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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #19 review

Andrew Asberry — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:07:59 +0000

Here I was, all excited for more Ethan Van Sciver pencils when in fact issue #19 marks the reunion of writer Gregg Hurwitz and artist Szymon Kudranski, who haven’t worked on a Bat-story together since the great-until-the-last-two-issues Penguin Pain & Prejudice.

While I enjoyed Kudranksi’s very atmospheric style on that story, I did grow a bit tired of it with the backups in Detective Comics written by Tony Daniel. Kudranksi’s emphasis on extreme close-ups, overuse of shadows, and the occasional red saturation in moments of fury became predictable. But, thankfully, when it comes to his work on Batman: The Dark Knight #19, I felt like he brought his A-game, tried things he hadn’t done in previous bat-stories, and the colors by Hi-Fi really brought the images to life. The only pages that I didn’t care for were between Bruce and his new girlfriend Natalya. Bruce looked scrawny and had a receding hairline and Natalya’s facial expressions looked artificial like those of a store window mannequin. Flashback colors were blinding and while that might be unappealing for some I found it to give the panels the distant feel of a memory. Only the characters in the foreground, the integral moment itself is in sharp focus while the details of the environment fade away. But it’s the final pages of the book that I enjoyed the most. It’s really horrific, haunting stuff. So what I’m saying is that there’s no reason to fear the art quality taking a nosedive due to Ethan Van Sciver taking a break. If you’re a big enough fan of his, you should at least find solace in knowing that he did the fold-out cover. Now, this gatefold cover, while well drawn, inked, and colored would under ANY other circumstances be a great cover to have– as far as “WTF” gatefold covers go, this is one of the least surprising I saw this month.

What about the story, you ask? Well, for a comic with Batman’s name in it twice, the Caped Crusader hardly makes an appearance. He’s there for maybe a page or two in the final, spooky pages but everything else in the book focuses on Jervis. In the last issue we saw that Jervis’ craziness stems from having taken an experimental tesosterone drug when he was a teenager. I’m not a fan of this idea by a long shot, but I was willing to see where Hurwitz was going with it. Here in issue #19 Mad Hatter’s childhood is explored more deeply than ever before. You’ll see how the drug affected his mind and body how his world fell apart and the path to villainy began. You’ll also finally get an understanding of what his obsession with Wonderland is and what exactly he’s been building for the past 3 or 4 issues– the arc’s been going on for a while… I think this is the 4th installment. It’s drawn out too long by any count and Hurwitz needs to pace his stories more economically. Scarecrow’s reign of terror dragged for too many issues as well.

It’s a very important issue for the New 52 Mad Hatter and I’m sure it will divide people. While I don’t care at all for the drug angle, I do very much like how Hurwitz addressed the Wonderland obsession. This is an issue that may be worth checking out just so you can get in on the discussion. I’ll talk about this a bit more deeply in spoiler tags.

SHOW SPOILER ▼

The most loved and well-known origin of Mad Hatter is that from the Animated Series where Jervis was a sad, lonely man who had an affection for the old children’s story Alice in Wonderland and used that fantasy as a means of escape from his depressing life. The line between fantasy and reality blurred and when his real life crumbled he fell completely into the make-believe and became the fantastical villain who would take over a Wonderland theme park in Gotham and host tea parties with kidnapped victims he would force to play dressup. In the New 52 version, the Wonderland theme park is actually what started it all. It is the very setting for Jervis’ psychological break. The greatest day of his life was in this fairy tale world with the girl of his dreams but after having his mind twisted and his body made all the more grotesque by experimental medication, Jervis lost any chance he had with this girl. He became obsessed with her, obsessed with recapturing that moment inside the theme park. And it’s that element that I really like. Forget the drugs making him crazy, this is actually a very good excuse for why the man would be so consumed by the fiction of Alice in Wonderland. However, it doesn’t exactly solve the problem of Mad Hatter being a one-note super villain. In fact, it possibly makes it worse because instead of trying to bring victims into the expansive an imaginary world of Wonderland, he’s just trying to reenact a single moment from his childhood.

Other spoilerish points to make–

Using the hats for surveilance as well as mind control was an inventive idea that I liked and I think it’s a development that makes Hatter far more sinister than the recent ultra violence.
Bruce acting like he’s never experienced love before was awkward. “Is this what love feels like?” is a line that made me gag.
Dropping Natalya off at the symphony in his Batwing was ridiculous. Batman would never do that. It…it draws attention, you know?
After the last issue I’m sure we were all waiting to see if Hurwitz would take the predictable route of having Natalya be kidnapped by the Mad Hatter and turned into his perfect Alice. Well, that’s what he did and it’s a pretty boring direction to take the story. After trying so hard to breathe new life into the Mad Hatter’s characterization this plot development is a snooze.
What’s the point of having Mad Hatter having a rehearsal if he’s just going to kill all the crew afterwards? I guess you can just write it off as “the guy’s crazy, what more do you want?”
Wouldn’t all the people drowning themselves snap out of the trance once they got deep enough in the water for their hats to float away?
The final moment in the comic is scary. The final line delivered by Gordon is corny. After all the shit this man has seen I don’t think anything could make him drop to his knees and weep “I fear he’s going to make our city bleed.”
I still hate the idea of Tetch being turned evil first and foremost as a result of chemicals, but I suppose what Hurwitz is going for is a parallel with the mercury induced insanity of the Hatters of old.

This was an alright read with a great atmosphere thanks to Szymon Kudranski and colorist Hi-Fi, but Kudranski’s style is so vastly different from Sciver’s that it’s going to make for one extraordinarily jarring trade paperback! As for the writing of this book the romance subplot is falling flat for me and Mad Hatter’s target for the perfect Alice is a predictable and boring direction to take the arc. There are some very corny lines as well that I could have done without. At the very least, you’ll finally understand New 52 Jervis Tetch’s turn to the dark side, grasp what his latest evil plan is all about, and you’ll likely be shocked by what the first phase leaves in its wake. It could be the most disturbing Bat-title of the month. I went back and forth between a 6 and a 6.5…thereabouts. It’s not great. It’s not terrible. Quite the long review to just say “Flip through it at the comic shop and decide for yourself.” eh?

SCORE: 6.5/10

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #18 review

Andrew Asberry — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 01:04:25 +0000

Hey it’s Andrew here with another late review. These are quite a bit more relaxed since I know fewer people are going to read them and I can just let the stream of consciousness flow.

So, Batman: The Dark Knight #18. What did everybody think about it? I thought it was okay. Not really bad, but nothing spectacular either. I found myself thoroughly enjoying the artwork by Ethan Van Sciver, who’s proving to be a great fit for the series, but the new Mad Hatter origin didn’t sit well with me and Batman made some questionable choices. And why’s Batman getting his ass kicked so much lately? Heretic whooped him in Batman Inc. this week and here you’ll see not only Mad Hatter but Catwoman bring the Dark Knight to his knees. SHOW SPOILER ▼

Why’s Batman being bullied so much?

The questionable things Batman does start from page one and go throughout the book. It seems like Gregg Hurwitz was writing more for the Dick Grayson Batman than the Bruce Wayne version, really. There’s such an openness to him and he even gets kind of sarcastic with a bad guy at one point and it doesn’t read right at all. But anyway, on page one we see Bruce walking in public talking about the Mad Hatter case with Alfred over his cell phone. Seeing Bruce openly discussing Batman business on the street didn’t feel right to me. Especially since Bruce is easily one of the most famous faces in Gotham and everyone would be looking at him. Then he sees a girl in a restaurant window and he gives this weird face.

I assume the girl he sees is his ex-girlfriend but we’ve really not gotten familiar enough with how Ethan Van Sciver draws her yet to know for sure. But just judging by the context clues, that’s what makes the most sense. Still…that face…it’s the least cool I’ve ever seen Bruce Wayne.

From there we get a pretty enjoyable monologue from Tweedle-dee about how severely Batman injured him once before and we get some cool images of Batman crashing around Gotham. This is all pretty enjoyable and it leads into the origins of Mad Hatter and his Alice obsession. It’s not bad and actually pretty entertaining. I think it’s just my own bias about liking the Animated Series origin far more that’s holding me back from really accepting this new beginning of Tetch’s road to villainy. We’re being asked to accept that rather than his twisted nature coming about through a natural progression of extreme loneliness that it’s actually because he took some controversial medication as a teenager? No…no I don’t like that at all. I find the idea of an ugly man so desperate for love that he escapes into a world of fiction and then gets lost in it to be far more compelling than pills turning the short kid into a homicidal maniac. But I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see where this new, ultra-violent Mad Hatter takes us. After all, the original Mad Hatter, even the one from the Animated Series that I love so well, is quite one note. Mad Hatter, Mr. Freeze, and Man-Bat are villains that have never had a whole lot of range. It’s quite ironic that such an imaginative character as the Mad Hatter would have so little imagination when it comes to his villainous plots. So perhaps the New 52 take with all his gory blades and frequent gunshots will bring forth fresh motivations and more intricate plans full of ambition beyond recreating a tea party or two? For now though it does indeed seem like Hurwitz’s Hatter is indeed recreating a fairy tale but he’s going about it in a more gruesome way and I’m not feeling it.

The appearance of Catwoman I touched on earlier really had no place here at all other than to add some levity to all the blood splattered Hatter panels. And it’s good to see Catwoman written competently again. The problem was that while Catwoman felt right to me, Batman didn’t. You can check the spoiler tags I did in the first paragraph as an example.

The bulk of the issue is Batman doing detective work, which is nice, and the Mad Hatter flashbacks, which are beautifully drawn and colored. I think it’s worth it to the curious to pick this up just to see what exactly I’m talking about with the new direction for Mad Hatter whether you love it or hate it. But Batman… I think most of you would agree with me that what he does on the last few pages is hard to swallow. SHOW SPOILER ▼

Worth picking up? If you’ve been reading this arc since the beginning, sure. If you’re curious about the new Mad Hatter origin and have $3 bucks to spare, sure. Is it must-reading? Not really. There’s some excellent artwork here but the overabundance of unnecessary gore and stilettos with Mad Hatter and the overly open and sarcastic Batman turn me off. Ya know, even though I said this late review would play out differently than usual, I think it turned out about the same. About 1000 words worth of me rambling.

SCORE: 6.5/10

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #17 review

Andrew Asberry — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 03:46:09 +0000

Before we get into the comic itself let’s take a moment to appreciate how cool this cover is. Ethan Van Sciver really put a lot of detail into this so take a few minutes to note all the mushrooms, the white rabbit holding a gun, the skull flowers, the Cheshire cat that is now a Cheshire bat, and is that Thomas and Martha Wayne dead on the staircase? As crazy-cool as this coer is, it’s Hi-Fi that really brought this baby home. Compare the black and white variant with the full color version:

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #16 review

Andrew Asberry — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:36:02 +0000

Batman: The Dark Knight is back with a bold new look to kick off a story centered around The Mad Hatter. Is it worth buying or is this one Bat-title too man?

This new story begins rather similarly to what we saw from the Scarecrow arc’s first installment. It’s another missing person’s case and it has the whole city on edge. However, after you get past that the similarities cease. There aren’t any flashbacks to Mad Hatter’s past or anything either like we saw in Pain & Prejudice and the Scarecrow arc. In fact, the entire structure differs from what we saw in Hurwitz’s other two stories by beginning with a bang. Whereas Penguin and Scarecrow’s tales started out very slowly and road that pace out until their final chapter where things got crazy, this issue is almost entirely action. There are some very cool sequences here that involve the Batplane and when things get violent, they get really violent. If you read the Scarecrow arc you know what sort of gore Hurwitz is capable of including in his stories and if you enjoy that you won’t be disappointed here. The story only ever slows down (and boy does it ever) for a scene between Bruce and his girlfriend Natalya. That scene is only three pages long and arranged in a creative way so that the panels resemble the keys of a piano (Natalya is a pianist) but what happened in those attractive panels plodded along and was a struggle to get through. We’ve just not been given a reason to care about Natalya yet so seeing her and Bruce arguing about their relationship is pretty boring especially since we’ve seen this all before and it’s a scene that falls directly after a high speed chase. Going through that dull lover’s quarrel just gave me enough of a breather to start wondering where exactly Mad Hatter was in all of this. Thankfully, he does make an appearance a page or so later but by then the comic is over. It all ends rather quickly and without any clear vision of what this arc will be about so I fear it’s not going to convince many readers to come back for more, even if the artwork is well done.

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #15 review

Andrew Asberry — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 02:08:14 +0000

Call me crazy, but wasn’t there a huge-ass blimp at the end of issue #14? I distinctly remember a scene in which Scarecrow visited the Penguin and was all like “Hey, do you have that giant Scarecrow blimp I ordered?” and then there was a shot of Scarecrow flying the blimp over a stampeding crowd. What the hell happened with that? That’s so weird that the whole blimp thing was just dropped. This whole arc has been kind of goofy. It was so slow and intimate for so long and then in that last issue it became a giant blimp attack on Gotham City thing and now in this issue what we get is some Batman and Alfred drama and almost no Scarecrow whatsoever. This arc dragged on for far too long and in the end Scarecrow’s final confrontation with Batman lasted 3 panels SHOW SPOILER ▼

. Hurwitz’s Penguin: Pain & Prejudice was structured just as strangely. It’s as if he doesn’t think you can have a climax to a Batman story without going super ridiculously big. I’m all for doing a big Scarecrow story in which he tries to terrorize the city but you need to arrive at that sort of even organically, not inject it in the very final chapter of a flashback heavy narrative told from inside a basement. It stretched on for 4 issues without ever being that kind of story, then tried to become that for about 10 pages or so and then finished quietly again.

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #14 review

Andrew Asberry — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:23:52 +0000

This was kind of an odd issue for me that I thought was just okay at first, but the more I thought about it the more I disliked it. It has some interesting elements but they don’t click together and this arc as a whole is shaping up to have the same unbalanced structure as Hurwitz’ Penguin: Pain & Prejudice. Up until now it’s been a small scale story, sort of like an actual horror film confined to a single location. Like Penguin: Pain & Prejudice it’s also focused more on being a character study, taking us deep into the troubled past of our villain and plodding along at a slow but steady pace. Unfortunately it’s also making the same mistake as Penguin: Pain & Prejudice by trying to turn itself into a pop-corny action adventure in the final chapter.

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #13 review

Andrew Asberry — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:25:35 +0000

Is it just me or is David Finch’s art getting creepier as this story chugs along?

Batman: The Dark Knight #13 is all regret, child abuse, and nightmares. And boy, is it a fast read. Many of its 20 pages are splash pages, a single image and only a handful of words. That means it’s a good addition to Hurwitz’s Scarecrow arc, but it’ll be over before you know it. In fact, both of the Batman comics that came out today were lightning quick reads.

What you’re getting here is more of the same that you saw in issue #12 only its paced better and the scenes carry a lot more emotional weight. Honestly, issues #12 and #13 could’ve been condensed into a single issue that would’ve been amazing, but let’s not talk about what should’ve happened and let’s talk about the real book at hand. As you may have seen from the preview, Scarecrow still has a little girl hostage and he’s using her tears to make a new fear toxin. She’s either being written as the smartest girl in the world who is trying to get her captor to empathize with her so she can survive OR she’s just a horribly written child character. Either way, in the book’s first page she draws a picture (never mind where she got the paper and pencil) of herself and Scarecrow holding hands outside on a sunny day and gives it to Scarecrow which makes him very, very remorseful about what he’s doing. Luckily for Crane, there’s a Batman in the next room that can be tortured and that’ll knock those warm fuzzy feelings right out of his system!

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Batman: The Dark Knight, Vol. 1: Knight Terrors review

Andrew Asberry — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:55:33 +0000

Here is a book that I believe sold well due to its name alone. “Batman: The Dark Knight”, what a great and incredibly timely title for a Batman comic! I see no other explanation as to how this series could have sold so well to be among the 20 top selling comics month after month. Or maybe there are more comic reviewers out there than I thought. I know I’m guilty of buying each issue of this series but I only did that so I could write reviews. If it wasn’t for that, I would’ve bailed on this title as soon as I witnessed this gem at the end of issue number one:

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David Finch exits, Ethan Van Sciver to draw Batman: The Dark Knight

Andrew Asberry — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:14:24 +0000

Comic Book Resources broke the news this morning in an exclusive interview with Ethan Van Sciver (well known for his work on Green Lantern: Rebirth, The Flash: Rebirth, and Sinestro Corps War) who will be taking over penciling duties for Batman: The Dark Knight starting with issue #16. This new story written by Gregg Hurwitz will utilize The Mad Hatter as the central villain and be released on January 30th, 2013.

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New 52 – Batman: The Dark Knight #0 review

Andrew Asberry — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:18:00 +0000

These reviews will be short and sweet this week since I’m still in LA and don’t have a whole lot of time on my hands. Basically there were four books that came out yesterday, I read them all last night, and now that it’s 24 hours later I can say that this is how I would rank them according to how memorable they all were.

1. Talon

2. Teen Titans

3. Batman: The Dark Knight

4. Batman Inc.

None of these comics were particularly bad, but none of them satisfied quite as some of the earlier zero issues I’ve read this month. Talon and Teen Titans stand out the most. Talon is something you should give a chance to because it’s new and has an ambitious creative team behind it and the retconning of Tim Drake’s past in Teen Titans should be read because it will give you and your friends plenty to discuss.

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