Bruce Wayne has been Batman for only a year when he tracks down a killer murdering women. Batman tracks him to a woman's apartment when he has just murdered the woman, leaving only her daughter alive. But he's hiding in the apartment and he and Batman fight. Batman notices that the man has military-grade weaponry, including silenced Uzis, but when he captures the man and tries to question him, someone or something vaporizes him with a beam weapon.
Bruce returns to the Batcave, where he is very upset over his inability to save the woman. But he *was* able to save her daughter, which Alfred reminds him of when Bruce becomes too angry at his inability to save the mother. At length, he winds down and thanks Alfred.
Wayne Enterprises is trying to win a lucrative government security contract with a new military aircraft that will be invisible to radar and several other detection systems. But ranked against Bruce in this is Lex Luthor and LexCorp. But when they go to the meeting together, Bruce is pushing another idea of his... a heavy-duty robot meant to replace troops on the line. After the presentation, however, the robot attacks Bruce and Lex, and while Batman battles the robot, it attempts to kill Lex. When Luthor escapes, the Robot leaves, and, after a stealthy night time infiltration, Batman and Bruce discovers that Lex has files on everyone... including the scientist who was controlling the robot from a VR sensory deprivation tank. For some reason, Luthor was blackmailing, or attempting to blackmail the scientist, and when they couldn't do that, slipped a probe into his body that would cause him to die in the tank.
They succeeded in killing the scientist, but something of his consciousness remained in the robot, who knew who was responsible for killing him, and tried to take out Lex. Batman is able to disarm the robot by having it eject its computer core, and is determined to stop Lex in whatever plot he is up to now.
Meanwhile, the young girl Batman rescued is revealed to be the daughter of the politician who is chairing the comittee on which technology to adopt... Wayne Enterprises or LexCorp. But the Chairman won't be bribed by Luthorm and when he is arrested for conspiracy to murder the girl's mother, Lexcorp wins the contract. But Batman already knows that the girl was "concieved" through artificial insemination of the girl's mother, taking cloned DNA from the Congressman. Now, as LexCorp's robots are installed around the country, Batman has to find a way to shut them off as Lex Luthor decides to use them to install himself as Supreme Leader of the United States, and Lex conspires to set Batman's own technology against him!
This was a great story, but the "Atmospheric Art" translates to heavy shadows around the eyes, leaving everyone in even moderate shadow looking positively demonic: Batman, Luthor and everyone else. The one person who seemed immune to the effect, most of the time, was Comissioner Gordon, whose glasses were bigger than the thin slits of eyeballs the other characters had and who managed to look almost normal.
I also wasn't a big fan of the character designs, which I felt were ugly and not to my taste. The art was sometimes inconsistent as well. In certain scenes, Luthor looked like he was in his 30's or 40's. At other times, he appeared 20 years older, and the same artist was responsible throughout, so I couldn't put the blame on competing artists. I honestly found the art repulsive at some level, so it was hard for me to enjoy the story, good as it was.
Great story, so-so art adds up to a book that I read once, but wouldn't go back to ever again. It was an "Enh". Didn't hate it, but didn't love it, either. Mediocre.
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