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andrewgraphics's review
3.0
Excellent writing from Brubaker, as always, but book was hampered by exaggerated art by Scott McDaniel and never-ending storyline.
luana420's review
4.0
2000 must have been a pretty weird time for Batman, as the Schumacher movies had kinda turned the character into a laughing stock of mainstream pop culture, and the source material had to scrabble to find what would rekindle the character’s audience fires.
The first part of Brubaker’s collected run on the Bat indicates that this included a good deal of adaptation from the animated series – probably the most recent Bat-thing at that time that carried with it a large amount of cachet: there’s Montoya and Bullock, Batman is by himself, but the Batfamily is KINDA there on the edges, Batman is serious but not sociopathic, …
Brubaker focuses mostly on few-frills organized crime stuff (not entirely no-frills cuz you still got the Penguin as a major player, as well as the main villain being an assassin with cyborg eyes) to great effect. It’s smart to have your introductory arc be about Batman caring about a (former) Wayne employee and doing his best to make sure he ends up right. It puts his obsessive behavior into a context of absolute good intentions and you’re basically set for the rest of the book with your emotional attachments.
I had never heard of Bruce Wayne’s bodyguard Sasha, and I thought she was a really cool/smart addition to the Batfamily; a non-costumed yet competent female presence that makes sense in the Wayne front context. A dummy playboy would have a bodyguard, right?
The absence of Alfred besides in flashbacks at first struck me as a weird choice, but then I realized… maybe Alfred was dead or something at this point in continuity? Who knows! One never knows with a high-profile book like this!
Speaking of high-profile: Brubaker is actually quite good at incorporating whatever the fuck big event was happening over in Metropolis. I was not lost, confused, or pissed off at a part of the book being spent in setting up a story I had no intention of purchasing elsewhere. A construction site explosion happens, turns out to be a Luthor cover-up, Bruce goes to tell Clark. Simple, easy, contained.
Also different from the previous Bat-collections I’d read, which would usually be single issue stories, this one had Zeiss, the aforementioned enhanced assassin, as kind of a lingering threat while Batman dealt with other shit, kinda like a season villain. I mean, I had read miniseries and multi-parters before, but the Zeiss/Moxon stuff just kept going beyond little arcs, which was cool.
At one point an issue stars with a voice-over that Joker had busted out a bunch of Arkham inmates and juiced em up with… Joker roids? Rather than feeling I missed out on something, or I was dropped in the middle of it, it felt like “yeah Batman is really busy” and one of the Joker Roid victims turned out to have some part in the Zeiss story.
If I were to point one disappointment I had, it’s actually the anticlimactic resolution of the Zeiss arc; he just randomly kills a bag man for no reason and Batman intimidates someone who knows about it to testify.
The first part of Brubaker’s collected run on the Bat indicates that this included a good deal of adaptation from the animated series – probably the most recent Bat-thing at that time that carried with it a large amount of cachet: there’s Montoya and Bullock, Batman is by himself, but the Batfamily is KINDA there on the edges, Batman is serious but not sociopathic, …
Brubaker focuses mostly on few-frills organized crime stuff (not entirely no-frills cuz you still got the Penguin as a major player, as well as the main villain being an assassin with cyborg eyes) to great effect. It’s smart to have your introductory arc be about Batman caring about a (former) Wayne employee and doing his best to make sure he ends up right. It puts his obsessive behavior into a context of absolute good intentions and you’re basically set for the rest of the book with your emotional attachments.
I had never heard of Bruce Wayne’s bodyguard Sasha, and I thought she was a really cool/smart addition to the Batfamily; a non-costumed yet competent female presence that makes sense in the Wayne front context. A dummy playboy would have a bodyguard, right?
The absence of Alfred besides in flashbacks at first struck me as a weird choice, but then I realized… maybe Alfred was dead or something at this point in continuity? Who knows! One never knows with a high-profile book like this!
Speaking of high-profile: Brubaker is actually quite good at incorporating whatever the fuck big event was happening over in Metropolis. I was not lost, confused, or pissed off at a part of the book being spent in setting up a story I had no intention of purchasing elsewhere. A construction site explosion happens, turns out to be a Luthor cover-up, Bruce goes to tell Clark. Simple, easy, contained.
Also different from the previous Bat-collections I’d read, which would usually be single issue stories, this one had Zeiss, the aforementioned enhanced assassin, as kind of a lingering threat while Batman dealt with other shit, kinda like a season villain. I mean, I had read miniseries and multi-parters before, but the Zeiss/Moxon stuff just kept going beyond little arcs, which was cool.
At one point an issue stars with a voice-over that Joker had busted out a bunch of Arkham inmates and juiced em up with… Joker roids? Rather than feeling I missed out on something, or I was dropped in the middle of it, it felt like “yeah Batman is really busy” and one of the Joker Roid victims turned out to have some part in the Zeiss story.
If I were to point one disappointment I had, it’s actually the anticlimactic resolution of the Zeiss arc; he just randomly kills a bag man for no reason and Batman intimidates someone who knows about it to testify.
melspeth's review
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
writtenbysime's review
4.0
Ed Brubaker’s BATMAN run in the early 2000’s, alongside Greg Rucka’s stint on DETECTIVE COMICS, rank as my favourite period in Batman comics history. Yes, in my mind, it even eclipses the brilliant work being done by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo right now — and that stuff is great. Some of my adoration is nostalgia, sure — I was fourteen when the issues first landed at my local newsagency — but make no mistake, Brubaker’s BATMAN comics are unmissable. Full of hardboiled narration, the perfect blend of super-heroics and dark, gritty crime, Batman by Ed Brubaker features all the ingredients the award-winning writer has plucked for his legendary Marvel Comics work and his brilliant creator-owned comics.
Batman by Ed Brubaker introduces the killer Zeiss who, with his specially-designed goggles, has the capability of memorising the Caped Crusader’s many fighting styles, thereby giving him the edge in combat. His arrival in Gotham City ignites a chain of events that weigh heavily on Batman. First, Jeremy Samuels —Bruce Wayne’s chief of security before the death of his family drove him over the edge — is paroled from prison, but quickly finds himself back amongst the criminal element, a pawn in Zeiss’s game, which is itself tied to the Penguin; then Mallory Moxon and her father, Lew — once a Gotham mob boss – return to the city, and quickly find themselves the target of the master-assassin Deadshot.
The trouble with this collection is that – because of the nature of comics – there are a variety of plot holes and sudden divergences in its focus. The Zeiss plot takes a backseat when the company-wide crossover event Our Worlds at War occurred, and the collection doesn’t adequately explain when / why Jim Gordon retires from the GCPD (he was shot) or when Sasha (Bruce’s bodyguard) learns his secret identity. This isn’t Brubaker’s fault – at the time, BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS (in fact, the whole line of ‘Bat-Family’ titles) were linked, so the universe was cohesive; but read like this, in standalone form, more than a decade later these holes are gaping. Veteran comics readers will power through undaunted; new readers might be slightly perturbed.
Scott McDaniel’s dynamic artwork is just as memorable as Brubaker’s writing; I can’t think of one without the other. McDaniel is, simply, an eminent storyteller, and excels when gifted whole pages or large panels to demonstrate his style. The combat scenes are spectacularly choreographed, and he’s just as skilled at the quieter moments. Batman in the shadows, crouched above Gotham in the rain, has never looked so menacing.
When I reminisce on my ‘golden age’ of comic book reading, I think of Ed Brubaker’s BATMAN. This collection served as a wonderful trip down memory lane, but besides that, I was thrilled it has stood the test of time.
Batman by Ed Brubaker introduces the killer Zeiss who, with his specially-designed goggles, has the capability of memorising the Caped Crusader’s many fighting styles, thereby giving him the edge in combat. His arrival in Gotham City ignites a chain of events that weigh heavily on Batman. First, Jeremy Samuels —Bruce Wayne’s chief of security before the death of his family drove him over the edge — is paroled from prison, but quickly finds himself back amongst the criminal element, a pawn in Zeiss’s game, which is itself tied to the Penguin; then Mallory Moxon and her father, Lew — once a Gotham mob boss – return to the city, and quickly find themselves the target of the master-assassin Deadshot.
The trouble with this collection is that – because of the nature of comics – there are a variety of plot holes and sudden divergences in its focus. The Zeiss plot takes a backseat when the company-wide crossover event Our Worlds at War occurred, and the collection doesn’t adequately explain when / why Jim Gordon retires from the GCPD (he was shot) or when Sasha (Bruce’s bodyguard) learns his secret identity. This isn’t Brubaker’s fault – at the time, BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS (in fact, the whole line of ‘Bat-Family’ titles) were linked, so the universe was cohesive; but read like this, in standalone form, more than a decade later these holes are gaping. Veteran comics readers will power through undaunted; new readers might be slightly perturbed.
Scott McDaniel’s dynamic artwork is just as memorable as Brubaker’s writing; I can’t think of one without the other. McDaniel is, simply, an eminent storyteller, and excels when gifted whole pages or large panels to demonstrate his style. The combat scenes are spectacularly choreographed, and he’s just as skilled at the quieter moments. Batman in the shadows, crouched above Gotham in the rain, has never looked so menacing.
When I reminisce on my ‘golden age’ of comic book reading, I think of Ed Brubaker’s BATMAN. This collection served as a wonderful trip down memory lane, but besides that, I was thrilled it has stood the test of time.
jokoloyo's review
2.0
The earlier stories up to Batman ruined the Penguin's business were good. This comic was telling stories from Batman's POV as flawed character (behind the mask, Batman was just a normal person who made mistakes, need friends' comfort, and have some idealistic hopes) and how Bruce Wayne's role in stories was more influential than just as rich-guy donated fund to clean-up the debris from the destructive battles between Gotham City's law enforcer (and Batman family) vs. lunatic criminals. I was tempted to gave between 3 or 4 star.
But then the next stories mixed the Gotham City crime plots with very unusual plots for Batman comics: aliens from outer space!!! :( The alien plot deducted 1 star from my rating.
But then the next stories mixed the Gotham City crime plots with very unusual plots for Batman comics: aliens from outer space!!! :( The alien plot deducted 1 star from my rating.
booknooknoggin's review
3.0
Always enjoy Brubaker's writing on crime elements, but wasn't a fan of the artwork for this.
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