Resumo de Batman. ? Cataclysm. - GARRAHY, PAT & GIDDINGS

ABSTRACT GARRAHY, PAT & GIDDINGS, NOELLE ? BATMAN. ? CATACLYSM. 1999. DC COMICS. A huge concept Batman graphic novel about what happens when instead of a Super-villain, Batman is faced with a major natural disaster, an earthquake that virtually levels Gotham City. Batman, in his human guise as billionaire, Bruce Wayne, is in the Batcave as his own mansion collapses on him when the quake hits. He has made many Wayne Industry buildings earthquake proof, but he was unable to reinforce his own estate without drawing attention to the Batcave underneath it and therefore revealing his identity. He devastation raises the question of whether the house can now be repaired without exposing Wayne as the Batman (a question never fully answered by the story end). Batman rescues faithful retainer, Alfred from the rubble, and realising that they are trapped inside the house, Batman risks swimming through a river that leads underground to some uncertain fate in order to seek rescue. He has barely left when Harold, the MAN responsible for creating Batman?s weapons, breaks in with a bulldozer. If Batman had just waited a while he would be OK. However, when he surfaces in the estuary around Gotham Harbour, Batman discovers the awful truth ? Wayne Manor wasn?t alone in being hit ? the whole City of Gotham is down. Batman, Robin, and various heroes help rescue people from the rubble. Catwoman, though initially planning on a crime, helps the survivors. There is a very moving moment when she fails to save a young child who dies. Batman forces The Penguin to help out too; threatening to make his life miserable and short if the villain tries to loot the exposed banks. As the rescuers begin to unite, a man calling himself The Quakemaster kidnaps a leading Seismologist and uses her advise to threaten to unleash another, bigger quake in the ruined city. With Batman busy elsewhere, Robin catches the Quakemaster, who is just a dummy, manipulated by an old villain called The Ventriloquist. There is a shocking sense of scale to Cataclysm, reducing the heroes to a piecemeal rescue effort, and limiting their ability to save too many people just like the real rescue forces, such as the police, and medics. There are flaws in giving many villains, such as The Penguin and Two-Face mere cameo appearances of no real importance to the story. There is a great sub-plot about a group of convicts who exploit the quake to escape from a maximum-security prison in Gotham. One, a man who has claimed to be innocent right up to the brink of his looming midnight execution, helps a Nun escape from the deranged convicts, as they try to kill her and a female prison warden. As Batman dispatches the escapees, the man saves the Nun from falling masonry, but he himself gets crushed. As he dies, at exactly the instant he would have been executed, he confesses that he wasn?t innocent at all. There are great stories and threads here, but overall, the book remains somewhat inconclusive.

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