I’ve never seen the Mad Hatter more insane than in
this storyline from the New 52 series, Batman: The Dark Knight. The Hatter is
kidnapping Gotham citizens left and right while setting up dummy accounts and
selling hats with mind-controlling devices inside. His reason? It’s not world
dominance or to find out just who is underneath that cowl of Batman’s. Instead,
demented Jervis Tetch is hoping to recreate a perfect date he had when a girl
name Alice was a boy.
In all my reading of Batman comics, I don’t remember
ever reading about the origin of the Mad Hatter. It’s pretty sad. The real tragedy
is how Tetch became the Mad Hatter by no real fault of his own. Puny as a
child, he fell in love with the first girl to flash him a smile. But when that
love becomes unrequited, Tetch and his parents seeks out a specialist in
hormone therapy in hopes of the boy growing a little taller. Sadly, the pills
that could cure him have the same effect on patients as mercury did on hatters
in the 1800s. The chemicals turn people homicidal, delusional, and just plain
mad with no hope of recovery.
This series also brings out the worst in Batman
unlike I’ve ever seen any other villain in the Dark Knight’s Rogue gallery.
See, Bruce Wayne’s fallen in love and when The Mad Hatter sets his sights on
Wayne’s lady fair, the Caped Crusader will tether the edge of reason and almost
fall into the abyss of madness himself.
It’s really strange to have the Mad Hatter be the
one to send Batman into a rage. You’d think The Joker with the number of
horrible things he’s done to members of the Batman family over the years would
be the villain to make Batman break his vow to never kill. When Batman fought
back against Bane for breaking his spine, it was tame and when the Dark Knight
was targeted during the Batman: RIP storyline, no matter how loopy Bruce Wayne
became, he still knew that killing was a line he couldn’t cross. That does not
apply here.
With these powerful but disturbing events that occur
in this volume, I must say that this is the best Batman story I have read in a
very long time. The art is fantastic as well. But it is the storytelling that
makes this book worth owning. Included in this volume is Annual #1 of this
series. It involves the Hatter, Penguin, and Scarecrow being summoned to an
abandoned mental asylum with the promise of a lucrative business proposal. But
when the trio of near-do-wells realizes they’ve been set up, their twisted
imaginations run wild fearing that the Batman is behind the whole thing. It was
a welcome change of pace from the brutal drama of the “Mad” storyline and I
laughed out loud several times at this Halloween themed romp.
Worth Consuming.
Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.
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