Batman has rarely been pushed to these limits and it's refreshing to see that it's not some hokey plot involving people from Bruce's childhood. As this happens, the Cult effectively takes over the city, causing the rest of the country to quarantine Gotham. At the ends of the day, The Cult is a solid story and makes for a great edition to Starlin’s work on the character. Nick: I struggle when starting a Jim Starlin book—his dialogue is so heavy and meaty that you really have to be in the right zone to read one of his comics.

But there is something about image of Bruce actually holding a gun in his hands which is quite unsettling, and The Cult doesn’t seem to acknowledge it. But then we get to a point where the National Guard comes in, and they are unable to stop homeless people who behave like a bunch of wild, out-of-control animals rather than actual people. Outside some brief hallucinations of the Joker and Two-Face, none of Batman's Rogues Gallery make any sort of appearance, the story focusing exclusively on Deacon Blackfire and his cult. In the late 1980s, Starlin began working more for DC Comics, writing a number of Batman stories, including the four-issue miniseries Batman: The Cult (Aug.

How We Got Here: The first issue opens with Batman already held captive by Blackfire, with flashbacks showing how he was taken prisoner. So many elements of this book remind me of the Waco Siege, and I have to wonder if those events actually inspired The Cult. Rigged with monster truck tires, tranquilizer dart loaded machine guns, and a rocket launcher, Batman and Robin begin to reclaim the city. The book is uncomfortable at times because of how real and believable it can be… And then the wheels begin to fall off the wagon.

Book three of a four-issue series, "Escape" finds a weary Batman (with help from Robin) doing just that: escaping from Deacon Joseph Blackfire's religious cult.Ratface stabs the civilian, but is caught by an attentive beat cop, who the dazed Batman knocks out. I just have to admit that the level of carnage was not just unsettling to me, but worse so, unengaging. Once the cult has left the area, Robin jumps in the water to rescue his mentor, but upon finding each other, they terrifyingly realize that they are standing in the bodies of all the people Blackfire killed. It’s a story that was hugely influential in comics as a whole, but which understandably had a major influence on Batman.

Rat-Face then attempts to murder an African American police officer but is instead knocked out by Batman. I realise “Dark Knight Rises” has this as a big part of its story but at least with the film there were large stakes – a nuclear bomb – as opposed to thousands of homeless people wandering the streets.While this happens, Jason Todd, AKA Robin sneaks into the sewer in a disguise and infiltrates the cult. Although he was drugged, Batman broke his no-killing rule in this series under the influence of Deacon Blackfire. They begin by hiring homeless people to do various work in furnishing a section of the sewer and Batman's experiences in "the pit" is similar to what he experiences in Blackfire's lair in the sewer. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Finally, this Batman seems to have no problem with blowing up bad guys with missiles mounted on the Batmobile/monster truck. I had heard about Batman: The Cult but I hadn’t a clear idea of what was about, but I knew that if I have the chance to get it, I haven’t to hesitate about it. It begins with Batman abducted, a prisoner of charismatic Deacon Blackfire and his subterranean band of homeless followers. Bane may have broken Bruce's back some years later, but Deacon Blackfire in these pages is the first to break his spirit, leading to the aforementioned vulnerability from a hero who is all too human.So paramount is this story that its details—despotic state, underground army, lynchings, blown bridges—partly inspired Nolan’s third Batman film. If Knightfall details Batman’s physical destruction, The Cult details his mental destruction—in all its gritty pulp and horror illustration. Though in the end, Batman believed that what Blackfire preached was a hoax, he wanted to make sure nothing supernatural was real.