Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Oracle #1

Overall: This issue begins with the Insider(Bruce Wayne for those of you who have been living under a rock)trying to hide Vicki Vale from Ra's Al Ghul's top assassins, The Seven Men of Death. To that end, Oracle(who has managed to hack into Insider's communication systems)sends out two teams of Bat-family members to distract and hopefully defeat the Seven Men. The Seven Men split up upon getting conflicting reports of Vale's whereabouts(thanks to Oracle)with one group meeting Batgirl, Hawk and Dove while the second group bumps into Manhunter, Man-Bat and Ragman. With the Seven Men distracted, Bruce takes Vale and decides to get her out of town, but is attacked by another of Ra's assassins, this one with a missile launcher. Bruce shields Vale from the blast with his armor and tells her to run while he deals with the gun-totting assassin. Bruce manages to defeat the assassin, and all of the Bat-associates take care of the Seven Men, but this issue ends with Vale getting abducted by Ra's right hand man, the White Ghost.

Here's the thing about this comic, it was REALLY good, but for reasons I didn't mention in the review above. Sure, the fight scenes were top notch, and it's always fun to see Batgirl and Manhunter in a comic(especially together!), but the interaction between Bruce and Babs was what made this comic so enjoyable to me. Basically Babs has deduced who the Insider was very early on, and tells Insider as much, which leads to some great dialogue between the two, as well as some awesome flashback sequences as Babs thinks back on what Bruce has meant to her and done for her over the years. As a fan of Barbara Gordon, this issue was very enjoyable. I've already stated my apathy over the Vicki Vale storyline, so I won't rehash it any more, but less Vicki and more Babs/Bruce would have easily put this comic close to perfect score range.

Score: 9 out of 10.The fight scenes were good, but the flashbacks were even better!