I wish there was an option to give it a Zero because this is absolute shit. Tom King doesn't know how to write Batman or Catwoman, DC seriously needs to stop giving him Batman book. the timelines and characters are complete shit in this. He literally has no regards for anyone of the bat family. I said before for him bat family is just Bat, Cat and Helena and you can see here he doesn't even bring other family for the wedding just brings Clark and Louis. Seriously could fuck up a batman book more than this. Finally this shit show is over, if there is anyone who ruined Bat-Cat then it is Tom King. more

Complete and utter bullshit, even King fanboys MUST see this, he just ripped you off of nine issues' worth of money for a farce! And he turned Adam Strange into a villain after he did the same to Wally West! Why does DC lets this guy get away with this kind of stuff? He's not Alan Moore and HE NEVER WILL BE BECAUSE HE SIMPLY LACKS THE TALENT AND SKILL.

The art looks great. The story, continues to be bullshit. If you enjoy Kings schizophrenic storytelling then you'll probably enjoy this. If you prefer any sort of coherent story though,don't waste your time.

As usual, Tom King's writing is terrible and he still doesn't know how to write Batman.

The art is great, though!

My main issue is that this is not a book about Batman at all, DC just inserted him in the title for sales, it's a Catwoman book. And Catwoman just owns the Bat, King continues the trope of the submissive man and the dominating woman, I guess he really is into that. The art is splendid, Mann is just great. It would also be really great if King would stop inserting songs into every single comic he writes, I know he thinks it's clever but it's really not. more

Maybe I shouldn't read King's comics, I never am happy after that but every time I pick one and read them...

And it doesn't hurt that I really enjoy Mann's art here, it is excellent.

As for the story? Well, the best I can summarize it: it's like 4 different tv shows are going at the same time, you watch each one of them and just switch channels after 2 minutes to another show just so that you can keep track on what is happening. Surprisingly, it doesn't work.

Well, I usually don't get that kind of experience when reading a comic but King makes it happen. And because he does, I don't care about anything that happens in any of the stories. It's hard to start even investing in this. The word messy is thrown a lot when talking about this series and for good reason. It feels messy.

Maybe some people like this kind of storytelling. I don't.

Again, there is nothing really to hate here. It just doesn't work. I'm not disappointed nor surprised.

But at least the art is nice. more

Great art. Worthless story.

No...

Johns needs to be the architect of the entire DCU. Great story.

Definitely the silver lining in this mess of an event. Superboy Prime is easy to mess up, but this issue was perfectly meta.

Holy shit, I actually liked something attached to Death Metal. This is a really good issue, and I don't even like Superboy Prime. If only Johns had a hand in the main event, maybe then it wouldn't be such a mess. Let's ignore that The Batman Who's Profitable's plan keeps changing again and again, including once more in this issue, after his declaration that he wants everything to end in issue six of the main series. Snyder co-wrote this, and that's almost certainly his end of the issue. Just ignore that this is part of Death Metal, and you'll have a really good one-shot on your hands. more

Oh. my. god.

Holy shit.

I know it says Synder co-write this but I'm assuming Geoff Johns is the one to praise for doing the impossible. He has made me sympathise with Superboy with one of the best villain redemptions I've read in a while.

Imagine closing an entire event in a spin-off issue that isn't even a part of the main event, but is still single-handedly, hands-down, easily, by and far, THE BEST COMIC BOOK OF THE ENTIRE YEAR.

The conclusion of Prime's entire arc after 15 years may well be one of the most epic last stands in super-hero comics of all time, and my time to quit comics. My boy did good. He honoured us. Each and every single one of us, who ever read comics. Go outside for a while lads. It doesn't get any better than this.

Thanks Prime. See you around.

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k i n o

Geoff Johns Final Thesis: Fuck Comics, go outside.

This is not how you write a nonlinear comic book. The cartooning was amazing along with the colors.

Omg Tom King can’t write to save his life. He thinks that making a character LGTB ( I am myself btw) is good characterisation or invalidate all criticism.

Btw, what if the headlock in cover were the other way around....

Uhhh, this was something! I really didn't think much of it. I found that the constant switching of the timelines was more annoying than interesting. Not a ton happens in this issue, even still. I know it's only issue one, but there's no hook here for me. Maybe if I had seen Mask of the Phantasm, I'd be more interested in what's happening in the present timeline? I don't know. The only part of this issue that I really think was worth the read was seeing future Joker pop out of his makeup and wig. That's it. The rest, unfortunately, just feels like more of Tom King's Batman, which I found unbearably vapid. I was hoping, for some reason, that his writing would change or be better. Something about the constraints of having 12 issues may have helped keep things more consistent or something. But as of now, I can only walk away from this feeling like we're in for another twelve months of Tom King's Batman, and that's not a good thing, even if Tynion IV is over there making the main book just as unfortunately trite. The art is good, at least. Clay Mann isn't my favorite artist, but he's very competent and that at least gives the book some standing.

Side note: When they first introduced the differing timelines, I thought the past timeline would have cold blues, the present timeline would have warm reds and that the future timeline would be colored standardly. But then that was thrown out immediately, and I honestly think that was a missed opportunity. more

No please, I thought I thought I was going to vomit because of the dizziness with all those flashbacks to the past, the future without explanation, I completely hated this number, I think this series will be put aside.

Hate this interpretation of The Joker with a passion. Involving his character in the story at all was a bad idea.

The character is so overused as of late. Just stop writing him for a couple of years, see if there’s any way to recover from the overwhelming edginess of what he’s become. He's my favorite villain, but I dread his every appearance in current comics when you just know he's gonna be this unfunny scumbug. I wish we can go back to actual fun Joker stories.

King gave the Joker the worst, the most boring future I can think of. There are so many different directions he could go with Joker and he chose the worst possible one. (Plus it reminds me of that horrible version of the Joker from the cringy Harley Quinn tv show)

A retired old-man villain living with his family is cliche as all hell, and it would never work for a guy like Joker, in my opinion. And not just because it's soo BORING, but also because the Joker would never quit and just retire if he knew Batman was still around. The Joker orbits around Batman. Even if you'd remove him completly, it's still much more possible for Joker to spend his days as a sad and lonely clown, rather than a happy father and husband.
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I've had displeasure to follow King's Batman run since #1, and I admit, I enjoyed first two story arcs of it. That's the reason why for such a long time I've been giving him a second, and third, and fourth, and nth chance, hoping this time he's going to lead the story... somewhere, anywhere, really. But nope. His run was a hollow and meaningless soap opera with plotline after plotline getting cut halfway, to either be picked up in a lazily written half assed crossover like The Button, or be forgotten for good with no resolution.
Sufficed to say, I've been there, and seen what King does to pretend he has a story to tell. His use of repetition, public domain poems/songs, disjoint sequences, retrospections and out of character dialogues have all become pretty infamous among those who saw through the 85 issues worth of almost nothing he spawned.

And now the circle repeats. The new series begins, and it's as hollow, as disjointed, as soap opera-ish as his main run, which begs the question "why"? It seems like neither he nor anyone at DC's editorial have read a word of constructive criticism regarding his main Batman run, considering this comic inherited its every single flaw I can name.

Now, in normal circumstances I'd say I shouldn't judge the book by its cover, but at this point I know King's Batman, and I can bet half of the disorganized mess he presented here won't even find any proper conclusion, heck, causality. I was hoping King will think the entire project through, not being forced to write two issues per month (which I could imagine was beyond tough), and crafts a comelling, engaging and most importantly coherent script. Instead, we get this. And this is by no means an acceptable comic. Shame, because those who don't learn from the history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Or, in this, case, repeat their own. more

Boo-hoo, Tom King is sad about the Iraq War. Cry me a river and go do some creator owned shit instead of ruining another beloved silver age character and his mythos.

Well, Alanna continues to be the worst. I hope those T-Spheres Mr. Terrific always has recorded that whole exchange, and what will come next. That'd just... Make sense. But we'll see. Mr. Terrific is the only reason I have any interest in this book. I don't really care about Adam Strange, and Alanna is clearly being set up to be the typical strong-woman-red-herring. Or maybe it's being played straight. I don't know, and I don't particularly care. This book has me as long as Mr. Terrific gets a hefty amount of the spotlight. Also, side note, does this series have an editor? In the first issue, they didn't get Adam's daughter's name right. The second issue, Mr. Terrific solves that quadratic equation incorrectly, and in this issue numbers just start changing. more

This is fine, I guess. I mean, if you wanted me to root for Alanna's downfall, you did good. She's clearly an awful person. I'm frankly sick of this story already, which is probably not a good sign, and I'm not interested in what happens next anymore.

Yes, this issue most definitely is filler. And now think - it's merely #2, and it already is exactly that. What a Tom King thing to do, isn't it?
I gave the series a blank credit of trust when the debut issue came out - it did not make me interested, but nonetheless I refused to criticize it due to my lack of knowledge regarding the titular character and his lore. With this comic, in comparison, I ask myself is there even any lore to expect in the series? Feel free to bash me for being so harsh, but try not to be when half of the book shows Mr. Terrific answering random trivia questions to show how smart he supposedly is and then he concludes Adam Strange's lying about somthing.

I'm sorry, but I can't give this issue a poitive score. It felt like an utter waste of time and even great art can't save it. It neither progresses the story any further nor offers insight in the main characters' psyche, show what motivates them, really. And even if you liked the series so far, and/o a fan of King's work, I think you'll agree with me on how empty this issue is. more

Wow, what a story so far. As a long time Adam Strange fan I realize he is mostly forgotten in DC lore. And then DC does one of three things with him.

1) have him cameo in a shot
2) He makes a good team up appearance
3) DC decides to use the "too good to be true", or "The Awlful Truth" trope in a solo appearance.

We saw this in 1992 in the "Adam Strange" mini series with Richard Bruning, Andy Kubert, and Adam Kubert. None of those are on this project it seems, so this is a new group saying "Disposable jetpack hero, let's write a suspense story."

Not liking where this current series is going. Strange is on top. He has a book, he's getting the key to the city. Everyone loves him, but there is some doubt. And then a critic comes up dead? When you start at the top in a story, there is only one way to go.

Then we bring in Mister Terrific. Wasn't a fan of all the trivia either, however, did show to me how cold and calculating, in the vein of "fair play”, Mister Terrific could be. And yet to paraphrase, "Everyone likes Strange but they didn't put me on a lunch box when I won medals" has me wondering if Mister Terrific is yet another disposable hero in this project that is also heading for disaster in this story?

So you have a man who is too good to be true, and a man who is already biased in finding negative in this man. Is the point to find guilt, establish innocence, or find fact? I doubt in his bias and obvious jealousy Mr. Terrific will be able to find fact.

Add to this Strange playing the victim to be the hero (again paraphrasing) "If you've read my book you've seen we've been through a lot...". Oh man... this is not going to be good.

Hey Strange has been through some scrapes before, many many times. Been through the Hero’s Journey, redemtion, then was allowed to be the jet pack hero for a while in the last two decades. And now this story.

In this age of social media facts, morals, and ideas have become twisted. What was right yesterday is not right today... according to those that are more socially popular. DC owns this character, writers naturally influenced by current events, so they are the more “popular” ones in this case. And in current trends we see that tides change, and heroes are disposed of in the pursuit of ratings, likes, and laughs. I see a lot of that in this story already. A product of the current times.

Looks like Strange will be a throw away character for a few sales. I hope I’m wrong. However, if I’m right, just like after 1992, writers will rebuild Strange, sweeping a one time sensational story under the rug, and let Strange be who he is: a quick thinking hero with a jet pack and a ray gun.

Sometimes we just need a fun escape. I do enjoy a good “heros are not so heroic” story. I love Watchmen, glad they made new characters for that story. Maybe they should have made new characters for this story too rather than throw a beloved character of 60 years under the bus. more