@rainshadow777 said:
I love The Long Halloween, and for me it's way better than anything Snyder has written for instance (I haven't read King yet and probably won't bother). With The Long Halloween I really engaged with the Godfather style crime story that had twists and turns and a fantastic denouement that blew me away. As a cohesive work, it's stunning.
Dark Victory was a little less thrilling but still very good.
I wish today's Batman writers would construct exciting detective stories like The Long Halloween. They just don't write Batman the way I want him to be, and that's obviously my problem, but I'm tired of these so called 'summer blockbuster' style comics. I want some goddamn plot development and storytelling.
Very true what you say.
I don't really know what you mean by "summer blockbuster sytle comics" and "today's Batman writers" but in recent years we've had:
- Grant Morisson - Batman before Snyder + Batman Incorporated
- Paul Dini - Detective Comics and Streets of Gotham right before New 52
- David Finch - Batman, The Dark Knight
- Geoff Johns - Earth-One
- Gregg Hurwitz - Penguin: Pain and Prejudice
- Peter Tomasi - Batman & Robin
- James Tyron IV - Batman Eternal / Batman & Robin Eternal / main writter + Detective Comics Rebirth
- ...
Which are all in the Top 20 Batman runs/arcs not to say Top 15 or Top 10
I can't claim to be any great Batman scholar, and there have obviously been some good arcs, but if we focus on the main Batman book for the last 6 years or thereabouts, I've been left cold. It seems to be more of a big set-piece style book that tries to tap into the current trend of comic book movies (explosions first, plot second) rather than a slow-burn development of mystery and solution in a literary form.
Snyder has been writing it in this larger-than-life style, and now according to interviews King is aiming for explosions and things that appeal to 12 year olds - so that's 6 years of set-pieces that haven't focused so much on Batman as the solver of clever mysteries. Of course, this isn't the whole story, but it largely is. Look at Zero Year (which felt like Zero Decade when reading it) when the Riddler took over Gotham and closed its borders, with Gotham being overgrown with jungle etc. Complete nonsense, and barely a mystery to be solved by Bruce/Batman even when he's guessing the riddles.
Even Snyder's The Court of Owls, which received pretty widespread praise at the time, was only mildly satisfying as a mystery story.
I abandoned Snyder's run after Graveyard Shift which was what, Volume 6 of the trades? Random stories with Harper Row etc. And of all the stuff I read in the New 52 that's the only time I've dropped anything, and I stuck with it long after I grew to despise it.
I've only read bits and pieces of a couple of the other Batman titles in the New 52, so I'm not qualified to speak of them. But as far as the main Batman title, which is in many ways the flagship of DC, it just doesn't portray the character as I think he should be. Maybe I'm just getting old and want to see him solving complex plots rather than the sort of empty and unlikely nonsense portrayed over the last 6 years of the main book.
And now with what I've read about King's start, it's disappointing, because like pretty much everyone, I love the idea of Batman, the setting, the cave, the costume, the darkness. But I'm just not getting the depth of story that I did find with Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween.
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