flush it out, get rid of it, it will always persist. 

It’s interesting that the idea of the Batman is presented as a force of revolution here. It cleverly positions Batman as a rebel, someone who will fight against the status quo instead of maintaining it. In today’s world where Batman’s context is being updated to make him seem more politically acceptable – from taking away his wealth to cutting out the copaganda component of the character – it makes sense that Batman wouldn’t be the bastion of the status quo anymore, but rather be updated and presented in the way the very concept of the superhero used to be, someone who fights against fascist, oppressive systems.

As Batman continues traveling through the desert, fighting the Azmer demon, eventually the sun sets once more, and a blimp, one in which Doctor Hurt is travelling, comes down to pick him up, showing him his second temptation. Previously, he had seen what Gotham looked like when he threw the money at it, but now he got to see the reality of it. 

“Here! Look upon the Gotham that the Batman DOOMED.”

This Gotham is the one that forms when he uses his money to save Gotham, throws away his humanity for, where he gives it all up to turn into the myth, into the Bat, stripped of Bruce Wayne. It’s reflective of Bruce Wayne in the present context of the wider narrative too, he is slowly giving up the man and becoming the Bat, and this is what Gotham looks like when it’s taken to the extreme. The gray makes it look dystopian, with the Batman of that Gotham piloting over the streets, taking down everyone else to exert control, to be perfect, and to always win, because the Batman must always win. It parallels exactly what the Orghams are doing – in the real world, they’re trying to strip the Batman out of the system, maintaining an illusion of a perfect Gotham with her ivory towers, while the people down below are slowly being removed to maintain that image, and here, he’s doing the very same thing, becoming the villain as he enforces his own oppressive regime onto the city.

This idea is reflected onto the Question’s part of the narrative once more, as she mentions how no one looks down at the dirty streets anymore, just above at the tall skyscrapers and towers, reflecting the very idea of how the Orghams, and Bruce in his temptations, are slowly getting rid of people from the streets of Gotham, erasing them, but as it ends, what she says also reinforces Bruce’s arc for the third part of the narrative. 

“You can impose a lie upon a place and call it reality. But the truth – the foul, stinking, unpalatable truth – is always flowing beneath.”

Brutus Wainwright. Aldridge Pearce. Marcus Martin.

For those who haven’t read Detective Comics Annual 2022, you should, because while it connected with the rest of the book on a thematic and narrative level when released, it kicks in full force here. Brutus Wainwright is Bruce Wayne, if you took his name back to their origins. Aldridge Pearce is Alfred Pennyworth, also the ‘Batman’ in the annual, Marcus Martin is Matches Malone, Bruce’s persona that he uses when he needs to conduct investigations that he can’t as either himself or as Batman. There’s also something interesting about three people of different ages here, another allegory to the Magi, except this time one of them, Brutus, has one thing to give to Bruce: that being the spark needed to truly remind himself of his truth, that he can resist. 

“But I know you are not him, because look at this place… this construct city, made of your weakness and fear. But even in this nightmare, we are still here. We still resist. I know who you are… because I know who I am.”

The temptation represents the very idea discussed earlier. It’s what happens when Bruce gives up his humanity to become the best Batman he can be. The only way to do that is to eliminate every trace of Bruce from his system, and that’s exactly what the Batman here is doing, or trying to do. In resistance, Bruce tells this demonic Batman that he would never become him, that he would never sacrifice his humanity, to the point where he lets the dynamite explode and take both of them, because he would rather die, rather lose, than do that. 

The way he lets the dynamite explode is reminiscent of Jesus’ second temptation, wherein Satan tempts him to jump, but he resists, realizing that the devil took words out of context. In a very ‘literalized’ fashion, it’s the same for Bruce. He has his faith, he knows that he will never become an authoritarian monster, no matter what.

Back to the Question, Renee says something that very much echoes Bruce at that moment in time. She realizes that to break the illusion, the lie the Orghams have set, she needs a truth that is impossible to deny, to get twisted – similarly to how even beyond the failures, beyond the darkness, there is a truth to Bruce, the innate goodness that makes him who he is.

Once we cut back to Bruce knelt by the edge of the desert, it’s the same idea. 

“His body has moved past anger or vengeance or the cravings of victory. Past pain, past desperation and hunger and numbness, lies a truth driven by something deeper.”

As he looks at his compass, he looks at the compass and notes that it’s broken but less uncertain – mirroring his journey of denying himself two temptations, as he slowly rediscovers himself. As petals of cherry blossoms fly across him, the world around him transforms, placing him on top of a butte with a cherry blossom tree, as Barbatos places his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. 

Barbatos offers the idea that what drives Bruce, beyond everything, is him. It’s his inner darkness, his inner demon – the fact that he has to win at any cost. Once he accepts this fact, this temptation, he could hold dominion over this “Kingdom of God” – once again harkening back to the beginning of the story, where Bruce is very explicitly compared to Jesus. From his position, Gotham looks perfect, filled with plants, ivory towers touching the sky.

But it’s here that he rediscovers himself. Going back to Detective Comics #1069, there’s a moment between Bruce and Gordon where Bruce considers himself the Batman, the mythological being, to which Gordon tells him:

“Sure… Batman’s a mythology. And myths don’t bleed. But I’m talking about the man behind the mask. There’s an edge, Batman. A precipice beyond which no one was meant to go.”

We’ve come full circle from then. From a Batman refusing to see his humanity for the greater cause, to remembering his humanity is his core, it’s what makes him him, beyond everything. When Barbatos asks if the boy who lost everything at Crime Alley deserves to win, Bruce rejects it, even as Barbatos tries to beat him into submission.

It’s the same as Jesus’ final temptation over the mountain, where Satan offers him all the kingdoms of god, Barbatos offers him the very same thing – these kingdoms that are obtained through fascism, through oppression, and they both resist in similar fashion – Jesus says you should only worship god, but Bruce is different, Bruce doesn’t need a god or a higher faith.

“You’re right… I’ve always needed my darkness. and perhaps I have even needed you, at times. But the one thing I’ve never needed is to win. All I have ever needed was the struggle. All I have ever needed was to try. I have never been afraid to fall.”

During this fight, he asserts his humanity. A myth might not bleed, but there he is, bleeding. But he still won’t give up, because even if Batman doesn’t always win, Batman always stands up, always tries again. He perseveres, embraces his failures, and tries, gets better, because as humans, that’s the best we can do, we can always try.

As Barbatos drops him and he falls, he is overtaken by the sands of the desert and transformed – literally. His old costume, his old mask, all of that leave him as something new shrouds him to signify that he is driven by newer things, newer purposes. Even as he beats Dr. Hurt, he beats him with ease and reminds him that he isn’t chained by his demons or his failures, that within all that there’s an innate kindness that drives him.

Finally, he reaches the edge of the desert, towards the standing stone, except unlike Farhad, who had reached it to find Aleasa dead, Bruce reached there to find Talia waiting for him, still standing. Like I said previously, in this way, he eventually won. He kept trying, and never gave in to the temptations given to him. He had beaten the test. 

We cut back to Gotham, where Renee comments on how “Justice needs a face,” and just like that, Bats spawn everywhere, bringing back the Batman, driven by new purpose, something greater. 

Going back to the very beginning of this essay: my complicated relationship with god, and what this story has to say about worship –

This story came at a good time in my life, one where I was frankly struggling, especially having been away from comfort, from home for so long in unknown lands for the pursuit of education. I was losing my motivation for studying, and without anything I really had faith in, it was hard to find a reason to keep going beyond “I need to do it because I must.”

But then Bruce comes in and says the words, “People shouldn’t have to look up for hope and salvation. They only have to look around.”

And that was the reminder for me. Looking around me, it’s not like I’m the only student who traveled abroad, so many have, many of them including my friends, and if they can do it, why can’t I? If they can keep going, I should be able to too, because we all uplift each other, help each other. 

But outside of my personal life, it also speaks to the idea of the person. There are so many times when we hold other people to a mythological standard, whether it be friends, family, or even people we don’t know, but it’s a good reminder that we’re all human. We’re all tempted by things, but we’re better, stronger than that, we can push past them and be the best versions of ourselves. If we ever struggle, we simply need to look around us.

Detective Comics: Elegy of Sand is a fascinating, phenomenal tale that starts by placing Bruce in the position of god, of a myth, just how the stories – and even his public perception – have looked at him, and examined not just him, but also all the simplistic notions of the character people project onto him. From there, it manages to evaluate the character, really dig into the kind of person he is on an allegorical level without particularly resorting to deep lore cuts or history, and by the end, reaffirms his humanity and manages to recontextualize him, not as a fist of vengeance, but as a light of hope.

Ram V, Riccardo Federici, Stefano Raffaele, Lee Loughridge, Ariana Maher, and Evan Cagle all manage to make this possible over the course of three issues, and if all of the run wasn’t already some of the best comics I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, this arc is one of the standouts in a sea of standouts. Bravo.

But you might ask, where’s the comparison to Cold Days? Well, that’ll have to wait until next time…