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A review by athena_rose922
Batman: Death and the Maidens by Greg Rucka
5.0
This is one of my favorite Batman stories of all time and Greg Rucka is most of the reason for that. Nyssa is a complex villain who was sadly squandered by later writers, which is why I'm glad she'll be appearing on the Arrow series if only because it might make more people pick up this book.
One of the other things that makes it stand out to me is that is Martha Wayne, a character who sadly gets very little character development in most other stories, with a large part of her character being the fact that she was wearing pearls the night she was killed. The Martha in this story may or may not be anything other than a hallucination, but she still steals the show and actually gets in a few digs at her son to make him confront things he doesn't want to. One exchange that stands out to me is when Bruce is talking to Martha and says “I don’t like seeing you this way” in reference to how she appears with a bloody hole in her face, and she counters “then change it” and when he protests she says “This is how you remember me. Shot in the neck, coated in gore, dying in an alley. Not the nicest memory to have one of one’s mother. And if you don’t like it, son, maybe you should remember me in a different way.”
And Ra's al Ghul, despite being the primary antagonist, also gets several good lines directed at Batman that add some moral greyness into this story, such as when he accuses Batman of killing him via the destruction of his Lazarus Pits and compares it to denying a diabetic insulin, to which Batman can only offer a half-assed reply.
The one criticism I have is that the art seems off in several places, particularly one panel where Talia's waist just looks wrong and leaves her looking semi-insectoid. However this only appears once and seems to have just been a one-off error, but nonetheless is distracting when it does show up during a big dramatic reveal, especially since earlier in the book there are several actual concentration camp survivors who look equally as spindly but are supposed to look unhealthy.
One of the other things that makes it stand out to me is that is Martha Wayne, a character who sadly gets very little character development in most other stories, with a large part of her character being the fact that she was wearing pearls the night she was killed. The Martha in this story may or may not be anything other than a hallucination, but she still steals the show and actually gets in a few digs at her son to make him confront things he doesn't want to. One exchange that stands out to me is when Bruce is talking to Martha and says “I don’t like seeing you this way” in reference to how she appears with a bloody hole in her face, and she counters “then change it” and when he protests she says “This is how you remember me. Shot in the neck, coated in gore, dying in an alley. Not the nicest memory to have one of one’s mother. And if you don’t like it, son, maybe you should remember me in a different way.”
And Ra's al Ghul, despite being the primary antagonist, also gets several good lines directed at Batman that add some moral greyness into this story, such as when he accuses Batman of killing him via the destruction of his Lazarus Pits and compares it to denying a diabetic insulin, to which Batman can only offer a half-assed reply.
The one criticism I have is that the art seems off in several places, particularly one panel where Talia's waist just looks wrong and leaves her looking semi-insectoid. However this only appears once and seems to have just been a one-off error, but nonetheless is distracting when it does show up during a big dramatic reveal, especially since earlier in the book there are several actual concentration camp survivors who look equally as spindly but are supposed to look unhealthy.