Batman Eternal #1 & #2
I feel weird whenever I go through an extended period of not buying Batman comics. From the tiny digests that I owned as a kid, to UK reprint titles, petrol station spinner racks and eventually visits to comic shops, Batman comics have been a staple of my comics reading. When I’ve been underwhelmed by the current DC output, or had to cut back due to lack of money, it’s felt like an unscratched itch. 
Lately I’ve been getting the Snyder/Capullo Batman in paperback, which means I’m years behind, and reading the odd mix of recentish Batman titles reprinted in the UK. The Snyder stuff is great, the rest a mixed bag, and it’s all very infrequent and irregular.
I do still buy two or three US comics a week though, and so I’m susceptible to the more regular diet of a weekly Batman comic in the form of Batman Eternal – providing I can justify paying for it every week at the expense of all those all new Marvel titles, Image books etc.
Batman Eternal is a weekly book developed by a team of writers including, and presumably led by, Scott Snyder. The writing team and weekly schedule suggest something closer to the approach of a TV show than a monthly comic, and that’s what these first two issues set up, building a sprawling ensemble and setting various hares running.
The danger of a project of this scope is that twenty pages isn’t much to set up the sprawl that an epic weekly series is going to need, and indeed it’s not clear by the end of #1 the scope of what Eternal intends to be. The first issue has a flash forward to horrible future events, introduces the characters at the Gotham City Police Department via a newbie to the force, then throws us into the big action scene that’s the inciting incident for this story. It’s kind of intriging, artist Jason Fabok does very solid Bat-work in the very Arkham-game-influenced New 52 mould, but it doesn’t quite explain what this whole weekly series is actually going to be about.
#2 sets things up a lot better, exploring the ramifications of the incident in #1 and, in a final page reveal, showing who is behind it all. As such I’d actually recommend #2 as a sample more than #1 – the first issue’s events are recapped well enough, and by the end of this second issue the reader’s reaction to what is revealed should provide a good indication as to whether this is your kind of series. On one level it’s just a villain reveal, but the implications are for a story that’s wide in scope and go to the heart of what makes Gotham and the Bat cast distinctive.
It should be fun, and for now I’m in. Apart from anything else I’m curious to see how the series competes for my attention over the long haul. When I last read a weekly series, 52, I had more money and time for these things. Can Batman Eternal compete with other distractions? We’ll see.
Roll back... and mix. 
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