Title: Wheel of Misfortune

Written by: Tony Salvador Daniel

Art by: Tony Salvador Daniel

Cover by: Tony Salvador Daniel Tomeu Morey

Official DC Comics Synopsis: There’s been a seriers of assassinations in the criminal underworld – and The Penguin is among Batman’s first suspects! But when seemingly ordinary women become part of the killings, Batman discovers a common denominator that leads him on the trail of a vicious killer who is spiraling down a path of destruction. Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend, investigative reporter Charlotte Rivers, ends up on the killer’s hit list. And with her missing, can Batman uncover the layers of lies and deception within the underworld in time to save her?

Release Date: January 4, 2012

Review by: Brendan S.

I hate to start this review off on a downbeat but I am going to have to: I had such high hopes for this arc considering it was Daniel’s take on a very well known Batman villain, The Penguin, and yet it was very disappointing in the fact that it did not tie in too much with the last arc and the involvement the Penguin had with it and the back up at the end.  Anyway so we have a Joker-ized Occupy Wall Street type protest in an park wanting to see the Joker dead or alive because they are all his supporters and they want to know what happened to him because of his face being in police custody.  One problem I have with this is that if the face was part of an ongoing investigation why was that not kept confidential, how did the public find out?  I do like the parallel drawn with the Occupy Wall Street protest though including some of my favorite signs “Equal Rights for the Disturbed,” and, “We’re not crazy!  Your are!” and the best one “We Are the 6%” I thought this was a very clever idea of Daniel’s unfortunately it appears as though it is being used by Chris Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises with Selina Kyle’s monologue, it appears as though they are having a mock Occupy Wall Street, so I am only concerned that this is not a totally creator owned idea.

That Batman witnesses a murder of a bad guy by a man wearing a Joker mask and Batman walks through the crowd of Joker supporters.  This is where I take a real issue with things because he is perfectly capable of swinging over them and yet he doesn’t which I just find to be stupid of Batman to walk into a crowd of people who want him dead.  Then he swings away and then we get another problem of Daniel not thinking and using cheep little cop outs: Batman chases the killer to the river where the killer tosses away the mask and gets in a boat, and Batman sees the boat and shrugs “Oh Well” the guy has a boat that can get their inside of probably 15-20 seconds USE IT!!  It is not like he dematerialized he took a boat.

Anyway from their we cut to Charlotte Rivers going to the opening of the Iceberg Casino, an obvious update of the Iceberg Lounge, and says that it is a good thing that Bruce stood her up because she would not have to explain her disappearance and change into a kinky maid outfit, WHAT?  I don’t know either.  Anyway then it turns out the Penguin uses his security scams for the wrong reason, watching women change as he sees Charlotte Rivers in her room and assumes that she is at her investigative reporting again, which is what I assumed as well, and with him are three women one named Lark and the two others who I can only assume are Raven and Jay.

Then we get the crappy back-up feature with a kid who is playing poker with the mob and it turns out he is working with Catwoman so she can steal back her stuff and kill them, a complete and total waste of 8 pages and the only thing good that came from it was that we learned the kid, Eli Strange, is Hugo Strange’s son, easy enough to assume though.

Overall I was disappointed that Penguin did not get much screen time and most of the issue was about Batman dealing with the Joker supporters which I can only theorized are not involved in this story at all and maybe an underlying plot thread.  I thought the back-up feature was a complete waste of time and can only hope that it leads to something more important like setting up Daniel’s big story that will eventually come.  I thought the art was good in the main story but I did not care for the art in the back-up feature, overall I think this issue fell short of the mark that is expected of any comic and being the first part of a story it really failed to set anything up for what is to come.