Batman overload this weekend! This is another collection I had planned to read eventually, as I've heard good things about it and like Scott Snyder's writing. It's also part of the Heroes discussion next weekend, so I decided to read it this morning while I had the time.
These issues are the first seven New 52 Batman issues. As the story began everything looked about as I expected from the original DCU continuity. Jim Gordon was Police Commissioner, though, and looked younger (so did everyone else, now that I think about it). He had retired before the Hush story line, so I am assuming he was still retired just before the New 52 reboot.
I liked the way Snyder wrote Bruce/Batman and the other characters (Alfred and Dick Grayson get quite a bit of space). They all felt right to me, so I slipped right in to the story.
The central theme was harder to swallow, though. Could there really have been a secret criminal conspiracy in Gotham since the beginning without Batman or the GCPD knowing anything about it? There's even a nursery rhyme that we have somehow never heard before. This is a real Everything You Know Is Wrong retcon. Even the Batman is completely thrown by it.
It does make for an exciting story. I thought the whole sequence in the labyrinth was overextended, as well as occasionally visually confusing. Maybe the story could have been done in five or six issues instead of seven...I guess the New 52 did not include a decompressed story telling reset.
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I thought the story was so well done myself, that it was easy for me to overlook this. Plus it seems like every few years there is a government agency, cult, or something that pops up that no one has heard of before that has been operating behind the shadows for years, decades, centuries, whatever.
Agreed about the labyrinth. I think it is one of those things that is a good idea just goes on too long. Like 90% of all Saturday Night Live skits.
I loved this arc. The rest of Snyder's New 52 Batman has been alright in my opinion. I still haven't finished Zero Year yet nor have I started the newest arc. The Court of Owls and Night of Owls I really enjoyed though. I don't mind the secret cult thing. It worked well here.
I liked the labyrinth. I thought it was cool how it was done, and it was just one issue of the story.
This was the series that sold me on Synder as a Bat-writer. I entered it fully prepared to heap scorn on the notion that there was some sort of criminal conspiracy happening under the nose of Batman, the world's greatest detective. Superman, sure, Spider-Man, of course, but Batman?
And he sold me on it. That's good writing. Also, I love the art.
I also found the Labyrinthe thing a bit confusing -- mainly because Batman is also the world's greatest escape artist, and wasn't escaping. I was half-convinced he was staying there on purpose, to find out who the Owls were. But no, he really was in trouble.