"He is a villain and his genesis is not more important than his current actions"
Eh, I agree and disagree at the same time. The why of a villain, how he came to be who he is, can add a lot to the character and make him more than what he previously was. So while I might not say that his origin is more important than what he's currently doing I think it could still be extremely important and make the current story that much better. That being said however, the story loses nothing from not having the origin.
"While I get what they were going for, I read super hero comics as an escape from reality. I do want to see Batman save the day."
Definitely understand where he's coming from, but for this story I preferred that it not be Bruce, because Bloom was Jim's villain. For better or worse this has been his time as Batman and I felt that to properly see it through to the end he had to be the one to stop Bloom. And this is why I was actually unhappy about Bruce coming back for this. Because as the reviewer points out the way Batman went about things doesn't actually make much sense (Using a robo suit that Bloom had already shown the ability to easily deal with previously, but somehow succeeding where the others failed because he's Batman of course!). There didn't seem to be much reason for him to come back right now if they were going to have it go down the way they did, except to try to drive the point home that only Bruce could be Batman. Simply put, it could've been handled much better.
"And yet, when they see the real Batman, they are inspired to tear the seeds out of their very flesh!"
This was by far the dumbest event in this issue. People are somehow to recognize instantly that it's "the real" Batman and are inspired to start fighting back in a way that they weren't before? No. That's silly and breaks my suspension of disbelief. Just lazy storytelling. The fact that he was piloting the same basic suit that numerous other people had been piloting really only makes it look that much worse.
"Batman lets Gordon figure it out on his own instead of handling the biggest threat himself."
This seemed to go back to what I was saying earlier about Gordon needing to be the one to handle Bloom and why Bruce being back then doesn't really work. If Bruce is around then, outside of killing (And that's a matter of choice), there's nothing Jim Gordon can do that he can't do. There is therefore little reason for him to have Jim take on a job of such magnitude instead of him. Bottom line, their positions could have and logically should have been reversed. Does this mean that Jim shouldn't have taken Bloom down? No, as I said earlier I feel that it was right for him to do so. However, the setup was not sufficient enough to explain why it was Jim and not Bruce, especially when you've just brought Bruce back. It's like you're spending time having all these people in the city, Jim included, note how great and amazing Bruce is, but then you have Jim doing this monster of a job because you remember that you began the arc with him and should therefore end it with him. But of course you still have to remind everyone of how great Bruce is.
"I'd say that my being Batman? Me, Jim Gordon? It was a mistake."
Still on the fence about this line. Because I get it. Snyder is big on the whole "There can only be one Batman" thing, so of course he wants to drive that point home for us here, at the end of his run. And maybe it's because i've never really agreed with that idea/interpretation, but I don't really like Jim saying this. The reasoning he gives is sound, about the police needing to be the police and not trying to make their own Batman. But still, I agree that i'd prefer Snyder to just stand behind his work and not go in making any apologies whatsoever. It's what you wanted to do, it was something different, go forth with it, and don't look back. Then again, i'm also not someone who really thought the storyline was bad and saw the potential in it as a brief, new status quo. This isn't even the first time Snyder's done this. We saw this from the start in fact where he had Jim (Think it was Jim) in the comic noting how terrible the mechanical suit looked...then still had him running around in it anyways. There's only so much self-depreciation you can do before it starts to ring hollow my man. And honestly? With stuff like that dating back so far I can't seriously read his "apology" to the fans here. There was clearly some awareness from the start, yet you went ahead and did it all anyways.
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