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A review by njdarkish
Batman Vol. 7: The Wedding by Tom King
3.0
There are problems with this collection.
First, a lot of this has been collected in a bunch of other volumes-- The Wedding Gallery, Preludes to the Wedding, even bits in volume 6, Bride or Burglar. But that set aside, it just wasn't a great arc, for the most part.
First, the Booster Gold mini-arc that makes up the beginning was bad. For starters, I felt like it was a weirdly watered-down version of Flashpoint, but in a way that was much less interesting and worn-out. Look, we've seen alternate histories where the Waynes live, or Bruce is the one who dies, or whatever. We don't need it for the fiftieth time. Plus, Booster is supposed to be the greatest hero you've never heard of, which means that for many readers, this might be the first time coming across him. Maybe show him in a way that makes him seem less sloppy and useless, eh?
Then we have the Joker in the cathedral section. That was pretty solid, I liked it a lot.
And then we get to the wedding itself. First, it's something that's been built up to for a good bit, and they obviously went all-in, with a ton of guest artists and the like, which is cool. Except, [SPOILERS] they don't actually have the wedding. Screw that. I was ready for the wedding. I was ready for a little growth and character change in Batman and Catwoman. Frankly, the changes and developments that led to this were refreshing and interesting and a lot of fun, and it fit the characters and the arc of Batman in some of the other books (like Detective Comics) as well. I feel like everybody was set for this, but then they wimped out on actually pulling the trigger on something that would change Batman as a person on a permanent basis. Also, just a little bit ago we had a flash-forward to right after Bruce's death and Selina was there as his widow, so let the even be what it promises to be, instead of pulling back so you can have a future volume titled The ACTUAL Wedding. [/SPOILERS]
First, a lot of this has been collected in a bunch of other volumes-- The Wedding Gallery, Preludes to the Wedding, even bits in volume 6, Bride or Burglar. But that set aside, it just wasn't a great arc, for the most part.
First, the Booster Gold mini-arc that makes up the beginning was bad. For starters, I felt like it was a weirdly watered-down version of Flashpoint, but in a way that was much less interesting and worn-out. Look, we've seen alternate histories where the Waynes live, or Bruce is the one who dies, or whatever. We don't need it for the fiftieth time. Plus, Booster is supposed to be the greatest hero you've never heard of, which means that for many readers, this might be the first time coming across him. Maybe show him in a way that makes him seem less sloppy and useless, eh?
Then we have the Joker in the cathedral section. That was pretty solid, I liked it a lot.
And then we get to the wedding itself. First, it's something that's been built up to for a good bit, and they obviously went all-in, with a ton of guest artists and the like, which is cool. Except, [SPOILERS] they don't actually have the wedding. Screw that. I was ready for the wedding. I was ready for a little growth and character change in Batman and Catwoman. Frankly, the changes and developments that led to this were refreshing and interesting and a lot of fun, and it fit the characters and the arc of Batman in some of the other books (like Detective Comics) as well. I feel like everybody was set for this, but then they wimped out on actually pulling the trigger on something that would change Batman as a person on a permanent basis. Also, just a little bit ago we had a flash-forward to right after Bruce's death and Selina was there as his widow, so let the even be what it promises to be, instead of pulling back so you can have a future volume titled The ACTUAL Wedding. [/SPOILERS]