It's by far one of the best looking Batman comics in a while, filled with gorgeous art, from start to finish, but that's the tragedy of it - it looks great, but offers nothing of value otherwise. It's garbage, borderline unreadable due to its painful, almost mechanical dialogues, and no real, actual, genuine chemistry between Catwoman and Batman. Their relationship has become Twilight level of forced and unnatural.
Even if you don't dislite King's run, I see no reason to recommend this comic. It's worthless filler. Too bad Mann's talents were wasted on it. more

oh yes, the beach episode, that's why we all love anime
in today's episode, it's made clear that the great mangaka tom king did not finish his story so more filler
the animation is gorgeous, as you can expect
our beloved protagonist is still trying to find love with his Tsundere(or wtf is the term)
unfortunately he comes out as one of those random dudes you find on social media complaining about their feelings in the most generic yet pretentious way possible
lots of weird dialogue repeating words, one word sentences and etc. making even more clear that this is a filler episode to fill up space
the best part is how heroic our protagonist comes out. his beloved city is burning and he is on a island with his crush. now that's is the super hero sh#t i love
but let's be real, enough.
Tom, please, go read Morrison's batman or even Snyder's run. Batman isnt the type of man you are. He does not need a woman to motivated him, to make him strong. That's not batman. The same goes for people who like this. This is not batman. more

"It's like poetry, it rhymes."

Great art and more garbage written by Tom King. I can't wait for him to be off of Batman!

I can't believe I actually read this.

The art is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but this book though...

This is the most unimaginative and elementary comic I have ever read in my entire life. At least when I read All-Star Batman and Robin (TBW) I get some enjoyment out of attempting to decipher Miller's ridiculous storytelling, but this is just makes me lose brain-cells.

"Oh wow, he mentioned the possible future seen back in Annual #2 (which I actually liked)", "King's work is so connected; he truly is the definitive writer of our generation."

I don't care how good the art is, how many "interesting" or "creative" ideas he introduces, Tom King can't write romance for shit, and the only "modern classic" he will ever be responsible for making is the "Darkseid War: Green Lantern" issue. more

an absolutely pathetic excuse for a Batman comic!!

the only thing this comic was missing was Catwoman tying Batman up in bondage with a gag-ball in his mouth, then spanking his fanny with a paddle until he said "Thank you Mistress Catwoman. May i have another?"

this has nothing to do with the issues before it.

The art is good but this story and dialogue are so damn bad that it’s a 2.5 for me. Apparently Catwoman interrogated the 2 random guys on the mountain who easily beat and cut Bruce’s throat. For some reason they knew the key to beating Bane. Why? Who the hell knows. King can never be bothered to provide details. The dialogue is so bad that I’m left assuming Tom King is actually a hermit who has never interacted with another human being. This issue and the entire series is complete bullshit. Thank god he’s leaving but it still isn’t soon enough. more

The art is great, that is why I rate it this highly. The whole issue is Bruce and Selina talking at each other, not to each other.

Basically, Selina says she gave up the relationship to be a hero, but she is not a hero, she is a thief.

Bruce said he thought Batman had to be alone to work. But that doesn’t explain Robins 1-4, Multiple Batgirls, Batwomen, justice leagues, commissioners, Outsiders. Remember kids, Batman debuted in 1939, Robin in 1940. That partnership lasted until 1969. Basically, Batman as a loner is a myth.

Anyway, Bruce and selina’s Dialog could have been thoughts to themselves. I get little sense of actual two way communication.

Also Bruce disguises himself as old school Magnum PI. NICE!

They train in and out of costume and are looking for the one thing that can beat Bane.

Very decompressed. The whole issue could have been done in one panel both say I missed you and I was wrong, let’s get the macguffin. Again great art.

Or I could be wrong. more

I don't think I will ever understand why DC is letting Tom King write this book.

Is the dialogue always this bad?

Alfred is frigged. Also Waynes are pathology.

Just more of the same shit.

Everyone sounds like a robot. Batman and Catwoman's dialogue is absolutely laughable to the point that I question whether Tom King knows what he's doing. But then I remember that if you go back to all his other books; the dialogue is exactly the same! Tom King is a legit hack who tries to be profound but just comes across as the storytelling equivalent of something I could have written in elementary school.

Damian sucks. Thomas Wayne sucks. The Alfred scene is just a gotcha moment that will be explained in the coming issues. There's no way that DC is going to let King kill Alfred after the one-two punch that was HIC + The Wedding.

The art is the only redeeming quality about this book (though I do prefer Daniels over Janin). more

Meh. It probably says a lot about this run that when something as big as this happens, I don't care. I don't get excited at the possibilities. I don't get sad because something bad happened. I don't even give it more than the half a second it took to read. I just move on, unchanged. The dialogue in this issue is the worst when it's Bruce and Selina. They don't talk like people do. And that wouldn't necessarily be a problem in certain stories, but in this one where we're supposed to connect with this *very human* relationship, it's bad. I thought this issue had a nice set up, at least. I can buy the idea that Damian would go into Gotham against better judgment. I mean, Damian's always been a shithead. It's just not well executed. It doesn't have the proper build up. If earlier issues weren't just a compilation of stories and ideas, but rather one throughline narrative, maybe this could've been given more weight. I just don't care about any of this anymore. I'm not angry, I'm not disappointed, I'm just apathetic. more

Alfred - alongside Gordon & Joker - is the only essential character of every portrayal of Batman's mythos.
Killing him in such an anti-climatic fashion, without previous "character work" or diegetic-dialogical preparation, doesn't represent a brilliant estrangement, or some sort of Freudian
"unheimliche": it simply attempts to delegitimize the narrative foundations of this - Batman's - literary micro-cosm. more

So like, i guess that damian can just use magic now? i think there should be a rule like "do not ever make one of the bat family members use magic", but whatever. establishing the massive treat gotham girl is was a big waste of time, cool.
all the dialogue between Bruce and Selina was trash, like, really forced really unnatural. It almost felt like King is just coping Dark knight rises in a way(also, if bruce is going to accept help why he can't just call the justice league or something?)
I know damian is arrogant but c'mon. Also, ah, spoilers i guess, alfred dies? who cares? Or this is going to be a dream or the rumors are true and DC is going to reboot next year
And, when we're going to get a explanation about how city of bane "works"? like, how bane did take over?
1,5 because the art, for the most part, was good more

King continues to overexpose filler, while forgetting to give important scenes enough attention. I can't ditch the impression if feels like an elseworld story, which is not restricted by stiff continuity rules. What other explanation for absence of, let's say, Superman taking over, or Suicide Squad infiltrating the city, is there? And I get it - story doesn't always have to follow and consider everything, but I would at least expect some semi comptent explenations of what, how and why.

And speaking of elseworld tales, that's not the first time Alfred died - remember The Dark Knight Returns or Batman White Knight? In the first, he dies with the Wayne manor. In the latter, he sacrifices himself to save Bruce's life, also setting him up for a redemption arc. Here, he is just cannon fodder, really. Maybe I'm just so bored and tired of King's Batman I stopped to give a shit about anything in his comics, but I don't feel this scene had any real weigth. It was all style, no substance. Similarly to how Bane hung all the Robins in one of the first arcs. Yeah, cool looking panel, but is it going to impact the story in real, meaningful way? Seeing King's previous issues, I have doubts. After all, the only massive change the series did, was renaming Nightwing to Ric - something everyone and their mothers hate with passion.

You know, there's clearly something wrong when a death of a main character made lesser impression on me than Damian showing Gotham Girl his tiny wand. more

Let me catch you up. Damian ignores dire warnings and gets his ass handed to him by Old Batman. Bane Kills Alfred as a warning to all other Bat family members. They have Damian and they'll do the same to him if they come to Gotham. I really hope they storm Gotham and Damian gets his head crushed.

Meanwhile, in Paris, Selina is with Bruce. Bruce says he's going back to Gotham to die a good death like Mom and Dad. Selina says not without me. Gotham's my city too. She says "You don't see me".

Now you're caught up.

What I liked. The art was good. Kudos. What I didn't like. The decompression. It took me two paragraphs to describe this story. I guess we're supposed to get a sense of like father, like son. The Wayne boys are stubborn and won't quit, whether for good or evil, I guess.

King is still not writing Selina like an actual character - someone with her own voice, her own view, her own spark of divine fire. King has said he's writing the Bruce-Selina romance to honor his wife. But now I really wonder about their marriage. It's not Bruce who doesn't see Selina, it's King. He has almost always written her as a prize to be won and not as an actual person.

He also writes Bruce like a weird child with overwhelming mommy and daddy issues, someone who is really an incredibly damaged person who is incomplete and destructive to himself and his city.

I know this is the way writers write Bruce now, but I prefer the person who is the smartest guy in the room who dresses up as a bat for strategic purposes and who is motivated to make Gotham a better place because he actually wants to help people, and not just work out parent issues as obvious as the ones Mike Meyers made fun of in the third Austin Powers movie.

But that's me. I could be wrong. But overall, an issue that stretches out three pages of stuff into an entire issue. I'm not impressed. more

Well we see Selina stealing paintings to pay for Bruce's coma care in Paris. Gotham Girl beats up Captain Atom.

You're caught up.

Nothing else really happens. We see a little more of how Gotham works, but nothing really that informative. The Robins are frustrated, but that's it. Just more decompressed story-telling. The art is nice. But it's also more told, not seen. We don't know who Selina got Bruce from the snowy mountains of wherever there were snowy mountains last issue. (I forget and don't feel like looking it up.)

More Kiteman. To paraphrase Indigo Montoya - "you keep thinking Kiteman is interesting. I don't that word means what you think it means."

We also see Dad Batman using a gun. So what? How does this affect the villains, the cops, the publuc? Again, not show or even told. We do get some shallow villain characterization. The Scarecrow gets off on Kiteman's fear. Wow, deep King.

This is a dull, slow, decompressed issue that moves the story ahead about one inch. It lacks forward momentum, excitement and the feeling that I have to tune next bat-time, next-bat channel to learn what happened. And that's a problem for serialized story telling.

Or I could be wrong. more

I don’t think this issue is that bad. Tony S Daniel‘s art is awesome& I wish he drew the entire issue. I was never a fan of Mitch Gerard‘s art. It feels too rushed.
As for the plot we are getting a glimpse of how Bane‘s city looks like ( which is basically Arkham War 2.0., but with less fun)& at least many villains made an appearance. There are some funny ideas like Hugo Strange as the Commissioner or Joker& Riddler as cops. Those are quite random though& Scarecrow’s& Joker’s team up during Knightfall was way more fun. King also writes a weird& unfun Joker. Speaking of Scarecrow. Of course there's as good as every villain in this issue except Scarecrow ( can’t blame him though). But what annoys me, that King gives a loser like Psycho Pirate such a big role in this. King overpowers him and makes him control every other villain. If it was that easy Psycho Pirate ( a shame I even have to mention a D villain like him) would have controlled Gotham years ago. I however find it positive, that Thomas didn’t kill villains like Two Face, who didnt want to play along considering his Flashpoint days. I hope that stays this way. It better does!
As for Bruce he’s somewhere in the mountains& meets Catwoman ( if she was just an illusion, it would make sense, but since this is King I wouldn’t be surprised if it was her for real). That’s one thing, what ruins this issue for me, because I’m quite annoyed by this Batcat crap King is forcing on us.

This issue also still faces many problems& plotholes. There are still questions King refuses to answer:

-Why& how is Flashpoint Batman even in the canon timeline?
-Bane‘s plan is still dumb& unbelievable especially because Bruce went through worse than a breakup.
-If Thomas brings Ventriloquist into the batcave wouldnt he know Bruce’s real identity?
- As if the JL or the batfamily wouldn’t do anything against Bane.
- Wasn’t it stated, that Gotham Girl is going to die, if she used her powers once more?

This issue also suffers from Kings typical problem the bad dialogue. Especially the way Gotham Girl talked was bad. Why is it so hard for King to write a decent dialogue?

This issue also ties in Years of the Villains& that’s where it makes zero sense. In JL Bruce is Batman& there is no problem with Gotham mentioned. I also doubt he would hang out with the others, if Gotham just fell into anarchy. Kings story doesn’t fit with the big event at all& I also have the feeling, that many villains will be wasted once again here. Another reason, why King‘s story is nowhere near as great as Knightfall, since the villains had great stories during Knightfall& werent wasted. more

more random, all-over-the-place, decompressed, pseudo intellectual gibberish.

nothing was properly set up. we are just thrust into Gotham being run by villains with Flashpoint Batman in charge of Wayne Manor and the Bat-cave.

meanwhile Bruce is marching out in a snow blizzard in some undefined mountains. where? why? who knows? Bruce is asking for someone called 'The Memory of the Mountain', but gets his throat slashed and his head bashed with a crowbar by two nobody punks. then all the sudden Catwoman is there, just because.

Bane gives a speech about how the Justice League won't come in and stop his havoc on Gotham because he'll threaten innocents. yeah. i totally buy that . . . . NOT! and the reason Bane even wants Gotham? who knows?

this is just beyond pretentious and dumb.

at least the Tony Daniel portion of art was nice, and we no longer have to worry about this going on till issue 100. hopefully DC will renumber this series after #85. just start fresh. more

Oh brother. King's Gotham is just silly. It's up is down wrong is right, evil is good. And that's just silly. We learn that Thomas Wayne is Batman and uses Gotham Girl to enforce things. Hugo Strange is the commissioner and Joker and Riddler are cops. Psycho Pirate "cures" the insane and we see him do that with Two-Face.

Meanwhile we see a traveler walk in the snowy mountains being getting narration RIPPED OFF from the Tom Hanks movie "Charlie Wilson's War." It's a mess. We still get King's pet love of Batman insisting He and Selina met on a boat, and Selina saying they met on the streets.

Does Thomas Wayne have the ability to separate Gotham from the rest of the Justice League. In the old days when kids would stay off my lawn, team-ups were a thing, but each DC title was really its own little world. And that worked because of the social contract between writers and readers.

Sure Superman or Flash could solve all of Batman's problems by helping capture villain of the week. But the book is a Batman one, so we assume Superman or the Flash are off in their books doing their thing and don't thing too hard about how it really would be logical for Batman to call for Super help all the time.

But in this new much more interconnected world of comics, all the other DC heroes are going to ignore the fact that Gotham is being run by villains who have multiple murders on their rap sheets. I don't care if Psycho Pirate made them sane, that's just a bridge too far.

Also having the Joker be "curable" by Psycho Pirate really diminishes the Joker. He is mysterious and unknowable. Having him have an actual mental illness is just . . . degrading to the character.

And stop having Bane boast about how he broke the Bat and there's no way the Bat will come back, yep the Bat is broken and I am putting my fingers in my ears and shouting LAH, LAH, LAH I can't hear yo.

The breaking of the Bat with Bane has already been done. You can buy the trades in your local book store. It's not like this arc has been forgotten. King you are just walking on ground that's been well tread on.

What bothers me is that King really does think this is original great stuff. He's ripping off previous arcs and Charlie Wilson's War and he thinks he's the greatest thing since Stan Lee.

Meanwhile things like actual plot, actual pacing and actual characterization suffer. The villains are cardboard, the secondary players are ignored and the romance between Bruce and Selina is told and not shown. AARRGGHH.

Or I could be wrong. more

This is the final issue of the „Fall& the Fallen“arc& compared to the Knightmare arc we at least get some story progression: Bruce& Flashpoint Batman are fighting in the desert. In the end someone climbs out of the hole, but we don’t know yet, who it will be. However there are many plotholes, unanswered questions& missed opportunities, that make it impossible for me to enjoy it.

Minor SPOILER WARNING:
The entire plot here is a retelling of the fairy tale from issue 57& it’s a missed opportunity, that King rather retells an already known story instead of concentrating of one of his more interesting ideas: the reviving of Martha. This is kept way too short& just shortly mentioned. Out of nowhere it’s stated, that Bruce sneaked away while Thomas was sleeping& burried Martha somewhere in the desert. It would have been by far more interesting& more exiting, if Thomas actually went through with it& we would get a Pet Cemetery like story. Or if Bruce at least had to fight for stopping him. It sure would have been more dramatic. It’s also without any emotion. You could think, that it’s a terrible experience for Bruce being forced to take the rotten corpse ( or more likely a handful of dust) of his mother& bury her somewhere at a place, where he can’t visit her grave anymore. Nothing of this inner conflict of the characters is adressed by King. His characters are pale& bland. It’s also not only a missed opportunity, it’s also unbelievable. King wants the reader to believe, that Bruce, whose back was just broken would be able to lift a corpse& coffin& bring it to a place somewhere in the desert. His writing is just without any logic. Instead of that King is trying to focus on the relationship between Bruce& Flashpoint Batman.

SPOILER Ending
This never goes deep& a reason for that is, that King never cared to show us any scenes about what Bruce actually thinks about his father from a different timeline. We still don’t get any explanations for why& howThomas is even here & his motivations still are illogical. At the end Bruce seems to realize, that this isn’t his father, but since Bruce isn’t a fool this realization feels way too late. Since the portrayal of Banes plan was a big mess in earlier issues, it’s also unbelievable, when Thomas tells Bruce, that he was broken.
Overall nothing of Kings story is fitting together& I fear this won’t change in the last 11 ( I think) issues.

As for the art, it feels rushed for me& drawing Thomas with Ben Afflecks Nightmare Batman outfit is an odd choice in my opinion. It also makes no sense drawing Bruce half naked, since in the desert he either gets a sunburn during the day or is in danger to freeze at night.


more

I would like to give this a 1 just to even out all the King Cult members wbo will give it a 10 but I wont do that. This issue is the epitome of what we have gotten the whole series which is nothing. You get Tom King using the majority of the issue just using a folk tale for dialogue (which he does more than write his own anymore) a story that goes nowhere, and a zero questions answered. I can not wait for King to be off this book so maybe we can get Batman back instead of whatever god awful character this. The art was alright. more

How does bruce fight? It was spelled out last issue that he was still messed up and healing from major back surgery???

Lets see, King uses a folk tale he’s already used previously and then repeats it in the same story. Still no resolution on how Thomas is in this world. Bruce gets into a straight up fight while still healing from a broken back and then being sling across the back of a horse. This is just more bullshit. People seem to think it’s some sort of genius writing but it’s mostly just pretentious bullshit that tells the reader nothing. It’s one nonsense filler issue after another and I can’t wait till it’s over. King seems to have big ideas so hopefully he does better writing movies where a more competent writer can fill in the details. As for this issue, if you haven’t bought it already, don’t bother. more

Last issue was, I thought aat least, a moment of twist, which will, finally, resuscitate the series and add some, any, story to it, especially since DC editorial decided to pull the plug to his run earlier (and thank goodness for that). This week all I can do is admit my failure. I was wrong, the comic leads absolutely nowhere, it's devoid of any substance, and King, despite having only half of year to conclude his story, still decides to add even more filler to it.

The story of this issue could be summarized in barely one sentence. You ready? Bruce buries his mother somewhere on the desert so she can't be resurrected, which pisses of Thomas and they fight. The end.
The rest of this issue is dedicated to meaningless conversations regarding the old public domain story about animals in the pit eating each other. It's boring, and once more makes an empty circle referencing something King said a while ago with no actual purpose. He's known for these recycled loops.

On top of that, the story doesn't even add up. Think about it - if Martha Wayne is buried somewhere under the sand, Bruce had to take her body after Thomas fell asleep, and return before he woke. So, if we assume he's slept for ~8 hours, which is the healthy standard for adults, Bruce's "trip"couldn't be longer than 4 hours at average in one direction. Average walking speed of a human is 5km/h in perfect conditions, and I'll use it as a reference, since Bruce is in peak form, and I will also ignore harsh ground conditions slowing him down, weigth of his mother's corpse, as well as time required to bury her properly, so animals don't dig her up and eat. So we're left with a circle around their camp, with ~20km radius. In practice I'd expect it to be way smaller. With Thomas sleeping for 6 hours, Bruce walking 3km/h and spending 1 hour to bury Martha, it would have ~7.5km radius at most. Thomas should be able to find the camp's location, more or less, since he knows which direction he and Bruce came from, and how long did it take them. With that knowledge, finding the body would be a matter of using some high caliber radar able to detect anything with density other than sand's. Since duh, it's comics. more

In a shock to no one, this plan Thomas Wayne had didn't work. We get a return of the folklore from Batman #57. It serves as the focal point of the entire issue, and then we even have the story narrated to us again. Because we needed the point hammered home after it had just been made. This is supposed to be cathartic, but it's not because this story hasn't been well constructed. I'm glad Bruce has finally decided not to be depressed, at least. He never really gave up, though, he just got a little more violent. He was always on the money with Bane and was never going to stop. But I'm glad he overcame that so he can go beat up Bane. more

Yay! More useless garbage by Tom King. Again, please remove him from any of DC's main books!

What to say. Basically “oh brother” covers it. The two bats get to the pit. While walking they do some talking.

Dad says Bruce was a whiner who always cried when dad would read him Russian folk tales from issue 57.

He said he wanted Bruce to be his own man, and once mom is restored that will happen for reasons.

Bruce says he always wanted to hear the stories because he hoped they would change so he was stubborn like mom, oh he buried her body in the desert so putting it in the extra special pit won’t work.

They fight. Dad is wearing heavy gear and a duster while Bruce is just wearin his cowl from the waist up. I guess he is not afraid of severe sun burn and sun poisoning.

They fight in the pit. Cut to top, and we see a gloved hand. Is it dad’s, is it Bruce’s? (It will be bruce’s).

Once again we get a writer adding backstory to a very old character. This back story explains all. I do not like this because instead of forging ahead, it just reworking the same old past. And the results are always dismissing returns.

Again, story unfolds so slowly. The art does not provide compelling action that tells its own story. Just single shots of men throwing punches.

Dad’s statement of now that you are broken down you can rise is so on the nose, That I guess King really hates subtext.

This run isn’t exciting. It’s just long and drawn out. It seems like the trek through the desert - never ending and dreary.

Or I could be wrong. more

King’s war on words continue. There entire pages without dialog, and some pages is is just public domain songs.

The entire plot is Thomas wayne dragging a coffin with Martha’s body to a Lazerous Pit. He has Bruce coming too, and explains the whole Bane arc, literally. He explains the whole trope of you are broke down and rise from the ashes.

Bruce does nothing. He doesn��t question anything, certainly not the fact that lazerous pits were originally written so that they had to be used shortly after death.

King is stealing another plot - this time it is Death and the Maidens. That story also has the Wayne’s bodies being used for revival.

Just a terrible issue that goes nowhere and reveals nothing.

Or I could be wrong. more