This is how King has Batman characters win. They get beat on and beat on, and once the attackers get all tuckered out from pummeling the victim, the victim then turns around, all bloody and beaten, and hits them once and they drop like a sack of potatoes.

Apparently, in King's world, there's not such thing as broken noses, concussions, internal bleeding , damaged backs, knees and hands. You just take a huge beating, walk it off and then hit someone once.

That's basically played out again in Batman 81. It turns out the Bat Family joins with Damian (may he rot in Hell) and beat and beat and beat Thomas Batman. He utters "because I'm Batman" and hits them once and they drop. King seems to have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that Thomas Batman used guns because he wasn't in the super condition of Bruce. Didn't have the training and was an older man. Also, is Alfred dead? Still dead? That part of the plot is ignored and I'm bored with it.

But no matter, because King often ignores continuity or flat out repeats things other writers wrote beat for beat (Think Wonder Woman and Batman trapped in eternity. The same story was done in the 2000s for Superman and Wonder Woman.)

Bruce's plan was to steal the super Venom powering Gotham Girl. Joker was actually Clayface. (Yawn). And again we get a lot of text boxes explaining the text in an on the nose manner. Did subtext do something to King when he was a child?

And the issues ends with Bane, Bats and Cats getting ready to square off. The actual defeat of Bats' rogues was very rote. We, as I've written before, didn't see any Bats outthinking enemies or setting up traps, etc. We just get static shots of Bats and Cats hitting guys and they go down.

Just one problem. This has been done before 25 years ago. And the problem with Bane knowing Bruce's secret identity is never played to the logical conclusion. We know the bad guy is going to lose, so why doesn't he expose Bruce? Because if they did, the comic series would be over. That's ALWAYS a terrible thing, having a character act stupid because plot demands it. Stan Lee having the Green Goblin know but forget Peter's secret identity was genius. The threat was always there, but not really, but really. Great for building up suspense. Gerry Conway's Spider-Man 121-122 was the logical conclusion of that.

King's explaining Bruce's plan after the fact strikes me as a cheat. We sort of go, oh that's why he was in Hawaii. I prefer it when writers play fair and we see the heroes follow the clues the writers left and we say, wow I wish I thought of that. Well played sir. (See Murder on the Orient Express for why that works so well).

Overall, a dull issue. Can't say I loved John Romita Jr's art. This story doesn't do justice to the characters and just sort of happens because it has to happen. Can't say I'm a fan.

Or I could be wrong. more