3 out of 5

Dag, batman, I wonder when you’ll be interesting again?

I don’t know what I want from a Batman book.  When I first got back into comics and experienced Waid / Morrison’s “anticipate everything” bats, I thought that was pretty cool, and it was fun seeing his impossibly -planned plans come together.  But it’s an easy shtick to abuse, which Mr. King is guilty of – shtick abusing – with his “You would’ve injured that man in point seven seconds” type dialogue.  Yeah, okay, Bats.  Chill.  I appreciate that we like sensationalism in our comics, especially when dealing with men and women in tights, but a balance is necessary in order to keep things interesting, and when Batman stares down death while coldly calculating angles of impact and whatnot (issue 1 of this arc…), it nets me a shrug.  Possibly, though, King’s approach here was to purposefully blow out this whole perspective, but more on that in a sec.

So we’ve firmly established Batman as the world’s foremost badass by now, even if I think how most people play that out gets hinky.  What stories are left to tell thereafter?  Well, you can do a mythos rejiggering, but Bats has such a well-fortified canon of mythos – and you’ve got the shadow of Grant Morrisons’s all-of-history summarizing arc still visible – that going down that road can almost immediately seem like a fool’s errand, at least for now.  The sort of inverse of this idea is to bring the current house down, but look at what you’re dealing with, as described above: A super genius know-it-all with a rock-solid history.  Suspension of disbelief is important for reading most major league “everything will change but not really!” comics, and again, Bats more than others.  King tries this approach too, with that issue one nigh-death and then a pretty lame sidestep in issue five that portends that shit gonna get real.  But is it, Tom?  Batman isn’t a title where you can just say that and expect it to have impact, which is what I hope I’m supporting with my blabbing here.

So sort of the last main option is to just… write a good Batman tale.  A good villain, with some valid stakes.  Although I’m not big on the Scott Snyder writing I’ve sampled, it does seem that that was, in part, his approach, which was certainly well-regarded, and I’d say that was a good undercurrent to Grant’s work, too, especially with how things evolved into Batman Inc.  And, uh, King does this too.  His insertion of two new heroes into Gotham – helpfully named Gotham and Gotham Girl, seemingly at Superman-level power status, opens the book up to a fun dynamic for a few issues as Bats susses the duo out, as well as gives the book its detective flair with Bruce Wayne going Matches Malone to find out about the newbies’ past.  It’s because of the way that they just pop up out of the blue and are played against Batman’s godly awareness that I critique above that it becomes questionable whether or not King is purposefully going so over-the-top with the awesome badass bit.  And given that the title seems to be wedged into a crossover already in some upcoming issues may account for the somewhat rushed pace to put his story pieces into place.  Alas, it’s too early to tell.  The hope is that this isn’t Omega Men, where then simplicity ended up being exactly what it seemed.  But I have more faith than I don’t, as Omega had a disconnect of having to be a Green Lantern book when the other story elements were more interesting; Batman at least feels like a Batman book, even if I’m skeptical, at this point, of King’s approach.

Another point in his favor, surprising me, is David Finch’s artwork.  Finch was always a bit too 90s-Image muscley for me, but he’s adapted that style into something a bit sleeker.  It still has a lot of six packs and square jaws, but the page layouts are smart and full of motion, and not just pinups.  It ends up being a great match for Bats, and kudos to King for stepping away from his 9-grid to (we’ll suppose) write more for Finch’s visual style, allowing more flexibility and space on his page.  Inkers shift a little during the 5 issues, with Matt Banning capturing the best balance between Finch’s detailing and the stream -lined momentum.  John Workman’s lettering is also a beauty to behold, but to be frank, I don’t know if he’s the best fit for the pacing of the story.  Something a bit more compressed might’ve gone better with the tone.

So King has me in a holding pattern again while I wait to see what he plans to turn this title in to.  It is a fast-paced and great -looking read, so its not much of a slog, I just hope the generic elements that are sprinkled about the first arc end up paying off less generically.