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A review by unladylike
Batman by Azzarello & Risso Deluxe Edition (Batman by Brian Azzarello
3.0
2 stars for first Gotham Knights #8 and main Broken City arc
4 stars for Flashpoint: Knights of Vengeance and Wednesday Comics #1-12
This edition is three, wait, no, four stories, according to the back cover, though the first feels more like a prologue to set the tone, more than its own story. All with the same writer and artist, all in black and white.
First there's a single issue focusing on Zsasz, which I was not fond of.
The bulk of the book is called Broken City, and it is mostly an attempt at emulating Frank Miller's Sin City books. Certain panels look like they were Xeroxed from those pages! I didn't *hate* the gritty noir style, but it felt forced, and I did not like the characterizations of various well-known and beloved people like Batman, Croc, and Penguin. Bruce narrates the whole thing in a voice like classic noir detectives, and the villains even address him as "detective," but why? He doesn't do any quality detecting. Most of these issues is just watching Batman beating people to a pulp with little to no reason. In fact, the most interesting thing about the story is examining his failure and how easily he's misdirected. He projects his ego and pain onto situations and then lashes out in anger, looking for targets in the wrong places.
I'm glad I stuck with it though, because the second two stories are where the quality writing's at. Brian Azzarello has written some really great comics, and the weekly miniseries is a great example of how a whole arc can be told in one-page chapters. The panels and art are really stellar here (I know, I use that word a lot when I like something.)
The best part of this collection is the Flashpoint arc, told in an alternate earth of the multiverse that we see encountered in other titles, where it was Bruce who was slain in Crime Alley and Thomas Wayne goes on to become a more brutal - and criminally entangled - version of Batman. The story has good twists and drama that elicited a variety of emotions from me while reading it.
4 stars for Flashpoint: Knights of Vengeance and Wednesday Comics #1-12
This edition is three, wait, no, four stories, according to the back cover, though the first feels more like a prologue to set the tone, more than its own story. All with the same writer and artist, all in black and white.
First there's a single issue focusing on Zsasz, which I was not fond of.
The bulk of the book is called Broken City, and it is mostly an attempt at emulating Frank Miller's Sin City books. Certain panels look like they were Xeroxed from those pages! I didn't *hate* the gritty noir style, but it felt forced, and I did not like the characterizations of various well-known and beloved people like Batman, Croc, and Penguin. Bruce narrates the whole thing in a voice like classic noir detectives, and the villains even address him as "detective," but why? He doesn't do any quality detecting. Most of these issues is just watching Batman beating people to a pulp with little to no reason. In fact, the most interesting thing about the story is examining his failure and how easily he's misdirected. He projects his ego and pain onto situations and then lashes out in anger, looking for targets in the wrong places.
I'm glad I stuck with it though, because the second two stories are where the quality writing's at. Brian Azzarello has written some really great comics, and the weekly miniseries is a great example of how a whole arc can be told in one-page chapters. The panels and art are really stellar here (I know, I use that word a lot when I like something.)
The best part of this collection is the Flashpoint arc, told in an alternate earth of the multiverse that we see encountered in other titles, where it was Bruce who was slain in Crime Alley and Thomas Wayne goes on to become a more brutal - and criminally entangled - version of Batman. The story has good twists and drama that elicited a variety of emotions from me while reading it.