They Did the Mash

Steve Orlando, Tom King, Tim Seeley, James Tynion IV, & Riley Rossmo “Batman: Night of the Monster Men” (DC Comics, 2017)

What we have here is an old fashioned Bat books crossover.  I’m not a big EVENT guy, but I do have a certain affection for crossovers within a specific book line. Here we have Batman & the team from Detective comics working together to stop MONSTERS! IN! GOTHAM!

This has every opportunity to be big pulpy fun. I like how Rebirth Batman is more of a SUPERhero. There’s room for some silver age crazy in these books, and introducing GIANT FREAKING MONSTERS is one way to up the crazy level.

This just doesn’t grab the excitement that it should. Our heroes are divided into the running around team, the ineffectual team, and team crowd control.  Yawn. It’s like a kaiju movie without the silly. It just doesn’t work.

Batwoman by any other name

James Tynion IV, Eddy Barrows, & Alvaro Martinez “Batman: Detective Comics Volume 1: Rise of the Batmen” (DC Comics, 2017)

So with Rebirth they have turned Detective into the Batman Family book.  The basic setup is simple: Batman decides to train up some of the various Bat-related characters & talks Batwoman into doing the work. (yeah, I know).

Hey, I’m all about Batwoman & I like Tim Drake & the other cast of characters. (Quick aside: what happened to Clayface? When did he start looking like this? WTF?)

Overall I liked the book, but like some of the other Rebirth titles I just felt like I had read it before. Didn’t (character dedacted) already (redacted)?

And again I found the art to be competent, but not exceptional. It gets the job done, but I miss the great art from earlier Batwoman runs.