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bstratton's review
4.0
Lots of good stuff in here. Milligan and Dwyer’s “Dark Knight, Dark City” and Helfer and Sprouse’s “The Eye Of the Beholder” are especially top-notch.
captwinghead's review
1.0
There's really nothing in this that I would recommend. It serves as a clear example of the shift from classic Batman to the dark comics from the 90s when the 3 M's (Morrison, Moore and Miller) came in and decided every comic needed more murder and women as sacrificial lambs.
I'm not a fan of Wolfman's writing. I thought maybe it was just the really shitty way he wrote Cyborg and Garfield being a little creep that consistently hit on women. The more I read of his work, the more I realize it's just him. The dialogue is always just a bit... fucky. This book has lines like "Get a face, ugly!" and Tim saying "The guy looks like a jerk or something. Is he really that dangerous?" They're just awkward.
Vicki Vale continues to be a character I don't like. She's just the worst. Every interaction with Bruce appears to be her pressuring him into agreeing to dates with her and then getting mad when he doesn't seem as engaged as she wants him to be. I question how good she is at her job as a reporter with her complete inability to read a room.
The Killing Joke storyline happened in the middle of this book (not in the book per say, but timeline wise). I'd forgotten that the Joker not only paralyzed Babs, but took pictures of her naked body to send to Gordon. My hatred for that storyline aside - this was a period of time where humiliating and dehumanizing things like that happened to female characters solely so we could see the pain it caused the men in their lives. As if that isn't shitty enough, this book features Gordon talking over Babs when she says she's adjusted to life in the chair and she feels just as capable, if not better than she was before. And he's being an asshole telling her she's clearly not - because he knows better than Babs apparently. So, Gordon comes across as a dick.
There's nothing I loved here. Wolfman's clunky writing, a penguin storyline that went on for WAY too long, barely any presence of Tim (who, while not my favorite, is the reason I chose to read this).
The final storyline where the Riddler is killing henchman and newborn babies alike was just another example of this shift in comics. All Batman criminals murder children now. None of them have codes. It's so funny because when you read the celebration of 25 years (or 50?) of the Joker, they talk about how when he was introduced, he was sort of silly. He poisoned water supplies with laughing gas which really just succeeded in fucking up the fish. He wasn't a murderer at the start, but as the years went by, this silly character was turned into the kind of person that not only murders indiscriminately, but now he beats children with crowbars and tortures and humiliates women. The Riddler was a criminal who had an MO, a way of doing things but in this book, he's just a mindless killer.
It's sad to read the end of an era this way but, here it is. As compiled, there's nothing here that I'd recommend reading.
I'm not a fan of Wolfman's writing. I thought maybe it was just the really shitty way he wrote Cyborg and Garfield being a little creep that consistently hit on women. The more I read of his work, the more I realize it's just him. The dialogue is always just a bit... fucky. This book has lines like "Get a face, ugly!" and Tim saying "The guy looks like a jerk or something. Is he really that dangerous?" They're just awkward.
Vicki Vale continues to be a character I don't like. She's just the worst. Every interaction with Bruce appears to be her pressuring him into agreeing to dates with her and then getting mad when he doesn't seem as engaged as she wants him to be. I question how good she is at her job as a reporter with her complete inability to read a room.
The Killing Joke storyline happened in the middle of this book (not in the book per say, but timeline wise). I'd forgotten that the Joker not only paralyzed Babs, but took pictures of her naked body to send to Gordon. My hatred for that storyline aside - this was a period of time where humiliating and dehumanizing things like that happened to female characters solely so we could see the pain it caused the men in their lives. As if that isn't shitty enough, this book features Gordon talking over Babs when she says she's adjusted to life in the chair and she feels just as capable, if not better than she was before. And he's being an asshole telling her she's clearly not - because he knows better than Babs apparently. So, Gordon comes across as a dick.
There's nothing I loved here. Wolfman's clunky writing, a penguin storyline that went on for WAY too long, barely any presence of Tim (who, while not my favorite, is the reason I chose to read this).
It's sad to read the end of an era this way but, here it is. As compiled, there's nothing here that I'd recommend reading.
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