Warning! Spoilers for Batman #112-117 ahead!
The current Batman comics event, Fear State, was initially billed as a Scarecrow story, but is instead packed full of villains, which leads the story to be unfocused and without a clear threat. Although it has a plethora of tie-ins, DC Comics' main Fear State story runs through Batman #112-117 and is the second big event helmed by writer James Tynion IV. Many artists worked on the crossover including Jorge Jimenez, Ricardo Federici, and Greg Capullo.
The main story of Fear State focuses on how Gotham's mayor has turned to an outfit called the Magistrate to provide protection for the city in the wake of the Joker War. Run by industrialist Simon Saint, the Magistrate’s key enforcer in its fight against a group known as the Unsanity Collective is a super-soldier called Peacekeeper-1. However, when Peacekeeper-1 falls victim to the Scarecrow, Saint unleashes another super-soldier called Peacekeeper-X to stop him. Also, Poison Ivy, now going by the name Queen Ivy, has taken control of Gotham's underground garden she’s called Eden.
It's not hard to see how all of that can become confusing. Nowhere in that rundown of the event was Batman even mentioned, so it's not abundantly clear where the main threat is coming from. At first Batman opposes the Unsanity Collective in their technological aims to wipe out Gotham’s trauma. Batman ultimately concludes that the group is misunderstood and being used as a scapegoat for the Magistrate to turn Gotham into a police state. Scarecrow, obviously, has his own machinations, manipulating the Magistrate into ramping up fear throughout Gotham. This leaves Batman stuck in the middle, forced to battle through Scarecrow’s fear tactics while opposing the Magistrate’s rule. Then, when Peacekeeper-1 goes AWOL under Scarecrow's influence, Peacekeeper-X is unleashed to stop him, destroying blocks of Gotham in the process. This doesn’t even begin to touch upon the subplot involving Queen Ivy.
In the end, the villains are wrapped up rather conveniently. Scarecrow is rendered irrelevant as Peacekeeper-1 takes him out before becoming the final physical threat for Batman to fight. Miracle Molly, leader of the Unsanity Collective, poses more of a philosophical threat, which Batman overcomes by appealing to her reason. The majority of Batman’s supporting cast takes down Simon Saint’s Magistrate while Harley Quinn handles Queen Ivy, who uses her pheromones to help quell the fear running rampant throughout Gotham.
Any one of these plot lines could’ve served as more than enough story to fill up the event. The Unsanity Collective, The Magistrate, and Queen Ivy all shared time in the villain spotlight that was supposedly reserved for Scarecrow. Instead, Fear State reduces Scarecrow to the level of a third-class villain in his own crossover, and Batman fans are left waiting to see if he will ever rightly get his due.
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