Beware The Batman
#18 - Games
Original Airdate - September 13th, 2014
Batman, Katana, Commissioner Gordon, Mayor Grange and Tobias Whale all wake up trapped in an unknown location – all of them drugged and left there by Humpty Dumpty. According to Dumpty, one of them is a killer…and the only way to escape his Murder Mystery Game is to figure out who. With each clue, however, the game gets deadlier and begins to take its toll on Batman who's obsessed with solving the mystery and defeating Dumpty!

Written by Adam Beechen
Directed by Curt Geda
Media by The World's Finest

Images:

Analysis by Frontier:

It was great to finally see Humpty Dumpty again after all this time, since I'd been wondering when the show was ever going to get back to him after pretty much all of the Rogues Gallery had already made a reappearance by now. His murder mystery game, with the addition of plenty of deathtraps, provided a good challenge for Batman while he also had to protect the group as well. The convoluted nature of his mysteries and clues, plus the multiple deathtraps, would probably make even Riddler blush.

Though unlike Riddler, Dumpler isn't as obsessed with his own voice or the idea that he's smarter than anyone else. More moral, misunderstood and abused than anyone else maybe, but he's more out to deal his own brand of misguided justice than flaunt his superiority like Riddler. Not to mention that Riddler's obsession with riddles highlights his intelligence, while Humpty's obsession with games highlights his childishness. Batman's fight with him was short but sweet, and I'm glad Batman was finally able to catch him. Not to mention the added irony of how he beat Humpty being pretty great .

Seeing Batman and Gordon, and to a lesser extent Katana, working together to solve the mysteries was cool. Though aside from maybe the first mystery with her card, it seemed like Katana was more just there for extra muscle than anything else. It would be interesting to see how she fared when she was in the CIA and if she was still just as headstrong. I'm surprised they didn't have Dent as one of the players, but I guess Whale served the role of sabotaging the group and being anti-Batman that Dent probably would've fulfilled on his own, just with more screaming. I guess three straight episodes of Dent being Dent might've been too much.

I am kinda tired of seeing Whale, though. He's been in a lot of episodes, but the only thing he really has going for him personality wise, in my view, is his casual nature that belies his devious criminal mind. He might seem like a pleasant enough guy, but he always ends up a bad guy by the end and knocked out on the floor. I doubt he's the only crime boss in Gotham, and it would be nice to see someone new like Black Mask or the Great White Shark .

I wasn't expecting the twist at the end that everyone in the group would have a role in the "murder" of the sailor, or to be more precise, ruining his reputation and keeping him from his family. Of course, Katana was the most indirectly related to it, and Gordon and Grange were just doing their jobs, and I guess they and Batman could only be blamed for not looking deep enough in the case. That actually does strike me as something that Batman would probably have at least looked into, at least as a side-case, though maybe he just had enough on his plate to not have the time to look into something that seemed open and shut? It was definitely nice to see that, despite how much they influenced his life in a negative way, that Croskey wasn't willing to kill the group .

Batman can come off as callous, but here he was ultimately focused on what was most important to saving the entire group and solving the mystery, though I guess I could understand why it would unnerve Katana. Though that certainly didn't give him the right to, basically, fire her and kick her out just for questioning him. There should be trust in a partnership or team, but it should go both ways and Batman shouldn't think he's infallible just because he's...well, Batman. Not to mention, Wayne Manor is also where Tatsu lives and sleeps, so I'd hope he'd at least let her stay there .

But if anything was evident of just how entrenched Bruce is becoming in the Batman persona, it's that he now doesn't consider himself Bruce Wayne anymore. He's probably barely sleeping, likely hasn't seen his real face in who knows how long or even taken off the suit, and while he seems to be functioning fine, I wouldn't be shocked to see this negatively effecting him the more it goes on .