Category: Batman

 

By Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-5389-427-0 (hardcover) 1-5389-469-6 (softcover)

The creative team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale have tackled many iconic characters in many landmark tales, but one of their earliest is still, to my mind, their best.

Set during the Batman: Year One scenario created by Frank Miller, and originally released as a 13 part miniseries (running from Halloween to Halloween) it details the early alliance of Police Captain Jim Gordon, District Attorney Harvey Dent and the mysterious vigilante The Batman to destroy the unassailable mob boss who runs Gotham City; Carmine Falcone – “The Roman”.

Trenchant with narrative foreboding – long time fans already know the tragedies in store for all the participants although total neophytes won’t be left wondering – this gripping Noir thriller effortlessly carries the reader along on a trail of tension as a mysterious serial killer stalks The Roman’s world, slaughtering close family and criminal employees, once a month, on every public holiday.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day and so on, each hit crushing more of The Roman’s perfect world, just as the three dedicated crime-busters had secretly sworn to. Is the Holiday Killer a rival mobster, a victim of criminality, one of the newly ubiquitous super-freaks such as the Joker, Scarecrow, or Mad Hatter, or has perhaps one of our heroes stepped over a line in their zeal for Justice? And what part does the sultry Catwoman play in all this?

Effortlessly blending the realms of the mobster with Batman’s more usual super-foes (most of whom make a memorable appearance) and graced with startlingly powerful images of Mood, Mystery and Mayhem from the magic pencil and brush of Tim Sale, this serial killer whodunit is an utter joy to read that should keep you guessing until the very end.

One of the very best Batman adventures.

© 1996,1997 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Dan Curtis Johnson, J.H. Williams III & Seth Fisher (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-481-1

This brief adventure of Batman’s early career (originally presented in Legends of the Dark Knight issues #192-196) tells of his first encounter with Mr. Freeze, as well as examining the gradual movement towards the current methodology and support network that the Dark Knight utilises.

As Victor Fries nears the completion of his work on extreme sub-zero temperatures he makes two shocking discoveries. His beloved wife Maria is hospitalised and dying whilst his research has been subverted by the US military. Batman, meanwhile is nearing a physical and emotional collapse. He finally comes to see his obsession and realises he can’t do it all alone. Yet the authorities have limits he won’t allow himself to be hampered by.

For both men the solution is drastic and in their own hands, and both will suffer consequences tragic and life changing because of their decisions. For Batman it’s the formation of a private unit of specialists to research and supply support for his war on crime. For Fries it’s the forcible reclamation of his wife and work.

The two stories dovetail as Fries suffers an accident that transforms him into a monstrous being unable to live at room temperature. He embarks on a vendetta of insanity and icy vengeance, bringing him into conflict with the Caped Crusader and his tragically under-prepared team.

This reworking of the origin of Mr. Freeze is compelling and imaginative in the modern manner and the art is beautiful if sometimes over-rendered – almost to the point of being passionless. In fact, despite my admiration for Seth Fisher’s ability I do wonder at his selection for such an emotive and gritty tale. His seeming inability to draw anything grimy or unpretty actually detracts from the narrative, I fear.

Since I obviously can’t decide, perhaps you should make your own minds up. It’s still got to be better than a night in front of the TV, right?

© 2005, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-122-7

Spoiler Ahead! Have you reviewed the other volumes of this storyline?

Rather than put you to the trouble of looking up the review of the previous volumes, please allow me to quote and paraphrase: Batman has training scenarios in place for every eventuality. One of them, in which he posits a takeover of all criminals in Gotham by his own undercover agent, has been activated by his current assistant Spoiler/Robin the Girl Wonder, leading to a gang war and general bloodbath. As the chaos ensues, sadistic mastermind Black Mask hijacks both the plan and Spoiler, whom he tortures near to death. He also kills Batman’s agent Orpheus and takes his place. All of Gotham is under fire and when the Dark Knight tries to take control of the police force. No longer an “Urban Myth”, Batman is now the focus of both police anger and public attention…

This volume of War Games serves to clear up and set the scene for another restart of the Batman Family, and I’m not going to reveal too much in case you want to read it yourself, but I will say that any new audiences that this kind of event garners – at least in Graphic Novel terms – must be supremely indifferent to many of the big thematic revisions touted in the periodical origins of the eight related series that make up this book. So nobody believed in the Bat and his buddies before this? The criminals certainly did. So he works outside the law now? Didn’t he always, at least, since the last time he didn’t? So some of his cast don’t survive? Nobody major – and who stays dead in comics?

I so wanted to be upbeat here. Individually many chapters from the forty or so assorted comics professionals working here are very good. It’s the marketing policy that falls down. The shouting of “milestones” and “turning points” and “major changes” never amount to anything and the illusion of change is just that, when looked at with the perspective of a little time and distance.

Wouldn’t it be better to get all these wonderfully talented creators to concentrate on simply producing good stories as they do in the course of their regular assignments and quit this relentless chasing of the cross-over cash cow? There could still be compilations and collections, but they’d have entertainment as their main concern, not traffic and continuity management. Don’t all these great characters and jaded readers deserve that at least?

© 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-070-0

The middle Act of the 2004 Batman braided crossover, Tides focuses much more heavily on the personal costs that each hero must pay whilst attempting to stem the rivers of blood generated as the dwindling criminal factions consolidate into new power-bases. Gotham City is bathed in blood as a mysterious master-planner has engineered a scheme to tackle the crime situation by having the various factions destroy each other. Obviously the collateral damage is not a consideration for this ruthless mastermind- whoever he or she is. The volume ends with losses to the ranks of heroes – these things always do – in a set-up for the final book which will concentrate on the kicking of butts and taking of names.

I’m wanting desperately to be fair here. Individually many chapters from the forty or so assorted comics professionals working here are very good. It’s just as a product of a flawed and outmoded marketing policy that this story, like so many others that this tactic has spawned, falls down. The niggles that merely jar in the blur of weekly comic delivery stand out tall, proud and glaring when collected together in great big books.

Perhaps the final volume will pull it all together and produce sense out of nonsense…

© 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-044-1

One major difficulty with the periodic comic book insanity of multi-part crossovers is the sheer difficulty of repackaging them as graphic novels. DC attempted to defuse this with their 2004 Bat-epic by designing the event as three distinct Acts, each containing one month’s progression of participating titles (Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, Robin, Gotham Knights, Batgirl, and Catwoman), and each working as a dramatic platform for the succeeding volume.

Thematically, it’s business as usual for poor, beleaguered Gotham City. Death, destruction, lots of explosions, blood in the streets, and another perennial winnowing of extraneous cast members is well underway. Content-wise the catastrophe is human in nature, as the various criminal factions of the city are finagled into an all-out gang war, leading to martial law being declared and at one point Batman’s attempt to take over Gotham.

Just as a self-indulgent aside, could someone please explain to me why the decent, law-abiding folk who so often end up littering those mean streets don’t just get the hell out of Dodge? After two plagues, an earthquake and the total anarchy of No Man’s Land, all in addition to the everyday mass-murdering psychopaths who make the place their home what on Earth could induce anyone to live or work there?

For a fuller experience, non-regulars would be best advised to read War Drums, a prelude to the carnage unleashed in Outbreak. Without divulging too much of the story, Outbreak sets the ball rolling and positions all the major Bat players for damage control as the bloodshed escalates and the various criminals who survive the initial slaughter start picking each other off. As the violence spirals Batman and team must not only save lives but also deduce which mastermind is responsible for the devious plan that threatens to wipe out crime in the city, as well as all the citizens.

© 2004 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-969-7

2004’s big crossover event throughout the regularly published Batman family of titles was called War Games, which was collected almost before you knew it – as these things usually are. One of the major problems with these publishing events is they don’t start, occur, or finish in a vacuum. Many of the events leading up to War Games were published as disparate shorter stories from the aforementioned family canon of titles. One such bunch of these featuring stories from Robin #126-128 and Detective Comics #790-796 are gathered together in the prequel War Drums.

Anything I tell you about the events of these stories (which, if you’re chronologically asking, begin just after the end of the Hush storyline – Batman: Hush vol 1 ISBN: 1-84023-718-X and vol 2 ISBN: 1-84023-738-4) beyond the fact that Robin’s girlfriend Spoiler is groomed to take his place would in fact constitute a gross spoiler of the other kind. You wouldn’t need to read some rather well-written stories by Bill Willingham and Andersen Gabrych, drawn by the likes of Pete Woods, Damion Scott and Brad Walker with all the usual contributions from a whole lot of other people, which would be a shame.

This is standard Batman fare, which, if you’re a Batman fan, you would like. There are evil pop divas, kidnapped babies, loads of fighting and for a change, teen angst is kept to a minimum. There is however an inescapable feeling of characters treading water while waiting for a hammer to fall.

© 2005 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

 

By Matt Wagner (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-495-1

The concluding volume of Matt Wagner’s reinterpretation of two of Batman’s earliest and most iconic triumphs features a classic duel with the Dark Knight’s most obvious antithesis – a vampire. A flamboyant, magical bat monster to combat the grim, steely rationalism of this hero was an obvious conceit when Gardner Fox wrote it in 1939 (Detective Comics #31 and #32 – most recently reprinted in Batman Chronicles Volume 1 ISBN 1-84576-036-0) and Wagner proves that it still has merit.

Following on from Batman and the Monster Men with the sub-plot of Bruce Wayne’s first girlfriend Julie Madison and her tragically flawed father, this subtle blending of high gothic fantasy and modern Goth sensibility sees a mysterious cult leader moving into the upper and lower echelons of Gotham society, recruiting thugs , seducing the glitterati and killing at a whim.

Still in his first year of his mission, the inexperienced Batman must reassess his role and his beliefs before his city can be saved.

This is great story-telling, beautifully illustrated, paying proper respect to the triumphs of the past whilst reverently refreshing them for the modern reader. This is a classic Batman that everybody can enjoy – and should.

© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By A. J. Lieberman, Al Barrionuevo & Javier Pina (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-258-4

The worst thing about major events in comics publishing – as elsewhere, sadly – is the blind compulsion to follow up and cash in on them. There were a whole bunch of years between Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and the recent sequel, and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have thus far resisted all urgings to revisit Watchmen. But it was inevitable that Hush, Batman’s dark opposite, would return sooner rather than later.

Relying on the tired plot premise that ‘everything you know is wrong’, and yet another string of guest-stars to bolster a weak and confusing storyline. Here it involves a battle for crime supremacy among insane super-criminals (Joker, Riddler and even the Penguin) intent on outsmarting each other, but this frankly bewildering mess could have benefited from fewer chapters and stricter editing, although the art is pretty good and Batman fans as much as any follower of long-running characters, have grown used to dry patches and occasional troughs between all those epic high points.

Originally published in Gotham Knights issues #50-55, the volume also contains a nominal epilogue from issue #66 featuring Hush’s hired thug Prometheus and the assorted villains from the criminal Society that plagued DC’s hero community since the onset of Infinite Crisis. This one is so very Not Recommended for anyone trying a graphic novel for the first time.

© 2004, 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

Volume 1
By Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee and Scott Williams (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84023-718-X

 

Volume 2
By Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee and Scott Williams (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84023-738-4

These are collections of the multi-part, mega-epic that ran in Batman #608-619. The plot is pretty negligible, as a mysterious foe assembles all the Dark Knight’s arch-enemies to have another pop at him, and despite only introducing one new character, dares us all to guess who the mastermind can possibly be.

Overblown, over-hyped and histrionic, it’s the perfect equivalent to the mindless, summer-movie blockbuster, technically and visually attractive but with no real meat on its bones. Such a disappointment considering the quality that all the creators are capable of producing.

Still, this is the shallow stuff that modern dreams seem made of and absolutely reeks of glitter, angst and testosterone in equal measure. Flashy and, I’m sure, a secret, guilty pleasure for many, I can only hope that as often happens, what succeeding creators do with the aftermath will make all the fuss eventual worthwhile and sensible.

™ & © 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.