Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Batman Annual #1 Review

By Kurt Wagner
December 7, 2016 - 09:34

I kinda liked this Batman show.

I liked all the little stories because you don’t need to know what’s going on in DC continuity today to follow it. Which is, for the most part, the point of comics, but we all forget about that sometimes. Let’s forget about it for the holidays, yeah?

Anyway, there was saying popular in the late-90’s that said: every comic book published was someone’s first comic. Of course, there was a rebuttal to that, which said: nowadays every comic book published might also be someone’s last comic.

This one would be an okay good first comic.

The portrayals of Batman here span decades and styles, both in the writing and the pretty pictures. That’s cool. Hell, why not do this more frequently, within the scale of a continuing series rather than a single annual? WHY NOT?!

There was a new villain introduced, cameo style, killing someone we didn’t care about (speaking of the late-90’s). If you care about that kind of thing, pick up the issue. There was not a single unique thing about the new villain that seemed compelling. He/she killed someone. Who cares? It may as well have been the drywall in the background that that was doing the killing. OH MY GOD, DRYWALL!

So the first few stories were feel-good, and pretty well written. The final one was the one with the most action, the most “detectiving” (which all happened off-page, suggesting the writers didn’t give a shit), had the only kinda mainstream villain, and was the longest. Still, for all of that, it was the weakest story of the bunch. As soon as there’s fear gas in Gotham and some guard at Arkham has been killed you may as well wrap it all up: Batman’s solved this one, no biggie. Yet when Alfred brings a random, crazed dog home referencing (perhaps unintentionally, but certainly inexplicably) a 1940s Bulgakov novel, and all the threats to Gotham have passed … well, sure, I’ll read that one. Gimme.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12