Dispatchdcu's Profile

I've been reading comics for over 30 years now and Lee Weeks has been one of my favorite artists dating back to his 90's work on Daredevil. Seeing him on Batman was something I didn't expect to see and was one of the highlights of my week as sad as that might sound. Weeks is credited as co-artist with Jorge Fornes. The two work extremely well together and it's hard to tell where one artist starts and the other begins.

With that out of the way, Batman #67 continues the Nightmares story arc. Batman has been trapped in a series of dreams that have been presented as One-Shots. Of all of the issues in this arc, this one is the most interesting. This is primarily due to Tom King getting out of the way and letting Weeks conduct a lesson in visual storytelling.

The story follows Batman as he chases a masked criminal from the top of the Gotham skyline to the very depths of the cities sewers. The comic is presented as an episode of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. With both characters getting the upper hand as the issue progresses.

The story is primarily presented as a silent issue with sight gags all over the book. There's a lot of energy in the art direction and the story is very easy to follow even with the lack of dialogue. There are also a few visual queues that hint at the dreamlike nature of the issue.

There isn't much else to say here. The random nature of these issues prevents any heavy discussion of themes or ideas and I fully expect some sort of twist when the storyline eventually wraps up to tie it all together.

The downside of these issues being presented as one-shots is that if you're a new reader or randomly picking up Batman to see what's going on the story may be baffling. However, I do believe that if you're willing to take the issue at face value it's a great read and I'd recommend it to fans of the Dark Knight or Comics in general. Lee and Jorge do a great job of translating King's script sans the lame dialogue.

In Short. If you've been waiting for Tom Kings Batman/Roadrunner Crossover this is the issue for you. more

For the parts that annoy me, why does Damian look closer to Jon in height and age when Jon is basically an adult while Damian isn't even 16? I read the Robin books recently and this is going to be annoying.

But I like just about everything else, for Jon to truly be "Super" he has to find himself a foothold first. Naturally, that includes his newer origin that retroactively fits him into DC's continuity. It's also why he's questioning the role of such a Superman. Instead of just trying to replace his father and be constantly compared to him, Jon wants to do things his father couldn't do. Best of all that's based on character and taking inspiration from people around him like Lois.more

This is how King has Batman characters win. They get beat on and beat on, and once the attackers get all tuckered out from pummeling the victim, the victim then turns around, all bloody and beaten, and hits them once and they drop like a sack of potatoes.

Apparently, in King's world, there's not such thing as broken noses, concussions, internal bleeding , damaged backs, knees and hands. You just take a huge beating, walk it off and then hit someone once.

That's basically played out again in Batman 81. It turns out the Bat Family joins with Damian (may he rot in Hell) and beat and beat and beat Thomas Batman. He utters "because I'm Batman" and hits them once and they drop. King seems to have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that Thomas Batman used guns because he wasn't in the super condition of Bruce. Didn't have the training and was an older man. Also, is Alfred dead? Still dead? That part of the plot is ignored and I'm bored with it.

But no matter, because King often ignores continuity or flat out repeats things other writers wrote beat for beat (Think Wonder Woman and Batman trapped in eternity. The same story was done in the 2000s for Superman and Wonder Woman.)

Bruce's plan was to steal the super Venom powering Gotham Girl. Joker was actually Clayface. (Yawn). And again we get a lot of text boxes explaining the text in an on the nose manner. Did subtext do something to King when he was a child?

And the issues ends with Bane, Bats and Cats getting ready to square off. The actual defeat of Bats' rogues was very rote. We, as I've written before, didn't see any Bats outthinking enemies or setting up traps, etc. We just get static shots of Bats and Cats hitting guys and they go down.

Just one problem. This has been done before 25 years ago. And the problem with Bane knowing Bruce's secret identity is never played to the logical conclusion. We know the bad guy is going to lose, so why doesn't he expose Bruce? Because if they did, the comic series would be over. That's ALWAYS a terrible thing, having a character act stupid because plot demands it. Stan Lee having the Green Goblin know but forget Peter's secret identity was genius. The threat was always there, but not really, but really. Great for building up suspense. Gerry Conway's Spider-Man 121-122 was the logical conclusion of that.

King's explaining Bruce's plan after the fact strikes me as a cheat. We sort of go, oh that's why he was in Hawaii. I prefer it when writers play fair and we see the heroes follow the clues the writers left and we say, wow I wish I thought of that. Well played sir. (See Murder on the Orient Express for why that works so well).

Overall, a dull issue. Can't say I loved John Romita Jr's art. This story doesn't do justice to the characters and just sort of happens because it has to happen. Can't say I'm a fan.

Or I could be wrong.more

So the slap was a message? Total bullshit! Last minute change due to people asking about the aftermath. Got way too much recap. Just an awful story.

No shock here....more garbage by Tom King! As I've said before, he can't leave this title soon enough. The art is also well below average, so this month the art can't even help the book at all.

Wait. I thought Catwoman standing Bruce up "broke" him? Now he says his brokenness was part of a master plan? So that means he proposed, knew he would get stood up, and even knowing that, let it "break" him? HUH???

Also, the "epiphany" Batman had about needing others to help him? The guy is in more groups (JLA, Outsiders) than anybody else, and he's been relying on his support family - only some of which are are shown in the splash page - for years. So that doesn't make any sense, either.

Then, of course, that entire support family just lingers on the sidelines while Flashpoint Batman has a gun cocked at Robin's head. What? Betting that this maniac wouldn't shoot? Not a safe bet, in my opinion.

So yes. This sucked. more

Terrible issue. The writing is over complicated and convoluted. The plot is full of holes. I usually like JR JR art but his work here seems lazy. I don't understand how Thomas Wayne can defeat the whole bat family alone ( including cass Cain). I guess I will never know since it is all off panel. For the first time in ten years I may drop Batman...

Come on King, you have 4 more issues left, you can't do a recap now, that's not the right time.
Even the little bit of progress we did get was unsatisfying because Bruce's plan doesn't make any sense. And on top of that, the art was underwhelming and boring to look at.

What a waste of time.

Is this a joke?

I'll be damned, I don't know what worse in this piece of filth of a comic - writing or art. It's bad on every considerable level, from the storytelling perspective, through dialogues, to sketches and inks. It's trash. Just trash.

Back when King started his Batman run, he created I Am Suicide arc - and as I said many times before, I like it, a lot in fact. The final plot twist, showing h ow Bat outsmarted Bane, was fun, surprising and somewhat fresh. Doing the same thing the second time simply doesn't work, and as much as King would like to build his story on similar themes returning multiple times, every now and then, it's, in the end, just tiresome and predictible. Tom King is not Noam Chomsky, who actually can get away with repeating certain facts like a broken record, to show how significant and interconnected they are.
On top of that, I'm sick and tired of everything interesting happening behind the courtains. Look how much filler King insterted in this trainwreck of a run, while he could have explored his investigation of Gotham Girl, and her connections to Bane. It surely sounds way better than having two issues dedicated to Bt banging the Cat in tropical paradise.

Now, the cherry on the top - art. Holy shit, this comic looks like an amateur hack job. I'm not a fan of Romita Jr. nor Janson, but both of them seem to had a bad day drawing these illustrations. Not only they're awful, they're also anything but dynamic, and I guess that's the main problem, since the issue is very action oriented. There's a lot of fighting, yet it all looks so still and motionless. Compare that to David Finch's outstanding job from the very beginning of Rebirth Batman. Yeah, this guy knew how to draw an action scene which feels dynamic.

My final verdict - avoid this dumpster fire like the Hot Topic face tattooed trailer trash abomination which is DCEU.more

This is the THIRD issue of this type in this run. It was lazy every single time. The way you properly set up a twist like that is that you foreshadow it. You leave connections and clues. You don't just think it up, not bake it into the background of the story, and then at the end go "Aha! I'm so smart!" I don't understand how anyone could read this and think it's good. And, by the way, I called it . This is just I Am Suicide on a larger scale. The plans upon plans are so convoluted and ridiculous and circuitous. They don't make sense without a lot of luck and a lot of people doing things Batman THINKS they will do. Which is something you can't plan around. And even then, the explanation doesn't explain the plot holes that have formed.

Docking some points for that added on bit by Mitch Gerards to tie this into Year of the Villain. That's so obvious and stupid.more

"You irrelevant old man"

I think that the next thing Tom King should tackle is the X-Men. To hell with Hickman, Tom King should write X-Men. His ability to tell a "story" without actually telling one is truly Uncanny.

Ok, now that we have this terrible joke out of the way, let's delve into the issue.

There isn't really much to delve into to be honest. It's the same old, same old. Telling a drawn out, paper-thin story and making an excuse that all that has happened was a part of the plan. Of course, sure it was. NOPE.

You can't just do things and then try to convince us that is was the plan all along, that it was a part of the bigger picture form the beginning.

But it gets even better. It turns out, that the sucker punching everyone around, that TK made Batman do so fondly, was actually Dark Knight's way to convey a super-secret-hush-hush-no-one-can-know message. I have to try that one day.

Tom King is really testing my mettle here. At this rate, I don't think I will make it to the issue #85.more

oh for pete's sake!!!
the painfully obvious back-peddaling that this issue starts with
just proves that Tom King had NO plan of what the heck he's doing.

King never bothered to read Flashpoint to learn that Thomas Wayne uses his guns
to make up for the fact that he lacks the years of training that Bruce had.
Tim Drake's lack of reflex skills was just LAUGHABLE!!!
King made Batman & the Bat-family into just as big a dope that he himself is!

this is seriously EMBARRASSING!!!! Tom King, have you NO shame?? beyond pathetic.

along with awful writing, even the art was phoned in.more

Heroes in Crisis continues to be long and painful read, bastardizing everything its characters stand for, all in the name of barely coherent, incompetent deconstructionism.

King tries, and fails time and time again, to do what giants like Alan Moore (Watchmen, Miracle Man) did before him, taking the concept of a good superhero fighting bad super villains, and twisting it around, giving it brutally realistic depth and switching black and white for an entire spectrum of greys.
Here, in this series, however, this deconstruction was done so poorly and obnoxiously, it's hard to take it seriously even for a moment. Which is a problem, considering this piece of filth is set in the main continuity, thus can't be simply disposed, forgotten and ignored like other edgelord trainwrecks, just to mention the recent Batman Damned.

That's the biggest tragedy of Heroes in Crisis - it's awful, yes, but sadly it's in canon making things ten times worse, since you can't just turn your sight from it and forget about it. It's like DCEU in many respects, where Joker and Harley have some idiotic scribbles tattooed on their faces, for example, and seemingly nothing can be done about it, due to Warner Bros' incompetence and, I guess, franchise-suicidal tendencies. That describest Tom King's entire event as well, doesn't it?more

This is issue as well as the series was so disappointing. What readers will find is an issue that explains the entire story. Sounds great right? Wrong! A comic that felt like a mystery with clues sprinkled in along the way turned into a writer withholding information for 7 issues, giving absolutely no clues, so he can drag readers along to make them THINK it's a mystery when in all actuality Kin g tried to make this series way to deep giving readers pointless and useless information for no good reason.

This issue was so upsetting with a conclusion that appeared to be wrapped up in an issue that leaves fans scratching their head as to why he would do this to Wally West, a character that literally stood for Rebirth, and how he could just explain everything that happened with "the speed force".

Why did Wally need to go to the future to kill himself 5 days from now only to give himself 5 days? For what purpose? How is it that NOW, which never happened before that I can recall, Wally loses control and unleashed a speed force storm that somehow kills everyone around him? We have seen speed force storms before that looks more powerful then this and they gave super powers. An entire city given speed powers but Wally's is more powerful and thus kills everyone.

Also, Wally must be so dang fast that Harley and Booster don't notice being pushed into positions by him? What crap is that? Wally couldn't stand being alone, puts together all the camera footage from everyone, an gets so emotionally drained that he kills everyone accidentally.... really? This is why one of my favorite characters killed someone? And this was the best King could come up with after painting himself into a corner?

This series was a waste of time. This issues sole purpose was to fix all the errors made before it in the past 7 issues to try to contact the dots. I didn't feel for Wally at all because their was no build up, no emotion throughout each issue explaining why. And puddles? Really? That's the explanation?

Everyone knew Wally was the killer months ago and the best King could come up with was this. Thank you for ruining one of my favorite characters. Here's to hoping an actual crisis happens to rewrite what I just read. This was another issue and another series that King tries to build himself up and tries to make his writing seem so deep and emotional by masking it with crazy characters acting nothing like themselves and pulling the wool over everyone's eyes once again.

Can King write any other way? Are we prepared for more Kite man's, veggie trays, bare naked wrestling, and speed force explanations? I'm not because I'm done with this. Again, thank you King for ruining Wally, killing characters for no reason, and withholding information again.

I gave this a 4 for art. That's it.more