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A review by superintendantchoamers
Batman: Road to No Man's Land, Vol. 1 by Chuck Dixon, Roger Robinson, Mark Buckingham, Alan Grant, Jim Aparo, Denny O'Neil
2.0
Gotham has been hit by a massive earthquake! Disaster on an unfathomable scale for the Dark Knight to handle! That was the hook the brought me back to a storyline I vaguely read as a kid (the last big name comic publisher's arc I remember ever following, actually).
Here I go, embarking on this journey. Well folks, the results are not great. This prelude volume sets the scenery in some capacity, but goes absolutely nowhere with it. We have standalone issue after standalone issue where either Batman broods over his own issues and how bad things are in Gotham, maaaaybe dealing with a C-tier villain or some looters (more on that later), or a B/C-tier hero does some minor good deed.
I was hoping there might be some redeeming artwork among this shambles, but it's all rather hohum at best. Lots of wonky action sequences, generic scenes of Gotham in ruins. The worst offense here is the ridiculously tropey portrayal of practically anyone non-white. There is almost clinical attention paid to making poor people (whether they are quake victims or petty criminals) look like caricatures.
I've recently reread part of No Man's Land volume 1 & 2, and what strikes me with Road to No Man's Land Volume 1 is how little the plot advances. I feel like I probably could have skipped this Road to No Man's Land duology, since all three works I've read are effectively the same misery porn, detailing the destruction and sorrow of a city literally torn asunder. Famine and disease spread like wildfire, criminals and super criminals alike thrive in the chaos, buildings collapse, innocents die, and Batman.... has to deal with the logistics of bringing in a construction company to repair the batcave without revealing his identity. It's almost satirical how little the caped crusader does in this volume, aside from handle his own personal issues, like defending his parents' coffins from looters.
Looters are the biggest antagonist in Road to No Man's Land, which is amusing, reading this in the middle of a pandemic, with several decades and numerous national tragedies making up ground between present day and when No Man's Land was conceived and written. Little effort is made to indicate that people are turning to crime out of desperation, simply that bad actors are taking advantage of the overworked emergency services. It's all banal "thugs besieging a hospital to steal narcotics" type stories that are utterly laughable today, and they likely were laughable when they were written.
Onward and forwards to volume 2. Let's hope there's something good in those pages.
Here I go, embarking on this journey. Well folks, the results are not great. This prelude volume sets the scenery in some capacity, but goes absolutely nowhere with it. We have standalone issue after standalone issue where either Batman broods over his own issues and how bad things are in Gotham, maaaaybe dealing with a C-tier villain or some looters (more on that later), or a B/C-tier hero does some minor good deed.
I was hoping there might be some redeeming artwork among this shambles, but it's all rather hohum at best. Lots of wonky action sequences, generic scenes of Gotham in ruins. The worst offense here is the ridiculously tropey portrayal of practically anyone non-white. There is almost clinical attention paid to making poor people (whether they are quake victims or petty criminals) look like caricatures.
I've recently reread part of No Man's Land volume 1 & 2, and what strikes me with Road to No Man's Land Volume 1 is how little the plot advances. I feel like I probably could have skipped this Road to No Man's Land duology, since all three works I've read are effectively the same misery porn, detailing the destruction and sorrow of a city literally torn asunder. Famine and disease spread like wildfire, criminals and super criminals alike thrive in the chaos, buildings collapse, innocents die, and Batman.... has to deal with the logistics of bringing in a construction company to repair the batcave without revealing his identity. It's almost satirical how little the caped crusader does in this volume, aside from handle his own personal issues, like defending his parents' coffins from looters.
Looters are the biggest antagonist in Road to No Man's Land, which is amusing, reading this in the middle of a pandemic, with several decades and numerous national tragedies making up ground between present day and when No Man's Land was conceived and written. Little effort is made to indicate that people are turning to crime out of desperation, simply that bad actors are taking advantage of the overworked emergency services. It's all banal "thugs besieging a hospital to steal narcotics" type stories that are utterly laughable today, and they likely were laughable when they were written.
Onward and forwards to volume 2. Let's hope there's something good in those pages.