Issue is out and it was better than the previous few but not saying much. Gotham Girl was okayish, King injected the loser villains with a fairly decent explanation and there's a huge set up for Bane but Batman is a paper thin character whose dialogue is now almost terrible, even Captain Stinagree has better dialogue than Batman. Also King continues to devote precious page time to non sense characters like Duke at the expense of interesting story telling. For instance Duke has a whole page of telling Batman he should save Gotham Girl and other obvious stuff but Bane and Hugo Strange make a deal off page which is told to us by Amanda Waller JESUS FLIPPING CHRIST. Wouldn't that page have been better devoted to the first meeting between two iconic Batman villains scheming together? NOPE MOAR DUKE.
Batman 6 discussion
I don't see what the problem is with King trying to develop Duke a little more. Now an entire Hugo Strange Arc is coming, and then an entire Bane arc. How they met is not important, we only need to know why Bane suddenly had his hands on Psycho Pirate (so no plothole is created there) and King just told us why. Overall I would say this is good story writing so far.
Foreshadowing, check.
Character development, check
Building a premise for at least two future arcs, check
Even that page where Duke was telling GG needs to be saved was interesting. It was an acknowledgement of the existing problem and explains why Bruce made that deal with Amanda.
I give this issue a 5 out of 5
Except there is no development, he just kept telling us things we (and Batman) already knew, it's like there is an obligation to put him in to every issue for no reason at all. I could've still swallowed the bitter pill if the more interesting stuff didn't get even less than Duke himself. That encounter between Bane and Strange I referred to, now I didn't want them to meet and hug, I wanted to know what Hugo's been up to for the last 6 issues yet King feels that his entire role in this arc merits a few lines. Take a look at that scan, that's everything Hugo did in this entire arc just neatly told to us and it doesn't make much sense. How does creating random explosions get him free reign with Psycho Pirate? how was Bane behind it as King says? it implies more than a simple swap.
Btw King doesn't get credit for Hugo's story in Monster Men, here from the horses mouth:
The Monster Men actually came from Scott Snyder, Steve Orlando, James Tynion IV, and I sitting around a table. Sometimes we play games. One of the games we play is "What would be an amazing Batman image?" I think James and Mark [Doyle, Batman group editor] were like, "Picture a silhouette of Batman standing on a roof and a kaiju like Godzilla was walking by. What would Batman do?" And I was already using Hugo Strange and we had this idea to have huge monsters. Hugo Strange's Monster Men just clicked together.
And the Monster Men have gone through a kaiju redesign. Was that in place from the start?
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it really comes from the imagination of Steve Orlando. I'd like to take credit for it because it's so cool, but he took the idea of Monster Men and ran with it and created these monsters, each of which has unique characteristics and is uniquely disgusting. The Monster Men crossover is so awesome.
So if Orlando and the other guys had never come up with this crossover then Hugo's involvement would have just ended with #6, King did nothing with the character, what we got in the last 6 issues is everything King ever planned on saying about Hugo.
I don't see what the problem is with King trying to develop Duke a little more. Now an entire Hugo Strange Arc is coming, and then an entire Bane arc. How they met is not important, we only need to know why Bane suddenly had his hands on Psycho Pirate (so no plothole is created there) and King just told us why. Overall I would say this is good story writing so far.
Foreshadowing, check.
Character development, check
Building a premise for at least two future arcs, check
Even that page where Duke was telling GG needs to be saved was interesting. It was an acknowledgement of the existing problem and explains why Bruce made that deal with Amanda.
I give this issue a 5 out of 5
Except there is no development, he just kept telling us things we (and Batman) already knew, it's like there is an obligation to put him in to every issue for no reason at all. I could've still swallowed the bitter pill if the more interesting stuff didn't get even less than Duke himself. That encounter between Bane and Strange I referred to, now I didn't want them to meet and hug, I wanted to know what Hugo's been up to for the last 6 issues yet King feels that his entire role in this arc merits a few lines. Take a look at that scan, that's everything Hugo did in this entire arc just neatly told to us and it doesn't make much sense. How does creating random explosions get him free reign with Psycho Pirate? how was Bane behind it as King says? it implies more than a simple swap.
Btw King doesn't get credit for Hugo's story in Monster Men, here from the horses mouth:
The Monster Men actually came from Scott Snyder, Steve Orlando, James Tynion IV, and I sitting around a table. Sometimes we play games. One of the games we play is "What would be an amazing Batman image?" I think James and Mark [Doyle, Batman group editor] were like, "Picture a silhouette of Batman standing on a roof and a kaiju like Godzilla was walking by. What would Batman do?" And I was already using Hugo Strange and we had this idea to have huge monsters. Hugo Strange's Monster Men just clicked together.
And the Monster Men have gone through a kaiju redesign. Was that in place from the start?
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it really comes from the imagination of Steve Orlando. I'd like to take credit for it because it's so cool, but he took the idea of Monster Men and ran with it and created these monsters, each of which has unique characteristics and is uniquely disgusting. The Monster Men crossover is so awesome.
So if Orlando and the other guys had never come up with this crossover then Hugo's involvement would have just ended with #6, King did nothing with the character, what we got in the last 6 issues is everything King ever planned on saying about Hugo.
Does Amanda Waller really say, "I could care less..."!? The phrase is, of course, "I COULDN'T care less", meaning that she cares so little about the issue that it is impossible for her to be less interested in it. If someone says they "COULD care less" then they're saying they have a certain amount of interest in a thing that could be reduced. Damn I hate it when people say/write that. Come on King, get your crap together.
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