Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Batman #695

This is not a good comic. It is as if Tony Daniel has a bunch of ideas and he's trying to blast them all out onto the page as quickly as he can. There's the return of the Falcone family, a sprawling group of mobsters, including a sneak who can give Catwoman a run for her money. The Black Mask gang has taken over some part of Gotham, I'm unclear on the goal or what is going on, but everyone is talking about it. Something is happening at Arkham Asylum, but I'm unclear on what it is. The Riddler is starting to turn bad again, because he was caught in an explosion, ruining a great tweener turn that made the Riddler more interesting than he's been in years. Then there's the return of the Reaper, a great villain from a classic Batman story, but he's lost in the shuffle. Oh, and Huntress shows up too. That is way too many elements in one comic. I can't make any sense of what is happening or really, even figure out what is the focus of the comic.

Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention or I need to re-read each issue three times, but I'm just lost.

Tony Daniel's art is a maddening mix of great looking pin-ups and unclear storytelling. I think as a cover and pin-up artist, he's quite good, but I get lost in combat and the sequential nature of some scenes are unclear. I'm actually a bit surprised this is the core Bat-title.

Poor

4 comments:

Martin Gray said...

Sounds busy, to say the least. I'm surprised to hear the Reaper is in there, wasn't he from Batman Year Two? I thought that story had been de-canonised.

Martin Gray said...

PS, what's a 'tweener turn'?

Timbotron said...

LOL, it's a wrestling term I should have explained. It's when a good or bad guy starts behaving in an unexpected manner. That is, a good guy starts beating down on people more than he should, or a bad guy starts helping a good guy.

StevenW said...

I'm SO glad it's not just me that's totally confused how this book can be published! I was absolutely enjoying Winick's run as Dick discovered what it's like to be Batman, but it ends for this cr@p?! Not. Cool.