I've had this song I got from my college roomie for years. He used it as part of his soundtrack when he played GTA 3. Having either not caught the name, or not been told, I titled the copy in my files, "Made for GTA." It finally occurred to me this summer to ask Alex to use the app on his phone to identify the song. It's Rammstein's Eskimos and Egypt (instrumental edit). Nice to finally know.
Deadman - now alive again - has landed in some future where souls stopped moving to Heaven or Hell. So people stopped believing in their being consequences for their actions, and somebody called "Master" took control. Some people get to live in a city of constant connectivity, and everybody else is in some sub-realm, their souls, or their bodies if souls no longer exist, getting picked off by those creatures.
Getting some guidance from an electronic Swamp Thing and the "Photon Stranger" - because I guess light still exists, but spirits don't - Boston travels to the city and finds the 10th story of a 9-story building. Brand makes it into "the Index", which is, I have no idea. It says "The Beast" or "True Evil" were other names, but I kind of thought Lucifer was "The Beast", and I'm pretty sure this isn't him.
Foe whatever reason, it makes Brand dead and sends him back to the neighborhood where he hangs out while off-duty. Though it also reminds him that words, like, say, "custodian", can have more than one meaning. I'm guessing in this case, that he's a caretaker, not just a janitor. But we'll see, because the creepy guy has showed up with a whole bunch of the soul-devourers.
I feel like that's ascribing more value to religion, or maybe faith, than I'm prepared to grant it. People do things I'd consider awful all the time, thinking that they will actually be rewarded by their faith for it. And if they aren't, if all these megachurch Bible-humpers and evangelist shitheads actually end up in Hell, we don't know it. Where's the value?
Batgirl crosses Gotham with the dying child and a stab wound of her own, but keeps getting sucked into other problems. Plant monsters attack her, then the cops. Then she has to save the cops from the plant monsters. Well, she doesn't have to. She could do triage and conclude saving Mimi is more important, but she chooses to. Then a cop car comes blaring past. I was a little confused when someone inside tried to shoot her with a Thompson machine gun, but as Nightwing and Damian explain during a brief reminder this is part of a Batbook-wide event , it's something to do with Scarface.
I feel like Miyazawa does something a little different with his art when drawing Nightwing and Damian versus Cass. Maybe it's just that their masks don't cover their entire faces, but it feels like the linework is thinner and sharper for them than Cass. Her outline seems almost gradual or rounded. She also seems to be in motion constantly during the brief conversation, while they spend most of the panels almost posed, fists on their hips like they're waiting for a photographer.
Through the issue, Batgirl wonders why any of them do this. Fight for a city constantly on the verge of throwing itself into a bottomless chasm. A city that will more than likely kill all of them. The conclusion is nothing too revelatory. They want to be good, and feel like if they stopped helping, the idea they could be good would wither. Which seems staggeringly detrimental to one's mental health - just look at that model of sanity, Batman - but is at least on point for Cass' own doubts about her soul, and her general indifference to her own well-being.
Granted, I'd thought that was getting better, but I guess in times of stress, people fall back into old patterns. And her she is, dismissing Nightwing's concern about her injuries as being stabbed, 'only slightly.'
Anyway, that's it for event tie-in issues. Next month, back to family drama storylines.
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