Sunday, April 26, 2009

Battle for the Cowl: Man Bat


I'm not sure I was clamoring for a one-shot showing that Kirk Langstrom can turn into Man Bat without his serum. That basically makes him into a new super-dude, rather than a misguided scientist constantly dragged into the super-world. I must have missed something pretty big too, since Lynx was fighting off street thugs and trying to cover for Batman. I thought Lynx was King Snake's old right-hand lady and a bad girl? Joe Harris has some neat scenes where Langstrom is desperate to find his wife, and I was surprised that she survived, to be honest. It was a neat bit to have Oracle reach out to her after she figured prominently into Chuck Dixon's run on Outsiders a few months ago. I'm not exactly sure why Langstrom flew off in a panic though, did he kill Dr. Phosphorous? Phosphorous is a tough villain to use. He's so powerful that he really should beat most everyone. After reading the Gordon 1-shot, it seems that Black Mask only had plans for a few of the Arkham escapees, and a fair amount just get to go free and cause trouble. This whole issue seemed kind of unnecessary. The Outsiders were interesting too, I was surprised to see them show up and basically function as an audience in this one. What was the point of them appearing?

Jim Caliafore is a decent artist who has been tagged as a fill in type guy in Gotham recently. I like his work, but nothing here was tremendous.

Average

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