The Caped Crusader

Post Dark Knight viewing this summer I took the opportunity to grab some of the detective's greatest hits. I am half way through my pile now and ready to share some thoughts.

Arkham Asylum
The art in this book is expressive, but not descriptive. Some panels evoke strong emotion while others leave me wondering what the hell I am looking at. The story feels just like the art, hit and miss. The parallel stories follow Batman going into the heart of the Arkham to stop its prisoners who have rioted and taken over and Amadeus Arkham's founding of the asylum and his ultimate insanity. The Amadeus story being the hit and Batman being the miss. Ultimately I liked the book, despite what I thought were short comings in the work and in me as a reader. I will probably revisit this book in a year from now and will hopefully enjoy it more.

The Long Halloween
This book is by far the best Batman book I have read to date, coming in just a hair above Year One. I like the idea of Batman as a detective mystery with plot twist and tons of who done it moments. The fact that there is still some mystery left in the ending makes for good comic discussion with friends as well. The art is killer save the joker which just seemed out place to me with his six inch teeth. Now, I'm looking forward to reading the sequel, Dark Victory and I'm also looking into good runs of Detective Comics.

The Killing Joke
This book ends just when I wanted it to start and portrays Batman as a lets talk it out super hero instead of the bad ass he should be. The shock of the Joker's action certainly did grab me from the start, but from that point on it spirals downward to a dull point. The art is a little to clean, something Arkham could have taken a pinch of and ultimately I don't get what the hype was about. The ideas that Dark Knight (the film) took from this book were well done and I am glad it took nothing else.

Baby Tabib
Crystal is super baby sick and has been for going on three weeks now. She is toughing it out at work and trying her best to have a normal life while remaining nauseous 24/7. I don't know if I could handle what she is going through right now, but the reward for all of this is a new baby in 7 months.