Batman: Flyer by Gil Kane

Batman: Flyer Reviews

• 
  Molly™☺

  Huh. Nazis, a Batman fetish, and slurs thrown around without care. Not what anyone looks for in a Batman story, but at least it tried something new....
• 
  Renan Fontes

  The first major step down in quality for Legends of the Dark Knight, but it's a short story with enough oddities to make it fun.
• 
  LittleFlowerEnjoyer

  Nazis, a woman with a Batman fetish, the most ridiculous looking antagonist with an Oedipus complex...the art isn't even that good. Utter trash.
• 
  Paul

  "Flyer" opens with an apparently naked Bruce Wayne meditating in the Batcave, when Alfred interrupts to inform him that meditation time is over. The story takes place 18 months after Bruce first appeared as Batman, and Alfred is still treating this like a phase his employer will soon be over. Alfred asks, "Isn't it really time to put away the horned hat, the music hall suit, and get down to some serious heir making?" As we'll see, there is a nice little bit of foreshadowing in Alfred's question.
  
  Bruce blows off Alfred and heads off on patrol instead. After stopping the mugging of a husband, wife, and young son that look oddly familiar, Batman is attacked by a strange, mechanized flying man. Batman defeats him, and he takes the flyer to the Batcave for study. There, Batman administers sodium pentothal in order to get this guy's story.
  
  It turns out that the flyer is Curtis Eisenmann, whose parents were an American Army officer and the daughter of a Nazi rocket scientist. Anyone who has ever read anything by Howard Chaykin will know that he's got a real thing for Nazi women, so when he introduces Brigit Eisenmann, we have a pretty good idea where this is going.
  
  After her own father died in American custody, she continued his scientific research for the American space program, which was one of the few areas of employment available to Nazi immigrants in postwar America.
  
  Being a Nazi and all, Brigit Eisenmann turns out to be a pretty terrible mother. She treats her son like some kind of genetic mistake, so in order to prove himself to her, he becomes a helicopter pilot for the Gotham City police department ???
  
  He has the bad luck to be on the job the night the Gotham PD goes after Batman, as seen in Batman: Year One. The swarm of bats Batman calls up cause Curt's helicopter to crash, leaving him maimed and barely alive. His mother, always ready to make lemonade out of her worthless failure of a son, decides to use him for her latest cybernetic experiments, and she commands him to capture Batman, with the promise that once he proves himself to her, she will work to make him normal again.
  
  At this point, with all this exposition out of the way, the story moves into crazy Howard Chaykin territory. You see, Brigit Eisenmann has been watching reports of Batman on TV, and these reports have been stirring up feelings in her that she hasn't felt in years.
  
  So, she plans to capture Batman in order to rape him and then breed the perfect Aryan human.
  
  You know, there are many times I say to myself, "They don't make Batman stories like this anymore," but that's mainly in nostalgic reference to Bob Haney Brave and the Bold stories or great Denny O'Neil stories where Batman clocks a bunch of thugs with a bag full of ocelots. This is the only time I've said it in reference to a story where Batman is threatened with rape.
  
  With her efforts to arouse him yielding no results, she decides to get rough.
  Yes, Chaykin actually has her say, "Lie back and enjoy it."
  Wait a minute! What did that next issue box say?
  
  Next: The Climax!
  
  OK then.
• 
  Jourdan Cameron

  I've not read very many Batman comics- but I must say that this is perhaps the strangest I've ever experienced. I'm not going to say much about the story for the sake of spoilers, but there are Nazis, a prototype Iron Man suit and.. No. No, this is too weird to talk about.
  
  This isn't a proper review.
  
  All you need to know is that it earned three stars with good art and an well told story- even though I have to admit that some of the dialogue's a bit cheesy and some of the storytelling feels a bit too comfortable- established, I'd say, in the wrong ways.
• 
  Brent

  A little over the top in several ways.