Review of the New 52: Part 1: Batman

so, i have been reading the New 52 by DC Comics that they started releasing in september. It was yet another effort for a comic company to re-vamp their system and attract new readers. Usually DC does some sort of big "Crisis" event that spans all of their comics, but this time they were just like "uhhh fuck it. reset button time!" and thus we have all of these new comics starting with #1, as opposed to continuing the same numbering that they've kept since the 1940s. this means that such things as Action Comics, and Detective Comics, their two longest running monthly installments, are ending their run in the 800-900 range and being reset to 1. this upset a few people, but i think it is a good way to reset their system, and attract new readers. Each of these new #1's that i read are good jumping in points for the characters, and thus can easily be picked up and read by anyone, without too much background knowledge needed.

so, i picked out 24 of the 52 to read the #1's for. there were a couple more that seemed interesting, but i figured 24 was plenty to start with. most of them i read out of interest, and a few out of good reviews from the kind people over at Tumblr. this is Part 1 of 3, giving my thoughts on 8 comics per entry, and this first one is devoted to the Batman Family. of these 8, there are 3 worth continuing on.

first off we have their flagship batman title in Detective Comics. as seen by the cover, it is a batman-joker story, which is less than entertaining to me. i feel as if the joker is a very over used character in batman media, and he is really one of the least interesting villains to me, because he has no reason for being evil, he just is. although this one left me with a good cliffhanger to prompt reading #2, i am going to pass.

So, this is their running Batman title, not to be confused with any of their other batman related titles. This one had a more detective-feel than Detective Comics, which i found odd, but i really liked it. Batman is actively having to solve a mystery in this one, and it leaves it up to a really interesting couple of twists along with clever dialogue. i liked this one a lot; easily the best one staring Batman that i read.

To understand this, first you must understand who this Robin is. This is Damien Wayne, Bruce's son. he's been around for 5-10 years and has been robin before, actually. He was robin during a year-long stint that Dick Grayson was batman while Bruce was off being dead and all (see, that is the old convoluted mess that existed before) the point is, Dick was Batman for a while, and Damien was his Robin. it was a really fun and interesting dynamic because in that instance it was Batman that was all fun & happy-go-lucky, and Robin that was dark and brooding. but now, you have matched a dark and brooding Robin, and a dark and brooding Batman together, who is doing a horrible job fathering this kid. just not a happy mix of personalities.

so, this was another stand alone batman book. i am not entirely sure as to why it exists, but it does, so i read it, and admittedly liked it a lot more than detective comics, which is what it read most like. still not something worth continuing.

So, this is a Batgirl title with Barbra Gordon as the titular batgirl. there are a few problems with this, the biggest being that since the late '80s, Barbra has been in a wheelchair and paralyzed. she has developed the alias Oracle over that time, and became the information distributor for all of the DC Universe, basically. it was a really good character, and a great showing for handicapped people. Now, she is walking again, and in fact it is referenced multiple times that she had been in a wheel chair for 3 years (3 years in comics is a long damn time since she was there since the 80s in real years) and now she has recently been able to walk. there is no explanation of how she can walk, she just suddenly can. and of course, if she can walk, might as well put on the old suit and start crime fighting again, right? as much as the premise and reanimation of her legs bug me, it was a really well written book that enticed me enough to want to read #2.

Okay, i'll get this out of the way right now. This was the one title that i was really going to follow no matter what, due to Dick Grayson being my favorite character. good thing too, because it was not the most enticing first book to read; it was a bit slow, really focusing a lot on his back story and how he was in the circus for years. in fact, this is the only one that i have gone ahead and read #2 for, and it does pick up, and gets significantly better.

so, this one is technically a team comic, but since the Red Hood is Jason Todd (the second robin) and it is in the title of the book, i count this as a batfamily publication. plus there is a bat symbol in the stylized title. i had high hopes for this, because although jason todd is my least favorite robin (i find him annoying and an asshole) i do really like Roy Harper, who is Red Arrow, and Starfire. Both of their characters fell flat for me, however, and the art in this book was really distracting and poorly done for my taste. this one was not for me.

This one was their gamble in the batfamily of books. he is a new, original hero in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in africa, and he is trying to do the batman thing there. admittedly he is supplied with armor, weapons, and tech by batman himself, so he does have some credibility. i really wanted to like this; i liked the idea of a new setting, and everything about it, but i just couldn't get into this one for some reason. i might pick up #2 later (because of the damn cliffhanger) but it seems unlikely.