Review: Batman: Year One

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the good Frank Miller Batman story. A man on a mission is the premise of the story. This is the Batman story that you can let your friends read and they can understand why Batman is cool. This story has the drama and action that you expect from Batman. It also shows that his is not the only life affected by living in Gotham City. The art carries parts of the story that don't need words. I think of Frank Millers Daredevil work and realize that his stories with Mazzuccheli are as gripping as Year One. This is the Frank Miller that is a great writer. This is him at best when writing superhero-noir comics. I recommend this book over the Dark Knight Returns so you should give this a try for yourself.

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Review: Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga Vol. 1: The Classic Manga Available in English in Its Entirety for the First Time!

Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga Vol. 1: The Classic Manga Available in English in Its Entirety for the First Time! by Jiro Kuwata
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was very Japanese from the '60s

If you've ever watched Speed Racer or some anime from the '60s or '70s this comic will be familiar to you. The stories are fine for what they are. The typical villains are not in this book so don't expect to see them. The book reads quickly and the plots are repetitive but its not bad if you can get past the first story.

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Review: Doomsday Clock The Complete Collection

Doomsday Clock The Complete Collection by Geoff Johns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nice try but misses the mark

If there was anyone who I think could possibly create a worthy successor to Watchmen it would be, Warren Ellis. I would have Mark Millar as a second option. I enjoy Geoff Johns other works greatly but he’s not the person who could do a sequel to Watchmen justice. With that said his best shot at doing a Watchmen sequel would be if he somehow combined it with the DC universe. That is what this book tries to do.

It fails but at least it tried.

The problem is that Geoff understands Watchmen from the point of the original source material. That is the characters that inspired Watchmen that Alan Moore used as the template for his story. Geoff knows those characters very well but doesn’t know them in the form that they are in during the Watchmen story. He does try to build on what Moore did by adding MiracleMans Kid MiralceMan in the form of Black Adam but it doesn’t work. In the end he tries to keep the Watchmen universe going but in a more Hopeful manner. Unfortunately he doesn’t get that the Watchmen aren’t built off Hope. That universe is built off pure possibility with Hope being just one of many possible outcomes. That’s why the ending of Watchmen is so ambiguous. Geoff trying to only leave that world with Hope goes against the grain of what made that world such an amazing book to read.

That’s why Ellis or Millar would have done a better job if this was a follow-up to Watchmen. It is better then that terrible HBO adaptation but it’s far from what it could have been. Even if you look at it like s Superman story, which is what it really is, it’s still just a nice try. I don’t think Geoff was trying to imitate Alan Moore but he did try to maintain some of the tone that Moore used in Watchmen. It didn’t work out well for Johns. It just points out how different he is from Moore. I appreciate that about Johns. His work is more aspirational then Moores is. I just hope that next time everyone just stays in their own wheelhouse. So for now this version of a Watchmen sequel falls short of what came before it but that was always a possibility.

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Review: Batman: The Imposter

Batman: The Imposter by Mattson Tomlin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was another Anti-Batman story that was just okay. The first half of the book was interesting. It reads like it could be turned into a movie but the second half is rushed. You can figure out who the fake Batman halfway through the book. There are many threads in the book that are unnecessary and are left to dangle by the end of the story. The art is fine but if the story was better that might have made the whole thing better. There are better versions of this story available so this one just gets added the list of Anti-Batman stories.

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Review: Batman: The Detective

Batman: The Detective by Tom Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a new version of the Anti-Batman story which is fine. There are better versions of that kind of story compared to this one. Reading Batman: The Wraith is just as good as reading this book. The only difference is that the Anti-Batman in this book is a woman so it just changes the motivation for that character. The story is silly at many points with Batman apparently knowing every single person he's ever saved. As well as having diplomatic immunity across Europe there were many points in the story that were just plain silly.. It was good to see Andy Kuberts art in a Batman book. I've been reading books with his work since Batman versus Predator so this was a visually appealing book. Overall this is just fine with Kuberts artwork making the story better then if a lesser artist was drawing this story.

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Review: Batman: The Black Mirror

Batman: The Black Mirror by Scott Snyder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was good but it's very reminiscent of the Hush storyline. This is Hush but for Dick Graysons Batman. That's not a bad thing but it does take something away from the story. The concept is that Dick has someone who is his own dark reflection from his past come back to ruin his life. While this works well there are a few inconsistencies that lower the rating of this story for me. One involves if Dick had been paying attention to something earlier someone may have been saved instead of losing their limbs, jaw and an eye. It might seem minor but that and throwing in the Joker into the story randomly brings the story down. The end is fine but it feels like could have been better.

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