The WORST Bat-Comics of All Time

[wrly_bird]

Okay, Death by Bongo. I'll take you up on that! Send me an email and I'll give you my address. I'll send you a cheque for the postage, just don't send the book in a solid gold crate wrapped in banknotes... Oh, and you do live in the UK, right?

[Funt Solo]

Year 2.

It's cackapoopoo.

[Richmond Clements]

Year 2.

It's cackapoopoo.


It looks gorgeous though.

[Funt Solo]

Compared to Year One, it's just gaudy.

[Funt Solo]

Compared to Year One, it's just gaudy.

[Richmond Clements]

Mmmm... fair point!
I'm a sucker for the big flappy cape images- that's my problem.

[Wils]

It looks gorgeous though.

The Alan Davis parts certainly are, but I'd be hard pushed to describe McFarlane's art as anything but "meh" at best. All of the related Full Circle story *does* look gorgeous, although the story itself still leaves me wanting.

[Funt Solo]

"I'm an excellent driver."

[The Monarch]

Lots mentioned about war games but what about its sequal war crimes

They fucked over an even older female member of the batman cast in that one!

[Bongo Jack]

You Mean Leslie Thompkins?  They're retconning that - kind of makes a mockery of the big noise DC made at the time about her never appearing again, doesn't it?  Mind you, they're retconning the Spoiler death, too, which is a shame, I think.  They should address the problem they've created honestly, rather than just retcon the trigger event for all their reactionary woes out of canon.
War Crimes wasn't so much bad as dull, and just left me with no opinion of it other than it wasn't very interesting and the main conceit would be retconned before long.  Dull and uninteresting - that makes it pretty much a Bat-book on par rather than hitting a low.



Freckle Monster: you have mail.

[wrly_bird]

Okay, so Death by Bongo kindly sent me his copy of BATMAN: CITY OF CRIME in exchange for an â??honest opinionâ? shared online. So, as agreed, here it isâ?¦
   As DBB made clear itâ??s not one of his favourite reads. â??Offensively badâ?, he called it. Well, I wouldnâ??t go that far, but itâ??s still pretty much what you might call â??not so greatâ?, â??so-soâ? or â??kinda mehâ?.
   A little context. Originally published as DETECTIVE COMICS # 800-808, # 811-814 (2005/6) with art by Ramon Bachs (the Spanish artist who notably illustrated several STAR WARS minis for Dark Horse), BATMAN: CITY OF CRIME is the first foray into the DC/Marvel mainstream by David Lapham, the bright young thing who won two Eisner awards for his self-published crime series STRAY BULLETS. Laphamâ??s apparently a big Frank Miller fan, and, boy, does it show in CITY OF CRIMEâ??s first half. Laphamâ??s Gotham is not so much an urban Hyboria like Millerâ??s Sin City, as an oversized concrete binbag brimming with lethal human vermin that Batman canâ??t ever possibly hope to contain. Itâ??s city-living seen as existence on the Ninth Circle of Hell, an evocation that might have worked if Laphamâ??s noirish captions didnâ??t tend towards blousy poetics and laboured similes. (I loved the bit where he likens the buildings on Gothamâ??s fetid East Side to drunken old men. â??And like them, theyâ??re ugly and they smell and they laugh at their own excrement.â? Arf!)
   Anyway, the story kicks off with a fire in an apartment block that uncovers a room full of pregnant (underage) girls, used as part of a black market adoption racket run by the Penguin. (Old Cobblepotâ??s not such a bad guy, though; in his bird-infested office he at least lets his secretary use an umbrella.) Anyway, Penguin hurriedly sets about tying up all loose ends by ordering Mr Freeze to pop anyone who can connect Penguin, or his mystery employers, to the crime. Unfortunately, Freeze is still mooning over his dead wife and takes an insane shine to one of the young women heâ??s been sent to turn into a popsicle. â??This is what happens when you work with freaks,â? groans Penguin.
   Driven by a sense of guilt at the death of a 14-year-old heiress, whose overdose he inadvertently funded, Batman must track down another missing girl beforeâ?¦ before what Iâ??m not sure. The problem is thereâ??s a lot of plot going on here, with some kind of pod people/Thing-type conspiracy one minute and street-battles with armies of masked inhumans the next. (Maybe the two-issue break in the original run has something to do with the uneven tone.) The story comes into focus quite nicely, though, when Bruce ditches the tights to go undercover and investigate some dodgy goings-on at the docks. But then the plot unravels again into a final half involving the sudden incursion of a rabies-like plague that causes an outbreak of mass hysteria with an exploding landmark or two. (In fact, it pretty much resembles the crowded finale of the movie Batman Begins, released the same year.)
   Lapham only contributed this one arc for DETECTIVE (before going off to do DAREDEVIL VS. PUNISHER), which might explain why CITY OF CRIME has such an isolated, off-kilter feel, as if the writer never quite had time to explore his characters properly. Jim Gordon (after having been written out of the book several months before so he could enjoy his retirement) turns up briefly to wave his gun about and go crazy along with everyone else. Iâ??m reliably informed that pretty much the whole cast donâ??t quite act in synch with whatâ??s gone before or after on DETECTIVE, but I havenâ??t read these issues so I canâ??t say. Most unsettling are the bookâ??s queasy undercurrents. Icky suggestions of pedophilia abound, in fact too many characters seem to harbour some kind of secret hankering for underage girls. Most disturbing is the scene in which Bruce himself, in the grip of a fever, hallucinates that the dead teenage heiress declares her love for him. Why would Bruceâ??s delirious subconscious suggest such a thing if there werenâ??t some deeper suppressed feelings behind it? Maybe this is why heâ??s in a full-on clinch with a handsome middle-aged woman a page later. Clever and subtle, but â??EUW!â?
   On the plus side Bachsâ?? panels suitably teem with detail like so many germs in a Petri dish, even if his combat scenes arenâ??t particularly dynamic. And Lapham pulls off a couple of undeniably creepy bits: one of them involving the Ventriloquist in the aftermath of a hit (â??Kill, Kill, Kill, All you Gastards!â?), the other involving Freeze arranging his â??wedding guestsâ?? in a meat locker â?? we can probably let Freeze off the hook here, by the way, regarding the age of his reluctant betrothed, as the poor crazy guy thinks sheâ??s his dead wife. (The Great Beard did much a better job of portraying love-sick villainy in Mortal Clay, BATMAN ANNUAL # 11, 1987.)
   So there you have it; as much of a review as I can give on a single reading of BATMAN: CITY OF CRIME and the fact that I donâ??t fancy reading it again any time soon is probably enough of a verdict in itselfâ?¦

[TordelBack]

You write good, Freckster.

[LARF]

Especially: '...teem with detail like so many germs in a Petri dish.'

That evokes the image perfectly

[wrly_bird]

Fanks!

[House of Usher]

Frecklemonster is a real writer. I think you should introduce yourself, Frecklemonster!

:)