Hi I was wondering if it was true that the Contagion/Legacy Story is going to be fully collected. I also wanted to know everyone's opinion on the the whole War Games Story arc that's being collected as well. I see Ed Brubaker is one of the writers but for the event as a whole how was it?

Thanks.

http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Contagion-Chuck-Dixon/dp/1401260683/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452658527&sr=1-1&keywords=batman+contagion

Slated for March 15th of this year and yeah it's supposed to collect both storylines.

Never been a fan of War Games. Of all the Bat events/crossovers from the mid 90s to the mid 2000's it's always been one of my least favorite.

@nathaniel_christopher: How come you didn't like war games?

Well firstly, I never cared for the overall premise. A massive gangwar breaking out in Gotham? Solid. The gangwar being a possible plan that Batman had come up with in the event that he needed to bring all the gangs under his control? Cool. The entire thing being because Stephanie Brown had stolen the plan from the Batcave and then implemented it without being sure of who all the players were, specifically Matches Malone? Dumb. I really do feel like the main purpose of this event was just to kill Stephanie Brown off. And it wasn't even tasteful because the character was treated as such a screwup/placeholder for Tim Drake beforehand. This was like one last hurrah of her messing up before they just killed her off. (I will say, her final conversation with Batman was well done). The whole "Leslie let her die to teach Bruce a lesson" afterwards just made it even worse and ended up dragging one more character down with her. And both incidents, the death of Stephanie and the assassination of Leslie's character, were later reversed anyways, robbing the event of what little meaning it did have.

Moving beyond the premise I think that the storyline itself is a mess. There's so much going on in this event, all over the city, with so many different characters that it all just runs together, with very little of it being memorable in the long run. As the OP mentioned, you had Brubaker working on this and a few other talented writers, so its actually somewhat tragic that it turned out the way it did. And I feel that the writers deliberately tried to write the event as being chaotic, because it's a freaking gangwar after all and something like that will be chaotic if nothing else, but reading it it just didn't work for me. Batman's just running from one place to the next, trying to keep track of things, with different side characters showing up. Naturally, something like this gives you plenty of action. So that's something you won't want for, but i've never felt much emotion in the story itself. In Knightfall, when Bruce is running himself ragged at the start trying to deal with the various criminals that Bane set free and then when he has his confrontation with Bane I felt his exhaustion and sympathized with it. In No Man's Land when you've got Joker killing Sarah and then not only Jim reacting to it but his confrontation with Batman over the latter's absence, I thought those were powerful moments in already strong stories. War Games? I don't know how else to put it except the entire thing's just a mess to me.

@nathaniel_christopher: Wow I never saw it like that. I read it when I was first getting into Batman and just was like look at all these Bat characters, its awesome.

But come to think of it it did have its problems. Thanks for giving your thoughts.

Gotta be honest, a little annoyed that they're reissuing the Contagion and Legacy storylines together, but mainly because I own them as singles, and the original trades so they kind of devalue them a bit.
As for the whole War saga, I have all 5 trades and I agree with @nathaniel_christopher somewhat. War Drums and Act One were readable, but Act 2 and half of 3 were a mess and mostly felt like filler. They basically pulled a Jason Todd with the whole thing, but I do get why they did what they did with Leslie. This was the second time she watched Bruce treat someone desperately trying to gain his acceptance in a careless manner so trying to 'teach him a lesson,' in a way, kind of made sense. He did it with Jean Paul Valley and then with Stephanie in a very similar way.

I just finished reading the new edition of Batman Fugitive and Leslie actually calls him out on this, so you're absolutely right. While I don't like it or agree with it I could therefore see someone making the argument that any actions she took with Stephanie would just be an extension of this earlier issue.

Personally i've been enjoying the new editions they've been releasing of older storylines and I play to purchase the Contagion/Legacy one as soon as it releases.

If Stephanie had really acted like some sort of mastermind, executing a plan step by step, setting the diffrent players one after the other against each other and than loosing the control,it might have cool, but all she did was arranging one meeting between all the players, where they started to kill each other. When you read it you never really get the feeling that this plan made any sense and how it should have worked when executed correctly (or why Stephanie thought executing this plan would proof anything).

And on top of this the story end iirc again with Bruce acting like a total jerk and loosing all his alleys because of this.

Bingo. I've seen some people complain about why people act as if Batman is constantly being a jerk to others and anti-social. It's because of events like War Games. I thought the same thing when I was reading the new editions of the Murderer/Fugitive storyline. Sometimes you'll forget just how often they've done the plot point where Bruce is acting like a major jerk, pushes his family members and allies away, wants to deal with the current threat on his own, etc. War Games, Knightfall, Murderer/Fugitive, etc. When reading the new edition of Murderer I was actually surprised at a panel I didn't remember, but Oracle even points this trend of Bruce out to Nightwing.