Grant Morrison

As someone who is pretty new to Batman (I've read a bunch of single issues as a kid and other stories in the DC world) I knew there was going to be some disconnect on my end going into this, but even considering that I thought this volume was a mess. The writing, the plot, the characters: none of it clicked with me.
The plot overall just seems erratic and disjointed, bouncing around from one villain to another to another to ANOTHER - seriously, why are there so many villains in here? They're also BIZARRE, even for a comic book world. Pyg is downright abhorrent, and Red Hood literally looks like a red tampon applicator. Whoever designed that costume needs to be fired. This huge cast is overwhelming and leaves so little time to breathe, or develop other things that are brought up, such as Dick's struggle to feel comfortable with the Batman mantle (the Batmantle?) and find his footing with Damian. Dick and Alfred were the only characters in this I enjoyed reading. Damian could have been cool, but I just struggle believing a 10-year-old could handle himself for a second in any of these fight scenes. He also uses "gay" as an insult and isn't corrected for it, which sucks.
The extreme violence against women was also just off the walls. It felt like it was also used primarily for shock value and never offered up any narrative/dialogue on that. Sasha's character ~almost~ went there, but it lasted for like 1 page and then was abandoned. Breadcrumbs, people, breadcrumbs. There is also not a single female character in this volume who is mentioned without being characterized in terms of her relation to/interactions with a man. So that was disappointing, especially when, again, Sasha could have been used in a much more dynamic way!
I'm looking forward to reading OTHER Batman stories my friends recommend because I know they can be told better than this. But honestly most stuff is written better than this, sooooo ¯_(ツ)_/¯… (mehr)

First thing first I like the character of Ra's al Ghul and his everlasting conflict with Batman. I truly enjoy the 1970's take on him, Blofeld like persona with accumulated knowledge of the ages that snaps and decides to teach humanity a lesson because of his loss. Sounds like an adult throwing tantrum right but hey these are comics and from comics I only expect entertainment not reflections on reality and answers to life issues.

That being said while enjoying the story to extent following was reaaaally annoying:

- Continuity issue - this is not standalone book but excerpt (or plugin?) work that fills the pages of other books (in case you ever wondered while reading them - oh, man what was X/Y/Z doing at this time.....reading a book, going to night club? hmmmmm, I wonder). Because of this you will end up with switches between stories that do converge to a degree (sometimes take a loooong time to converge) but as soon as they do kablam new arc starts (continues?) and you have to wonder what? Again I understand these are comics and stuff but this seems to be just like a filler release without any attempt to link the dots for us petty fools that are not up to date with Bat-Family issues. Not to mention the enemies here - Sensei, Sensei's Men of Death (they recover faster than anyone I ever saw, Batman kicks them in a seconds and then few pages back they are not just alive but making life miserable for all our heroes), those three weird women masked heroes who look more like characters from Kick-Ass then from DC whose sole purpose is to come in, make idiots of themselves and fade out in the closing pages of the arc....... as I said due to nature of the work it is not possible to connect all the dots.
- Bat Family ..... somewhere in the middle this started to read like Santa Barbara for caped crusaders. You have Nightwing and Robin duking it out because they are true sons of Batman. In the middle of this daddy issue conflict enter Damian, actual biological son of Batman (who is simply a spoiled brat trained as an assassin and unable to make one logical and sound action in the entire book) who scorns above mentioned two (grown ups? I dont think so) and makes such an idiot of himself that I hope Talia beat some sense into him after she run away with him.It is nice to have a junior with spunk and attitude but some brains would be good too. I understand need for internal conflict and emotional aspect of the story but do we truly need to have it presented in the way that would embarrass most soap opera writers? Not to mention that half the issues these three are talking about are unknown [to anyone outside of the loop] so it all looks rather very silly (again due to the continuity issues, see above).
- Art is a mixed bag here. For obvious continuity reasons and story spanning what I expect to be dozens of books so artists are changed ever so often. In some issues art is very good but in others it looks so .... weird, like 3D animations gone bad way that it is disconcerting.

All in all interesting read. If you are knowledgeable of the background (or parallel stories to this story) I think you will enjoy it more. For me it was an interesting book but with issues (art and internal relations that were presented in such a dramatic way I was feeling embarrassed for all the heroes involved).… (mehr)